Another thread (namely Forum.WhatSuggestionsWouldYouGiveTPTBForIndividualPreps) suggests keeping lots of water for each family. In tiny homes this wouldn’t work well, and the idea of a space-ship like home kind of emerged. Could we recycle every drop of water instead of storing up many cubic feet or meters of water?
Thinking along this line may not be helpful if you have room, cash and want things done yesterday. But:
I’m framing the thread as “cover needs”. We need a way to warm up food, a way to wash ourselves, and so on.
Some ideas will be high tech (spaceship), others will be low tech (1 cubic meter biodigester to have some self-made biogas), and other will just be simple “nice-to-know” ideas.
Some ideas have been covered elsewhere so we may just bring some links (square-foot gardening, etc).
In this design challenge we are allowed to look at sites like http://www.worldchanging.com and even consider buying the book. (I have no commercial interest in it.) Linking to other sites would be good.
bump (or delete thread)
I’ll have to figure out which book I saw this in so I can get the exact directions for a simple water filter.It was made with four poles that held three sheets of cloth tied across the poles.The top layer held gravel,second held sand,third held charcoal and a bucket was placed underneath to catch what should be clean water when dirty water was poured thru the top to the bottom layer.
lugon — what does “cover needs” mean exactly?
“cover (our real) needs”: we don’t need oil (means) but keeping food, cooking, transport (end).
unless you live in a dessert area I belive a doulton filter, and maybe 10 gallon of water ready is what you will need. The filter (when used on some buckets you allready have will not take any space at al, and cost nothing. Chlorine is also a part of prep. I dont belive water will be gone the entire period, nowhere..
Given the system some time to adjust and water will be flowing regardless of cases. Water is so essential for any soceity, that it will be the number 1 priority by anyone able to make it run, worksmen, militarty, pensioners etc. It they dont have power for pumps, they will use generators, If they dont have fuel for generators they will get is somewhere (large generator is diesel run, and the differnt storages of diesel in any industrilized comunity is large., if they dont get generators, any working machine can be converted to do the pumping. But it will be disturbenses, and maybe not water treatment, The way to orgainize it is via rationing at differnt time periods, This will give people time to fill up there conatiners. And remmeber that many areas have gravity feed water.
Important to check out before deciding tactic.
The message of storing water for 12 weeks is for anyone not living on a rurual farm a message that will not be listened to ( the crazyness of it was clear in the Asia cable incident, no one in central cities have the space needed. And it was made jokes about the recommandation on blogs).
Put more effort on the message that people should get containers, and cheramic filter, and bleach, Say they need to fill up when a pandemic is a fact, not infront. It will not stop soceity on day one. day 10 perhaps..
Malachi – at 07:19
Found a similar discription in “Camping and Wilderness Survival” by Paul Tawrell. Page 476.
I found something like that in The SAS Survival Handbook, p. 283. By John Wiseman.
Filtering: Allow water to stand in its container so that sediment settles to the bottom. Then siphon it into a filter made up of a nylon stocking (or other porous material) stuffed with layers of sand (bottom), charcoal and moss (top).
Then sterilize with bleach or iodine, (Don’t know if I should copy any more of his book.)
It’s a great book, btw. The food section covers smoking food, making flour, insects. Also fish narcotics made from plants! So you can catch the fish! (In the disaster section, he recommends storing a year’s worth of food.)
The answer is likely to be local (but that doesn’t mean we can’t describe solutions here to be implemented locally). For instance, in the Pacific Northwestern US, it has been raining since Halloween. No problem getting water. It needs filtering and purification, but there is plenty to be had. So the solution includes rainwater collection systems (tarps, kiddie pools, rain barrels, etc.)
In the summer, however, there’s likely to be NO rain at all in the westernmost US. A different problem altogether.
In the Northeastern US, you may be able to scoop snow outside and melt it for water needs in winter.
So let me amend my statement to read that “The answer is likely to be local and seasonal.”
Please continue though. This topic is essential. Well, WATER is essential. Thanks for starting the thread, Lugon.