Outdoor Life Prepare for Anything Survival Manual (27 page)

When it comes to the procurement of water in an emergency, we all want to be choosers, not beggars, but you’ll rarely see crystal-clear streams in the places where water is scarce. If the only available water looks awful, a little bit of overkill is certainly justified. All you’ll need for double-duty disinfection is a water filter, a cloth, and a little bleach to give your water the old double-tap. Follow these easy steps and you’ll be killing all of the disease-causing pathogens and keeping new ones from growing in storage.

STEP 1
“Rough filter” chunky, slimy, or particle-laden water by pouring it through a piece of cloth. This will help extend the life of your filter.

STEP 2
Use a reputable filter with some capacity for microbe destruction. A ceramic filter will screen out big pathogens, while a silver or iodine element will kill the more diminutive bacteria and viruses.

STEP 3
Now the real doubling occurs. Add 2–4 drops of household bleach per quart or liter of water, shake aggressively, and let the water sit for 1 hour.

STEP 4
Store or drink your water—it’s as safe as it’s going to get. Any mini-microbes that slipped past the filter should be thoroughly fried by the chlorine. It can be stored or drunk as long as it retains a faint bleach odor. Use this technique with swamp water, an aging water filter, or any time you are feeling a little paranoid about your self-made water supply.

The art and trade of traditional well digging has almost been forgotten by modern people, but in its most basic form, digging a well requires that you simply dig a hole deep enough to hit the water table. This hole will fill with water from the surrounding soil and may be clean enough to drink as is, but you should boil it just to be safe.

SITE SELECTION & PREP
Short of learning how to use a set of dowsing rods, your site selection will be mostly guesswork. If possible, place your well site close to your home and in a water-rich area. Digging near the base of a hill is usually productive, as the hill pulls the water table up toward the surface. Don’t dig the well in a low-lying area that is prone to flooding. This location will compromise the soil in the walls of the well and end up introducing a lot of contamination from surface water. Creating a solid surface, like a circle of flat rocks, can help to stabilize the mouth of the well.

DIG IT
You won’t need much more than a short-handled shovel, a bucket and rope to haul up dirt, a digging bar to break up rocks, and a ladder to get your brave well-digger out of the hole. Dig a round shaft 5 feet (1.5 m) wide, and dig straight down. Use rocks tied to strings for string lines to determine straight walls. Be aware that people died often in the well-digging trade, due to well collapse or deadly underground gases like methane. For these reasons and others, well digging and open wells are illegal now in many areas. If you have to dig more than 15 feet (4.5 m) down to hit water, make sure you taper the walls of the well as you go down and keep several people on standby to help in the event of a collapse.

The average household well is around 100 feet (30 m) deep, although some areas may require wells that are twice or three times that deep to hit the water table. The water is drawn up from these wells by an electric-powered pump located at the bottom of the well. In the event of a power failure, this pump won’t run and your water will be stuck deep below the surface. This may seem like a hopeless scenario, but there are ways to pull the water to the surface.

WELL BUCKET
A well bucket for modern wells is a slender plastic or metal sleeve that can be lowered down on a length of cord. This sleeve has a foot valve at the bottom, allowing it to fill up with water but not spill when lifted up. Make sure you have enough cord to reach the water level, and tie off the free end of the cord at the top of the well. This will keep you from losing your bucket and line. If you have to improvise a well bucket, use an arm’s length of steel pipe with a cap at one end and a cord tied to the other. That much steel will weigh enough to submerge in the water, while other slender containers will probably just float on top of the water in the well.

EMERGENCY HAND PUMP
This will require some advance planning on your part. You can purchase an old-fashioned hand pump to attach to your modern well head. Some styles of hand pump can be mounted on a well as a backup method, without disrupting your existing electric pump. Do your homework to find the right pump, as some pumps will only pull water up a few feet and others can pull water out of a 200-foot (60-m) well.

Dig a “gypsy well” to clarify muddy or stagnant surface water. This technique doesn’t filter out contaminants, but it can filter larger particles from the water to help with disinfection.

STEP 1
To make the well, dig a hole about a foot (0.3 m) away from the edge of the questionable water source. Dig the hole about 1 foot (0.3 m) down and at least that wide across to make the well’s volume worth it. This well can also be dug in a dry creek beds, allowing any subsurface water to collect in the hole for emergencies.

STEP 2
Wait. The hole will fill with water as the fluid seeps through the soil. Allow the water to sit for a few hours or overnight to clear out some of the mud and particles. This type of well works best in sandy, silty, or loamy soils; substances like mud and clay don’t percolate the water very effectively.

STEP 3
Collect and disinfect the water using the best method you have available. You can boil the water for 10 minutes, treat it with chemicals, or even run it through a proper filter if it is not too muddy.

Did you know that you can use your water bottle to boil water by the campfire? It’s a great backup method for disinfecting your drinking water. Many water bottles developed for the outdoor-sports industry are made from impact-resistant and heat-resistant Lexan plastic. While you shouldn’t try to put your Lexan bottle over a fire, you can put the heat of a fire inside the bottle using hot stones.

STEP 1
Collect about two dozen small stones from a dry location.

STEP 2
Heat the stones in your fire for 30 minutes, and use some wooden tongs to drop a hot stone in the bottle of water.

STEP 3
Replace each stone as it cools. The stones will emit heat into the water, bringing it to a boil. It will keep boiling if you keep replacing the stones. Keep one stone at a time in the water until 10 minutes have passed.

Your home is your castle, and while you may not be able to dig a moat, you can make sure that the exterior is as impenetrable as possible, whether the danger comes from humans or from Mother Nature. These seemingly mundane things can make a major difference in a survival situation. After all, when a hurricane strikes, your rain gutters suddenly become vitally important. And repairmen will be hard to come by.

ROOFS
Be sure your roof is free of debris, fallen leaves, pine needles, or other plant material. This will help to maintain its structural integrity, keep any decomposing substances from affecting the roof materials, and to prevent any flammables from becoming a fire hazard, which is especially important in hot, dry weather or if your property has trees that shed. In addition, if you have a wooden-shingle roof, be sure to give it a proper coating of stain at least every five years, and replace any cracked or missing pieces.

GUTTERS
Your gutters shed water from your roof, preventing water damage, but if they fill up with debris they’ll be useless. Keep your gutters and downspouts clear of dust, dirt, leaves, and other foreign material.

SIDEWALKS & DRIVEWAYS
Keep all of the concrete perimeters of your home in good working order by treating them with a sealant—one that protects them from the elements and also roughens them up, which helps avoid injuries from slips and falls. If you have any sprouting weeds, apply weed killer or uproot those pesky plants, and fill in any cracks.

WINDOWS & DOORS
Check your doors and windows to ensure they’re closing properly and that their locks function smoothly. (Deadbolts are a more sturdy lock than a simple slide chain, in terms of security.) Check your weather stripping around the bottoms of doors and windows and replace it if it’s worn or cracked.

Heating fires are responsible for more than a third of all U.S. house fires, and most of them occur due to creosote buildup in the chimney. This mixture of incompletely burned flammable substances, soot, and condensed gases forms an oily coating inside your chimney that can burst into flames.

You can reduce buildup by using only seasoned hardwoods (other flammables leave more deposits) and keeping your fireplace or woodstove clean. However, creosote will accumulate regardless, so you should clean out your chimney at least once a year. You’ll also be able to clear out anything else stuck in there that could be a fire hazard.

Set up a tarp around your fireplace to keep the inside of your house tidy when cleaning your chimney, and sweep or vacuum up any ash, soot, creosote, or other contaminants. The chimney itself can then be swept out with a long scrubbing brush, usually one with a spiraling head. You can also make do by lining a burlap sack with chicken wire, filling it with rocks or small weights, and lowering it down the chimney on a rope to scrape the sides. Various chimney-cleaning solvents are available, or you can use kerosene to help break up the stuff.