Making Water Safe

Boiling

In order to kill the parasites, bacteria, and

other pathogens in water, the most reliable thing to do is boil the water. Boiling will not evaporate all forms of chemical pollution, but it is still one of the safest methods of disinfection. Five minutes of a rolling boil will kill most organisms, but 10 minutes is safer. Elevations high enough to affect boiling and cooking times will require slightly more time over the flame.

Boiling can be done over a campfire or stove in a metal, ceramic, or glass container. If no fireproof container is available, heat rocks for 30 minutes in the fire and place them into your container of water. This container could be a rock depression, a bowl burned out of wood, a folded bark container, a hide, or an animal stomach. Don’t use quartz or any river rocks as these can explode when heated.

Distillation

Radiation, lead, salt, heavy metals, and many other contaminants can taint your water supply after a disaster, and trying to filter them out will only ruin your expensive water filter.

In a scenario where the only water available is dangerous water, there aren’t many options. The safest solution is water distillation. Water can be heated into steam, and the steam can then be captured to create relatively clean water, despite its prior forms of contamination—including radioactive fallout. Distillation won’t remove all possible contaminants, like volatile oils and certain organic compounds, but most heavy particles will stay behind. For home-based disaster survival situations, a quick way to make a steam distiller is with a pressure canner and some small-diameter copper tubing. The best part of this operation (aside from safe water) is that the canner stays intact. This allows you to easily shift gears from water distillation to food preservation (providing you are not dealing with radiation). The only tricky part is getting the copper line fitted to the steam vent on the canner’s lid.

If in the field, try your luck with a solar still, a simple invention that collects and distills water in a hole in the ground. To build one, place a square of clear or milky plastic (5 by 5 or 6 by 6 feet) over a 3-foot-deep hole with a clean container centered in the bottom. (Run a drinking tube from the container so you can drink your gathered water without taking apart the whole still.) Place dirt around the edge of the plastic at the rim of the hole to seal off the still. Place a rock in the middle of the plastic to create a roughly 45-degree cone over the container. Dig the still in a sunny location and in the dampest dirt or sand available. Add green vegetation and even urine to the hole to increase its water production. A transpiration bag is a smaller and less productive version of this set-up, involving a clear plastic bag tied around live vegetation. As I have mentioned in the blog about water before.