You can only survive 3 days without it , Start storing water, NOW!!!

I dont own a TV, Sorry i did not see it..
Its a really famous way of thinking about survival, nothing new to me..

Just in case this was missed... good info here. 311 pages worth all for free.
Thread: Doom Survival Guide

It's much easier to spend the money on a reverse osmosis machine. Just boil your stream water then use your reverse osmosis machine.

Water only stores for two years at the most..

Google and order a box or two of "retort emergency water" from a surplus and survival store. Many avenues online.

The water is in small pouches, is recommended by the Coast Guard, and lasts 15 to 20 years.

About 100 pouches in a box for about $15 to $30.

Get a couple boxes and some powdered or squirt flavored stuff to mix with it if you want to add some taste.

Well that doesn't sound like much fun. Enjoy the challenge, my friend. Don't just go quietly into the night, we'll need all the help we can get.

Awesome link and thread.. thanks

Five stars OP.

From a plumber who knows.

If you have a Kinkos or something similar, a printout with coil binder is around $45.

You need to remove your old water pump before using the well bucket.

Do you want to give a quick rundown on how to remove your electric water pump from the well. I have done it a few times but i am not a plumber.. any advice would be good..

Last Edited by Liquid_Pestilence on 01/23/2013 11:25 PM

I made it 10 days without food or water. It sucked, however, I had worked up to it. Silly.

Thanks for all the info. Good you have set so much up already. I have collected lots of info over the past years but have not actually put it in to action yet...lol..

Last Edited by *PinkPixie* on 01/24/2013 12:10 AM

You can also buy concentrated water. All you need to do is dilute it with regular water at a ratio of 50/50 and you're good to go.

Didn't your country get the crap beat out of it during WW II ???

You of all people should be prepared.

and i suppose katrina or sandy didn't happen. no earthquakes or power outages. eveything everywhere is peachy-keen and perfect all the time, huh, waffle-head?

All good information.

Note that milk jugs shouldn't be used. I hope you scratch that from the first post. There's two main reasons not to use them.
1) They break down. Preppers have found that plastic containers of this kind will spontaneously leak and therefore ruin what's below them. They're made to be recycled and the thickness has been pared down over time to where they're fragile.
2) Caesin proteins and fats in milk resist cleaning. You could spend a lot of time using bleach and still not remove them. They tend to coat the interior and you can't scrub it easily.This means stored water will end up full of bacteria. Some people use bleach but still, it's a bad plan.
[link to faculty.deanza.edu]

So, I wouldn't use them. Use something else that you can at least clean well.

A better solution is a 55 gallon barrel with a closeable lid. It will hold up.

Even in a pinch, many of you probably have sealable plastic bins. When filled with water, you can't stack them. They will be enormously heavy. That has to be a major consideration.

How will you haul water from whatever source is locally available? You need a stout cart for this purpose.

When purifying water, you never ever will take it with you, but will haul water back and purify at home. Why? Your water purifier will be gold after a collapse.

There are many inexpensive water purifiers that have prefilters to remove sediment, then a main filter to purify the water. They cost from $50 on up depending upon complexity. A prefilter will greatly increase the longevity of your main filter. Look to see what the maximum purificaton in gallons (or liters) is. Then divide that by cost to get an idea of value.

In a true collapse, many of you could save your tribe by building a biosand filter. It costs about $50 in materials. It's used all over the world. We have documentation on its efficacy. It's easy to make.
[link to www.biosandfilter.org]


It will remove up to 97% of pathogens. Because any well can be contaminated easily post-collapse by fecal matter runoff, dead bodies, agricultural waste and chemical fertilizers, then you need a well and a biosand filter.

The first wells will be shallow point wells. They are cheap to install and one person can put one in and save everyone. You might hit water as low as 8 feet but no more than 25 feet.

They however are so close to the surface that they can easily be contaminated. Long term, you need a deeper well. That's an organized activitity that can easily be done by a team doing water drilling, simple tool making for breaking the sod and ground, feeding everyone, etc.

Many of you could create stability in your neighborhoods post-collapse by organizing this biosand filter and then people will respect you and look up to you for guidance. There's a ton of preppers and we can rebuild society if we chose to. All that knowledge and MacGuyvering is locked in your brains. It's up to you to help or else likely deal with them. Personally since they may have skills my tribe needs, I'm going to help some of them.

Organizing three member teams of stout-hearted men to gather water and bring it back safely will save whole neighborhoods. It's one of the first community acitivities.

It takes time to get the biosand filter to work, so in the interim you're using bleach or pool shock.

Doing several of these ideas will greatly increase your worth as a proven leader. It might also work towards the cure of your soul. God is watching and so are your children and wife.

Long term, your community will build an above ground cistern in all likelihood and collect rainwater. Then since above ground, it will have force to drain to crops or be used to fill water barrels.


All of these aspects are located in the 1st topic in my sig. The topics include complex ways to deal with crucial aspects of living, but made yourself cheaply using low tech requirements. The topics begin simply and then build upon each other to slowly convince people how to prepare prudently. Don't be put off by the initial simplicity. It was done intentionally. By the end, you can learn how to make ice at 80 deg F which is pretty amazing and might save valuable medicine like insulin or cool a fever in the absence of antibiotics.

Good luck. Stop waiting to prepare.

Most people will suffer dehhydration very rapidly in a collapse and so, by the time they panic and respond, it might be at the 2.5 day marker and by then, your mind will be experiencing delirium.

Dehydration leads to hypotension. That caused blurred vision, passing out, stumbling, and death as your kidneys fail.

If you go to a farmer's supply, you can purchase these kinds of water containers. They use them. Realize that this container will be enormously heavy.
275 gallons x 8.34 lbs/gallon = 2,293.5 lbs. You need a strong base of reinforced concrete to hold that.


If you were catching rainwater from your gutters into a typical 50 gallon garbage can for watering crops, it would weigh 50 gal x 8.34 lbs/gal = 417 lbs. Good luck moving that. It will be unwieldly. You can use it, but you'll need to siphon it, right?

Do you now realize the difficulties of hauling water and why you need special carts and strong men to haul them. At the beginning based upon seasonal rain and distance and the contour of the traversed land, it makes for a Herculean task. None of your neighbors will realize what they're up against especially if the water source is three miles away in one direction. Be realistic. In a collapse, you're not driving there. You're walking and grunting and cursing and finally getting back many hours after you departed.

Because rainfall may be very seasonal and run off, then your tribe will do two things:
1) Swales are clever basins deliberately created to sculpt the land. The swale will stop the runoff of water and then soak instead and spreak underground and sweep across and so create a good lasting moist soil full of healthy bacteria counts to fix nitrogen. Doing this will ensure good yields while others suffer in non-rainy periods.

2) You will deliberately dig down and insert logs of wood and then bury them and mound up the soil. This is called Hugelkulture. It maintains a sponge in the ground and this plus the swales will result in very low water requirements. That means more drinking water. That means more washing water. It means more sanitation. It means better yields during droughts.


All of this and more are in my sig to save you all.

Last Edited by Don'tBeAfraid on 01/24/2013 02:33 AM

lol. Ironic moment.

You turn off the power and use two big pipe wrenches to lever the pump up and out of the well. I tried to find a video on that to share because it's the simplest (and best in my opinon)method, but all the videos I see have some elaborate fucking contraption rigged over the well casing to winch the pump out.

Hard to describe, but you use the pipe wrenches to bite the pipe and then you push the handle down, using the casing to lever the pipe up. You move the other wrench below the first and repeat. A bit slow, but it always works unless the pipe breaks. (Have someone else keep tension on the power wires in case it does, so the pump doesn't fall back down. You can pull it up enough to get back to a point where a pipe is showing and then secure it with the pipe wrench again.)

This makes much more sense if you could see it in practice.
I'm too liquored up to make and post a video tonight, and I don't have anyone handy to film for me.

If you really want a video on it, bug Hawk0 and tell him to remind me to film it for you, and I'll put it on youtube.

although I highly doubt SHTF ever, this is good info and worth taking in and putting it into practice. Remember that most likely doom scenario is a nuclear fallout or some epidemic, so you'll have a hard time purifying rain and ground water

This - not new at all, and LP's knowledge and recitation of it doesn't make him a poser - I've taught this very mantra for an easy 20 years/ except the last reference to love.

Anyone who's into serious outdoor/ adventure type activities should always have this in the front of their mind in anything they do - it tends to keep the "uh-oh gremlins" at bay.

5 stars op...this is an important fact that lots of people forget.

Not 100% certain ClydeX, but I think the LDS community came up with that a long time ago. Their earliest prepper manuals had that phrase. It may be as old as 1970 or so. They arguably wrote the first ones way back when, while some of the survivalists came out of the Nuclear Fallout Shelter crowd at the tail end of the 1950's.

EDIT:
at least 1976 Human Behavior
[link to books.google.com]

Last Edited by Don'tBeAfraid on 01/24/2013 09:18 AM

Very possible - good find DBA!

Last Edited by ClydeX on 01/24/2013 10:28 AM

Thanks again for your reply. To expand on the last reference of Love (also Companionship)one just needs to look at what happens to people without it. Most of you heard it described as cabin fever.

I am not talking about sex, I am talking about human to human contact in all forms. From a friend that visits once a week to even the internet and these forums all bring a sort of love and companionship into your lives.

In talking about survival I come across many people who think they can just pack up a backpack and walk off into the woods to survive, to escape from humanity and never return. I bring up the Love rule to try to explain why that wont work. Among the other serious flaws to that plan, First and foremost we need others to survive...

{Snip}

"The Other Priority, Love

We've talked about all of the most important priorities with the exception of the mind crippler. Love.

I suppose one might say that there are many kinds of love. Spiritual, emotional, physical and mixes and matches of those. For the survivor, the word is tied to the word hope. It has been noted that many excellent survivors who find themselves trying to make it on the land, alone, can do so with a great degree of success for a couple of months. Then about three months down the line comes a sort of crisis. They feel the loneliness, the homesickness, the tension, and sometimes give up hope. When this happens there is a definite, if invisible, threat to survival."

[link to www.survival.com]

Point understood and agreed with, I just haven't included it in my "Rules of 3", but do address the need for interaction otherwise.

People from the time of creation have never been meant to be solitary. The rare examples that may be brought up of those who have been able to exist alone are just that - rare examples that are more of an anomaly than any "proof".

These are simply overwhelmed by the examples of those who have died alone from injury, entrapment/ entanglement, sickness/ infection, or have simply gone nutty as a squirrel.

Wow, great post! And It will take some time to read but this looks like an excellent thread, Thread: Last minute tips for parents when the SHTF

thanks for putting all that out there, please add anything you feel needs to be said to any of my threads. You have excellent knowledge. and I welcome your advice.

On the Milk jug thing there seems to be two sides to the argument.

On one hand its just HDPE Plastic ( [link to en.wikipedia.org] and that same plastic is used in the manufacturing of all sorts water transportation and storage items. Its the most common plastic in use for storing water and is what the 55 gallon drums are made out of.

On the other side you are correct in that they are fragile and if not cleaned correctly the fat remaining from the milk would be a huge problem in breading unsafe bacteria. they also leak somewhat in the long run.

I have known people who have stored water in milk jugs for years, my great grandma lived to 98 years old and drank all her water from old milk jugs filled up at the local spring.

I will need to do more research before i remove it from the opening post, but i will if you can convince me. Anyone else want to get in on this?

There not Perfect but they are free, are milk jugs good or bad for water storage?

Your grandma's milk jugs were probably tougher. They started making them thinner and thinner.

There have been numerous preppers who've both commented and made videos on water jug breakage. Believe me, that sucks ruining food.

Use something else. You don't want to induce a bacterial infection when the SHTF, right? Gasteroenteritis is no fun, and why do that especially to a child? There will be enough issues with proper butchering of animals and avoiding nicking the digestive tract and getting contamination. You'll never eat rare meat when the SHTF. Realize your immune system is usually fairly resilient. Not so when starving, dehydrated, cold from lack of adequate firewood, and then getting sick, classic error.

I don't know any authoritative preparedness sites that condone milk jug use. Do as you wish.

Why not use a large clear orange juice container that you can scrub out? Most of them are made of far thicker plastic and sturdy too.

There really isn't a good way to clean a plastic milk jug. Not in all honesty. Even if you took a bottle brush to them, it would be inadequate.

The goal is to preserve safe water.

Note: everyone test you hot water tank NOW, not expecting it to flow when you need it. Sediment collects in the bottom from gravity. Often they're full of rust.

The spigot is very close to the ground. Have you thought of how you're going to channel that? Bet you haven't. Get some hose now so you can remove the water. Don't forget to shut off the power or gas heat to them first.

Most people have not thought out how to fetch water. I want you to try moving even 10 gallons by yourself and see how it sloshes as you move cross country. Think how you would realistically fetch it.

Open up Google Maps or better Google Earth. See where the nearest water sources are in relationship to your property. How many private properties will you have to cross to get there? If there's a road, how far is it? Do you have hills? How will you make it up the hill?

Probably in a SHTF scenario, you'll offer to collect water for the person who owns that land since they likely haven't planned. Realize that all of their neighbors will also be crossing their land, plus pissing on their property, collecting their firewood, making a nuisance at all hours, etc.

Realise this, that watering hole is a prime trapping place. A ton of creatures rely upon that water. That's meat on the table. All those folks trapsing around will scare them off. That's bad for everyone. The owners will get pissed off, because that's "their game animals".

Find multiple sources of water. If the SHTF in Winter, and there's no rainfall, you must haul water.

Last Edited by Don'tBeAfraid on 01/24/2013 03:02 PM

I just spent some time reading up on this and thank you for bringing it to my attention. I am going to defiantly agree with you on this now that I read up on it.

The main reason given by the experts is that the fat from the milk is as you said hard or impossible to remove. It is not worth it to even take the chance when it comes to your valuable drinking water. Two liter soda bottles are also free and work so much better without the breakage and fats issues.

I changed the opening post and thank you for bringing it to my attention..

ty dba....I would really like to make a well as that is what worries me most..I am not really near to any water source anyway. Orange cartons sound good too...so much info to take in....lol....

God bless you. Part of being a prepper is using good critical thinking AND also helpin' to mentor folks. As preppers we're also like shaman, the Native American healers who also taught culture, history, remembered military tactics, were scouts who knew the lay of the land, the best trapping areas, artisans, taught skills, etc. We could really help to restore order in tribes and build back communities post-collapse. All that knowledge and wisdom is locked in our brains. We have a responsbility to our mentors to teach the ones who really want to learn, just like our mentors put up with up with our pesky eternal questions.

Last Edited by Don'tBeAfraid on 01/24/2013 11:03 PM