With all the recession talks not many people think about another possible emergency – apparently there is a growing world-wide water problem.
I first heard about it from Ralph W. Ritchie, a survivalist and author of series of disaster preparedness books. I have also read his water handbook and learned a lot from it (this post largely relies on the information from the water handbook). When I wrote about being prepared to disasters and emergencies, the water problem has never occurred to me, and it should have.
Here is Australia we are already several years into a drought and water issues are very familiar to us – but the truth is that farmers are the ones really facing this problem, for most people who live in the cities the water was never a problem. I mean the water restrictions are there, but even if we’re not allowed to water our gardens whenever we feel like it, it’s not the end of the world and we can adjust.
How about this – what if they cut the municipal water sources off? How long will we survive? What do we know about stocking up on water? And I am not exaggerating here – if due to a power outage or another kind of fault the municipal water system stopped working, we would be in a lot of trouble. Here is just a short list of events that could easily cut our water supply: floods (by contamination), earthquake (by breaking pipes), power outage (by shutting the water supply down).
Where the water is concerned, there are three basic rules:
1. You must have a reliable source of water
2. This source must satisfy human purity requirements
3. You must provide a backup water supply
A lot of people have rain water tanks installed in their back yards, which they can use as an additional source of water. Another possibility is to use water from a swimming pool if you have it. Ponds can also be useful, provided the water is purified and tested for quality.
Purifying may sound complicated but it is not, and it is a better alternative than drinking a contaminated water – which is deadly. You can purify even dirty water by settling it to get the largest particles out of the way, boiling it to kill the bacteria, filtering with activated carbon filters and adding chlorine or iodine to it (there are also water purification tablets available as an alternative to the chlorine/iodine). Another interesting solution to water purification is to use pure silver – i.e pour the water in a silver mug or put a silver coin in the water container.
Backup water supply means exactly that – storing water in bottles, jars or containers, in case the municipal water supply is interrupted. You can freeze it or just store it in a dark cool place, and it is probably wise to distribute your stored supply so that no single event can destroy it. Ralph Ritchie has a 60 gallon plastic drum he uses for water storage and it has a steel frame built around it, so it can’t be crushed even if the roof collapses.
If this post made you think about your household and its water-problem preparedness, don’t just click away and forget all about it. Download the water handbook, by Ralph W. Ritchie, read it, and act.
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I have a question about the silver. I am wondering if adding a silver coin to the water would be similar to colloidal silver. If I place a clean sterilized silver coin in a cup of water for a while then drink it, would it provide the same health benefits as colloidal silver?
It depends what health benefits you are talking about. From what I know some people think that colloidal silver helps with diseases such as diabetes, cancer, HIV, but there is no study that confirms that. Silver coin placed in water has antibacterial effect, that’s all.
This post has made it into the the Homesteading carnival – check it out, a lot of interesting reads.
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