Water in the Wild
Water is number one experts say.
Before you can disinfect the water, you have to find it. Depending on your location and situation, water can be abundant or virtually non-existent. Water can come from freshwater surface sources like streams, creeks, ponds, and lakes. If you are able to distill the water, you can even use brackish or salty water as a source.
Clear, flowing water is your best option, as the movement doesn’t allow bacteria to fester. This means that small streams should be what you look for first. Rivers are acceptable, but larger ones often have a lot of pollution from upstream. Lakes and ponds are okay, but they’re stagnant, meaning there’s an increased chance for bacteria.
Not having any water for 24 hours, however, while survivable, depletes both your physical and mental strength, making it more difficult to perform the tasks necessary to making it out the other side. And after just three days without hydration, your body will shut down, and it’ll be lights out for you.
Processing
Water issuing from springs and other underground sources can also be safe in most areas. Water coming from tapped trees like maple and birch can be safe to drink and abundant in late winter. But most other water sources should be considered “dirty” and must be disinfected with one of the following methods.
The first step of the purification process can be filtration. It’s important that you filter your water before boiling as the bacteria and viruses (covered in dust and sand) will not be killed.
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 ten minutes is safer. Elevations high enough to effect 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
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.
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 (5×5 or 6×6 feet) over a three-feet-deep hole with a clean container centered in the bottom. (Run a drinking tube from the container so that 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.
The benefit of creating a still is that it provides a reliable, fairly substantial source of water (compared to other methods), and you know roughly how much you’ll be getting, which helps you plan and ration better.
Filtration
The first thing to consider when collecting water is to think about how soon you will need to drink. If you have time, collect standing water in a container and let it sit for a few hours. This will allow anything that floats to rise to the surface, and you can skim off any debris.
If you have two containers, try this method for filtering water: Take the first container and fill it with water. Then, put your shirt or some sort of porous layer over the other container. Put your pebbles on top of the cloth and filter your water by pouring it over the stones and into the container. Next, remove the pebbles and put sand, a finer material, on top of the cloth. Filter your water again.
Finally, the most effective way to filter is to crush up charcoal, put it on your cloth and let the water run through it. Charcoal filters remove sediment, many contaminants, and improve the taste. Charcoal is used in store-bought home and backcountry water filters. You can make your own charcoal by making a campfire, covering it with dirt and ash, and allow it to cool completely. Once it has cooled, crush it into small pieces. Pour the water through the charcoal several times.
If you don’t have a manmade container, some natural materials are great alternatives. Bamboo is a prime example. It is hollow in the center and water can flow through it easily. There are many other plants with hollow centers. Use these to your advantage. A hollow log can be a great option. Place the materials (pebbles, sand, cloth, and charcoal) in layers through the various parts of the bamboo or log. Remember to think about what materials you are carrying and check out your surroundings in any survival situation.
Collect Rainwater
Collecting and drinking rainwater is one of the safest ways to get hydrated without the risk of bacterial infection. This is especially true in wild, rural areas (in urban centers, the rain first travels through pollution, emissions, etc.).
There are two primary methods of collecting rainwater. The first is to use any and all containers you might have on you. The second is to tie the corners of a poncho or tarp around trees a few feet off the ground, place a small rock in the center to create a depression, and let the water collect.
Heavy Morning Dew
Looking for a way to collect up to a liter of water per hour? Tie some absorbent clothes/cloths or tufts of fine grass around your ankles, and take a pre-sunrise walk through tall grass, meadows, etc. Wring out the water when the cloths are saturated, and repeat. Just be sure you aren’t collecting dew from any poisonous plants.
Fruit/Vegetation
Fruits, vegetables, cacti, fleshy/pulpy plants, even roots contain a lot of water. With any of these, you can simply collect the plants, place them into some kind of container, and smash them into a pulp with a rock to collect their liquid. It won’t be much, but in desperate situations, every little bit helps.
Dig a Beach Well
If you’re stranded on land near a body of saltwater, you can still attain fresh water by digging a well on the beach. Behind the first sand dune — typically about 100 feet from shore — dig a 3-5’ hole. Line the bottom with rocks, and the sides with wood (driftwood, most likely). This allows the well to fill up without collapsing or having too much sand in the water. In a few hours, you’ll have a well full of fresh water — a combination of collected rainwater (which runs down the dunes), and sand-filtered ocean water. If it tastes salty, you simply move a little further away from shore.
A variation of this method is to let the water seep in, but then heat some additional rocks and drop them in the water. This will create steam, which can be collected by holding an absorbent cloth over the well. Wring out the cloth and repeat. This ensures that your water is free of all salt and other contaminants, but you will yield less.
Precipitation
Let’s not forget precipitation as an emergency water supply. Rain, snow, sleet, hail, ice, and dew can be collected for water. Fresh rain that didn’t fall through a jungle or forest canopy should be safe enough to drink as is. New snow can be melted for drinking without processing as well.
While snow and ice provide an excellent source of water, it should always be melted and purified first. Eating straight snow/ice will lower your body temperature, which dehydrates you because it forces your metabolic rate to speed up in order to keep you warm.
The best way to melt snow/ice and make it actually taste good is to simply mix it with other water you may have, even small amounts, and slosh it around until the snow melts. If you are heating it, add a little bit of other water to it; heating snow/ice directly can actually scorch it and produce a foul-tasting drink.
FYI
In any desperate survival scenario, you may be tempted to try non-water liquids as a substitute for the real thing. In all but the most dire of situations, these should be avoided. In general, non-water substitutes only worsen your heath and vigor. These substitutes, and their harmful characteristics below:
-Alcohol. Dehydrates and clouds judgment.
-Urine. Contains harmful body waste and is about 2% salt.
-Blood. May transmit disease. Also has high salt content.
-Seawater/Sea Ice. Contains 4% salt. It takes more water to rid your body of the waste from seawater than what you get from it. Just depletes your body’s H2O supply.
Of course, if you’re a Bear Grylls fan, you’ll know he famously drank his own urine while in the Sahara Desert. Is this safe to do, or was that for entertainment purposes? If you’re down to your very last resort, drinking your urine can keep you alive for another day or two. It’s 95% water, but that other 5% is comprised of waste products that will ultimately lead to kidney failure if subsisted on for more than a very short period of time. And of course as you get more dehydrated, this method becomes even more dangerous.
Before you resort to drinking your own pee, exhaust all the methods outlined above first. With a little effort, knowledge, and ingenuity, there’s a good chance you’ll be able to find genuine H2O.
DISCLAIMER: DO NOT JUST GO OUT AND DRINK YOUR OWN PEE. IT IS NOT OKAY. NOT. OKAY. THIS SHOULD NOT NEED TO BE SAID, SINCE YOU ARE ALL SMART AND RESPONSIBLE INDIVIDUALS BUT SERIOUSLY... DO NOT DO IT. READ THAT AGAIN. DO NOT DO IT.