This post is an amalgamation of multiple posts from my Blogger posts published between 2020 and 2024
The climate and ecological crisis is also a water crisis. Here are some household/personal solutions:
As the Globe heats, water cycles change. As this civilisation begins to crumble, the water and electricity infrastructure breaks down, leading to outages and water shortages. A common phenomenon of collapse is that once things start breaking, that’s it; they are broken for good. We are in the Climate and ecological Emergency, and Collapse is a sporadic, ongoing fact. Natural disasters push small, low-lying islands towards total collapse from sea inundation. Cyclones and tropical storms bring flooding, death & widespread destruction. Driving small nations towards total collapse.
There will be a point sometime in the not-so-distant future when the water that comes out of the tap is not safe to drink or is brackish, undrinkable, then we make other arrangements or die from the world’s biggest solvable killer.
I grew up in a country where the water from the tap wasn’t safe; it was brackish. We went to collect water for drinking and cooking from desalination stations.
In any prioritisation set-up for survival, at the top of the list is water. Know your local sources and have a method already established for the collection and storage of potable and non-potable water. Preppers talk about purchasing and storing water for short-term survival. My approach is different. I am looking for long-term survival and storage.
The Starting Point Is Food-Grade Storage Barrels
If you are in Oxfordshire, Bunkers Hill Garden Centre sells these excellent food-grade MDPE barrels with airtight lids. Because they are not transparent, they can store water long-term without the formation of Algae in the water. The 220-liter capacity makes them very practical for the long-term storage of rainwater. Currently, I have 8 for rainwater harvesting storage, one as a composting worm bin, and one for processing grey water from the shower for watering the garden.
I have also been considering building a CH4 (Methane) digester for the production of cooking and heating gas.
Understanding Your Future Water Sources
In the post 1.5 C world today, rainwater harvesting requires a level of organisation that we have never had to do before in Britain. For the 2nd year now, I am observing that the rain in Britain stops in April and starts again in October. For 2 years running, I have seen a new climate emerging in Britain, with a dry and wet season.
Rainwater is most likely to be your primary future water source. For your garden, that is perfect as it is. For drinking, it requires purification (See Below). There may be other sources of water locally, like rivers and lakes. Abstraction may be subject to restrictions. Additional barrels for settling river water would be a distinct advantage. People have argued that collecting river water would expose you to sewage contamination. If there is a water shortage, people won’t be flushing their toilets, especially if there are standpipes. This creates a new problem outside of the idea of AMOC collapse. What happens when water is so scarce that our toilets can no longer be flushed? The answer is the same. Dry sanitation, compost toilets.
Flooding, Abundant Water, But Not a Drop to Drink.
Some members of the preparedness community will tell you that their expensive filters can clean floodwater, and then, when you examine the technical specifications from the supplier, floodwater is explicitly excluded. Floodwater is toxic and, though abundant in winter, should be avoided.
Processing Water For Drinking
The Gold Standard For Water Sterilisation is Boiling
In a water crisis, drinking water is more precious than precious metals. The skill to process water is highly specialised and requires organisation and an understanding of some technologies that go beyond ordinary preparedness. Most preppers have a proprietary off-the-shelf filter, which probably costs in the region of £1-200 and requires careful maintenance. A bought filter is only as good as the maintenance it requires and the volume it can safely filter.
Chemical Prefilters
Flocculants are rarely discussed in preparedness circles. In commercial water treatment, flocculants are an important part of the pretreatment process of drinking water and brown water. Flocculants work by:
- Neutralize charge: Tiny particles in dirty water carry natural electrical charges that push them apart.
- Bind particles: Flocculants use long polymer chains to grab these particles and pull them close.
- Form clumps: Small bits turn into large visible masses (flocs).
- Settle out: The heavy clumps drop to the floor of the tank or pool for easy removal.
There are a number of different commercially available flocculant chemicals with different applications.
- Calcium hypochlorite Ca(ClO)2: A chlorine-rich flocculant that clarifies and sterilises water at the same time: 4grams /10litres
Calcium hypochlorite, Ca(ClO)2, is possibly the only option available for processing drinking water from floodwater. P&G sachets are commonly found in relief packages dropped to people stranded on the roofs of their homes during severe flooding.
I have been a Puribag fan for a very long time; it is possibly the safest and fastest method of cleaning water on a small and large scale. Calcium hypochlorite, Ca(ClO)2, can be stored in sealed containers, though caution is advised when storing it, as it is a fire accelerant.
More primitive flocculants like Alum date back to ancient Egypt and the Indus civilisation. Alum of Phiktari are flocculants which work in the same way as Calcium hypochlorite.
These pretreatments will make your expensive microscreen filter last much longer. Also, flocculants mean you could, if required, be processing water at community/ neighbourhood level.
Alum, as a flocculant, even captures air bubbles!
Need A Water Filter? Peel A Tree Branch. TheXylum Water Filter Is A Sustainable, Biodegradable Micro-screen Filter From Nature
“MIT engineers make filters from tree branches to purify drinking water. Prototypes tested in India show promise as a low-cost, natural filtration option.” Source: https://news.mit.edu/2021/filters-sapwood-purify-water-0325
“MIT group shows xylem tissue in sapwood can filter bacteria from contaminated water.”
Source: https://news.mit.edu/2014/need-a-water-filter-peel-a-tree-branch-0226
“If you’ve run out of drinking water during a lakeside camping trip, there’s a simple solution: Break off a branch from the nearest pine tree, peel away the bark, and slowly pour lake water through the stick. The improvised filter should trap any bacteria, producing fresh, uncontaminated water.
In fact, an MIT team has discovered that this low-tech filtration system can produce up to four liters of drinking water a day — enough to quench the thirst of a typical person.”
The wood of non-flowering trees should only be used. How to Build a Plant Xylum Water Filter
Filter -> Boil -> Drink
Other Purification Systems
Settling and then filtering through sand. Boiling is still essential.
Steripen: The Steripen uses UV light. The most effective ultraviolet frequency range for sterilisation is the UV-C spectrum, spanning wavelengths from 200 to 280 nanometres (nm). The Steripen requires clear water.
SODIS (Solar Water Disinfection) is a free, low-cost method that uses sunlight to clean and sanitize drinking water.
How SODIS Works
- Sunlight and UV rays: The process uses ultraviolet (UV-A) rays and heat from the sun to kill germs, viruses, bacteria, and parasites in the water.
- Time required: Clear bottles filled with water need at least 6 hours of bright, direct sunlight. If it is mostly cloudy, leave them out for 2 days.
- Limitations: It kills living germs, but it does not remove heavy metals, chemicals, or cloudiness.
SODIS Method is internationally recognised and recommended by the UNDP.
“Solar Water Disinfection to Produce Safe Drinking Water: A Review of Parameters, Enhancements, and Modelling Approaches to Make SODIS Faster and Safer
Solar water disinfection (SODIS) is one of the cheapest and most suitable treatments to produce safe drinking water at the household level in resource-poor settings. This review introduces the main parameters that influence the SODIS process and how new enhancements and modelling approaches can overcome some of the current drawbacks that limit its widespread adoption.
SODIS: Solar water disinfection, or SODIS, is based on the germicidal effect of UV light and its synergistic effect with the rise in water temperature. ” https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8201346/
Commercially Available Water Filters, 3 types:
- Straw- Personal Use
- Squeeze- Group Use
- Gravity-Group Use
- Chemical-Highly Scalable
Katadyn Hiker Pro Hand Pump Water Filter for Backpacking, Camping, Emergency Survival £92
Sawyer Mini Water Filtration System £55
All commercially bought filters require care; follow the manufacturer’s instructions. Failure to do so could cause severe illness off the grid, requiring rescue:
“Sick walkers rescued after drinking river water on West Highland Way”
“The first incident happened on Wednesday last week when the team evacuated a German man who was described as “incapacitated” near the remote Rowchoish Bothy.
He had been vomiting since the previous evening and was taken to the Royal Alexandra Hospital in Paisley…”
“The team said that if water is collected from a stream, there is no guarantee that filtering alone will make the water safe to drink and recommended secondary treatment such as boiling or chemical treatments.”
“The team leader of Lomond Mountain Rescue, David Dodson, said both men had drunk from a stream around Conic Hill, most probably Burn of Mar, and became ill despite using straw-type filter systems – lightweight devices walkers use that remove contaminants as they drink.” https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c98rpgqyqygo
These walkers were left so weakened that they were unable to walk.
Solar Distillation is another method of making water safe, but the water requires remineralisation before consumption.
Harvesting water from Fog and Mist
While this sounds like science fiction, it is in fact a common practice in parts of the Andes, where it is a successful method of water harvesting; however, beware, this method too requires boiling:
“The fog is alive: Droplets host bacteria that clear toxins from our air“
“What if fog isn’t just misty air, but a living ecosystem? This question hung over cloud researcher Thi Thuong Thuong Cao. As a Ph.D. student at Arizona State University, her curiosity led her from knocking on the doors of microbiologists and chemists to sampling fog before sunrise in Pennsylvania to hours of peering through a lab’s microscope. Finally, she found her answer. Her ASU research team found that bacteria floating in tiny fog droplets are alive, growing and (quite helpfully) breaking down pollutants in the air.”
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