Go bags could be just about anything that you can carry stuff in. That does not mean a paper bag is a good choice for a go bag. If you are putting stuff in the bag you expect to keep you alive, you want something that is sturdy enough to take a beating and constant use.
It should be light enough to carry so that it will not kill you by slowing you down so much that you can not get to a safe place when you are carrying it.
It needs to hold your life-saving items securely. It needs to have strong straps or handles that will not break easily.
Your go bag will be more useful if you can find whatever you are looking for inside it quickly. It would also make it better if it is easy to pack and unpack. That can mean lots of pockets or containers inside to organize the contents. Containers and pockets can add weight and you need to be able to tell what is in the pockets and containers without opening a lot of them to find something. Some kind of marking or labels for the contents of pockets or containers may be a way for you to know where things are. A map and checklist of the entire contents of your go bag may also be helpful.
You need to decide what type of go bag you want. Do you want a duffle or sports bag type? Do you want your hands free with a backpack? Would a wheelie bag be any good? Will it need to go over ground where the wheels will be a problem? Does your evacuation route have good sidewalks all the way? How much do you need to carry? How heavy are the contents of your go bag? How strong are you and how much can you comfortably and safely carry?
If you have children and pets will you have separate go bags for each of them? If so, what kind of go bag will you need for each of them? They have small backpacks for tiny children. The rule of thumb for backpacks for children is a maximum of 15% of their body weight in a backpack.
They do have backpacks for dogs and some people take their dogs hiking and let their dog carry their own food supply and bowl, etc. This sort of backpack would be ideal for a pet's go bag. Preparation for the pet's backpack is necessary. They don't universally take immediately to carrying a backpack and will have to be trained, to take it as a matter of course or even like it. If they think of wearing the backpack as a prelude to a fun walk, they will be cooperative when you need it in an emergency.
I have not yet tried a backpack on my cats, but am thinking about it. They do tricks and learn new things constantly, so I expect it can be done. I have trained cats to walk on a leash before. A leash would probably be necessary to evacuate cats if you want them to carry little backpacks. A caution here is that emergency shelters for pets require them to be in a carrier or on a leash and they must have proof of vaccinations and licenses etc.
If you practice carrying a backpack or other go bag, you will be able to carry a heavier one and handle it better. It is a good idea to practice with a weight that is equivalent to the contents of the go bag. The same is true for your entire family.
Ok. Now go out there, get your go bag, fill it up with the items you have selected and practice carrying it! Once you do that, you and your family are that much safer and ready for emergencies.
Saturday, December 31, 2011
Friday, December 30, 2011
Why Be Prepared For Emergencies?
The purpose of this
blog post and the whole blog is to help people to know enough not to die
after a disaster.
More people die after a disaster than during the disaster. Most of those people
do not need to die. They only die because they do not know enough to stay
alive. The most important disaster preparation that you can make is to prepare
yourself to think clearly enough to live through a disaster and stay alive
afterward.
It will make it much easier to stay alive during and after a
disaster, if you have enough supplies to meet your necessities until help
arrives.
There are lots of reasons to be prepared for emergencies.
Staying alive is an obvious reason to be prepared for emergencies. There are
others that are less obvious.
If you experience your own personal emergency like job loss
or serious injury, being prepared will help you. You can eat your stored foods
until you have enough money to buy more
One of my favorite reasons for my emergency food
preparedness is that it allows me to stay out of stores and go shopping less
often. This gives you more time and money because you don't have to go back and
forth to the store and you have less chances to go off your budget and buy
unnecessary things. I also appreciate not spending my personal energy on
running back and forth shopping. I feel more serene and peaceful without the
unnecessary trips.
Another reason for emergency storage is related to the less
trips part of it. Less trips means less gas burnt and is better for the earth.
People who are suddenly impoverished are often in a bad mental state and may have trouble thinking clearly. If you don't help them with recipes and cooking assistance I have found they may waste your precious food and go hungry anyway.
During an emergency, if you have plentiful stores of food you are usually able to feed others who are not so prepared. There are cautions about this. There will be so many people who are unprepared that you will not be likely to be able to feed all of them. Hungry people can get ugly. You might be better off if you can get the food distributed by a third party such as a disaster agency like the Red Cross or a Rescue Mission. That way you can keep your anonymity and safety.
If you are prepared for emergencies, you will feel better. One way to get rid of worry about potential problems is to prepare for them. Once you have your disaster preparedness in place it will take one more worry out of your life. You can be happier and more serene and enjoy life more.
I am sorry if regular readers are tired of me repeating some of the ideas mentioned in this post. I believe some readers of this blog may not stay around to keep reading. If they only read one post, I hope to have something important in that one post that might some day save their life.
People remember things better with repetition and I hope for that to happen with the ideas in this blog. I would like for people to remember things in these posts so they can use them to save their lives and the lives of their loved ones.
Thursday, December 29, 2011
More About Dried Foods For Emergency Preparedness
The best way to make sure that your emergency food stores will work for you in an emergency is to use it. It should be food that you already eat regularly. You can rotate your emergency foods into your daily diet and replenish it as you use it.
When you do that, it will never spoil or go stale and you will know how to cook it during an emergency. You can use your ordinary recipes and won't have to spend time looking up recipes.
I use dried foods in my daily life to save a lot of money. When you shop on an empty stomach you are much more likely to spend more money than you planned or need to spend. The way to stop this is to make certain that you have a full stomach before you get in the store.
There have been many studies done that show that people will even spend more on non-food items when they shop hungry. I blogged a little about this in one of my earlier posts about weight loss.
If I am going to be out all day and know that I will get hungry before I finish shopping I take along a snack in my pocket. A full meal of dried foods will fit in a small pocket. I take a bottle of water along as well. In the summer when I lived in a hot climate I took a bottle of frozen water so it was nice and cool to drink.
You need to drink extra water when you eat dried food or you can easily get dehydrated. Your digestive system must have water to work properly or it will pull the liquids out of your body if you don't drink enough water.
There is an important warning about dried foods: Even though the dried foods seem like just a little bit of food because most of the water was removed, it will be just as big as it was before it was dried, inside you. That means you can get a really horrible stomach ache if you eat too much.
It works best to eat the dried food slowly; chew it very well and drink plenty of water as you eat it. That way you can gauge how much to eat to fill you up comfortably. Be sure to share this warning with anyone you share your dried foods with. I believe it is possible for someone to be seriously injured without knowing about this.
I plan a balanced meal when I take my pocket meal of dried foods along. That means a protein, a carbohydrate and something from the fruits and vegetables group. The carbohydrate of my choice is usually crackers I make myself because they are small and don't take much room either. I can share a recipe for the crackers if people want it. They are very tasty and everyone I have given them to really likes them too. They are also healthy.
I used to make them with freshly ground flours, but my grinder that I have now is not satisfactory. I found one that will probably work ok, but have to put it on the list to get later. Things made with freshly ground flour taste much better and are lots healthier as well. Once you get a routine down, it is not too much trouble to grind your own grains before you bake.
This blog post seems to be long enough so I will end here by telling you that I want to add more about dried foods in my next post or so.
When you do that, it will never spoil or go stale and you will know how to cook it during an emergency. You can use your ordinary recipes and won't have to spend time looking up recipes.
I use dried foods in my daily life to save a lot of money. When you shop on an empty stomach you are much more likely to spend more money than you planned or need to spend. The way to stop this is to make certain that you have a full stomach before you get in the store.
There have been many studies done that show that people will even spend more on non-food items when they shop hungry. I blogged a little about this in one of my earlier posts about weight loss.
If I am going to be out all day and know that I will get hungry before I finish shopping I take along a snack in my pocket. A full meal of dried foods will fit in a small pocket. I take a bottle of water along as well. In the summer when I lived in a hot climate I took a bottle of frozen water so it was nice and cool to drink.
You need to drink extra water when you eat dried food or you can easily get dehydrated. Your digestive system must have water to work properly or it will pull the liquids out of your body if you don't drink enough water.
There is an important warning about dried foods: Even though the dried foods seem like just a little bit of food because most of the water was removed, it will be just as big as it was before it was dried, inside you. That means you can get a really horrible stomach ache if you eat too much.
It works best to eat the dried food slowly; chew it very well and drink plenty of water as you eat it. That way you can gauge how much to eat to fill you up comfortably. Be sure to share this warning with anyone you share your dried foods with. I believe it is possible for someone to be seriously injured without knowing about this.
I plan a balanced meal when I take my pocket meal of dried foods along. That means a protein, a carbohydrate and something from the fruits and vegetables group. The carbohydrate of my choice is usually crackers I make myself because they are small and don't take much room either. I can share a recipe for the crackers if people want it. They are very tasty and everyone I have given them to really likes them too. They are also healthy.
I used to make them with freshly ground flours, but my grinder that I have now is not satisfactory. I found one that will probably work ok, but have to put it on the list to get later. Things made with freshly ground flour taste much better and are lots healthier as well. Once you get a routine down, it is not too much trouble to grind your own grains before you bake.
This blog post seems to be long enough so I will end here by telling you that I want to add more about dried foods in my next post or so.
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
Pick A Water Filter For Your Budget and Needs
My favorite water filter would be a lousy choice for a go bag if you had to evacuate on foot or were in a very crowded vehicle. There are lots of commercial water filters on the market. Some are very big and heavy and some are very small.There are some tiny ones available that are like a drinking straw and are very light and easy to carry. These do not filter very much water and the cost per gallon is high.
My personal preferences in filters may not work at all for someone else. They are largely a matter of what an individual likes and wants to spend and their circumstances. The most likely disasters in your area could also influence your decision on a water filter for emergency preparedness.
I will just tell you about them and you can decide or go read more about them and then decide what you want.
My favorite is a ceramic filter that has silver in the ceramic filter elements. You can buy these according to size of filter elements, and quantity of filter elements. They work by gravity. You pour the water to be filtered in the top. The water goes through the filter elements and into a lower container with a spigot that you can take drinking water out of. The bigger and more filter elements you have in this filter, the faster and more water you can filter. They are big and heavy and cost a lot. They are easy to use and you get very clean water from them. The per gallon cost is low and they filter a lot of water before you need a replacement filter element.
There are water filters that are made for filtering water for a whole village. They are made so that they can have water pumped by muscle power through a filter. This allows a lot of water to be filtered in a short while. These are good if you have a very large family or want to filter water for a village. They cost a lot, the cost per gallon is low and they are fast. They are not very portable.
There are little straw water filters that can be easily carried in a go bag or pocket for everyday preparedness. They are pretty cheap, but the cost per gallon is high.
Some water filters look like a sports water bottle. You put your water to be cleaned in the bottle and sip out of a straw. The clean water comes out of the straw. This is not too expensive, the cost per gallon is slightly lower than the straw types, but still high.
You can buy tablets or liquids to put in water and shake it up and let it sit for a while. They kill germs. They are cheap, and take very little room and are light and are easy to carry. Their cost per gallon is low. Their disadvantage is that you are drinking the stuff that killed the germs.
You can find some of these various types of filters, especially the smaller, lighter ones, in sporting goods and backpacking stores. Military surplus stores often have water filters.
The larger ones, like the ceramic element ones with silver in them, are harder to find. Companies that sell food storage and that specialize in emergency preparedness have them. Places that sell bulk foods and farm supply stores online and offline often have water filters, including the big ones.
The whole village ones can be found in places that sell to missionaries and to homesteaders.
I want to write about go bags next.
My personal preferences in filters may not work at all for someone else. They are largely a matter of what an individual likes and wants to spend and their circumstances. The most likely disasters in your area could also influence your decision on a water filter for emergency preparedness.
I will just tell you about them and you can decide or go read more about them and then decide what you want.
My favorite is a ceramic filter that has silver in the ceramic filter elements. You can buy these according to size of filter elements, and quantity of filter elements. They work by gravity. You pour the water to be filtered in the top. The water goes through the filter elements and into a lower container with a spigot that you can take drinking water out of. The bigger and more filter elements you have in this filter, the faster and more water you can filter. They are big and heavy and cost a lot. They are easy to use and you get very clean water from them. The per gallon cost is low and they filter a lot of water before you need a replacement filter element.
There are water filters that are made for filtering water for a whole village. They are made so that they can have water pumped by muscle power through a filter. This allows a lot of water to be filtered in a short while. These are good if you have a very large family or want to filter water for a village. They cost a lot, the cost per gallon is low and they are fast. They are not very portable.
There are little straw water filters that can be easily carried in a go bag or pocket for everyday preparedness. They are pretty cheap, but the cost per gallon is high.
Some water filters look like a sports water bottle. You put your water to be cleaned in the bottle and sip out of a straw. The clean water comes out of the straw. This is not too expensive, the cost per gallon is slightly lower than the straw types, but still high.
You can buy tablets or liquids to put in water and shake it up and let it sit for a while. They kill germs. They are cheap, and take very little room and are light and are easy to carry. Their cost per gallon is low. Their disadvantage is that you are drinking the stuff that killed the germs.
You can find some of these various types of filters, especially the smaller, lighter ones, in sporting goods and backpacking stores. Military surplus stores often have water filters.
The larger ones, like the ceramic element ones with silver in them, are harder to find. Companies that sell food storage and that specialize in emergency preparedness have them. Places that sell bulk foods and farm supply stores online and offline often have water filters, including the big ones.
The whole village ones can be found in places that sell to missionaries and to homesteaders.
I want to write about go bags next.
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
Water Storage For Emergency Preparedness
As I mentioned previously, you can die a lot faster without water than without food. Water needs to be way up on your list of priorities for surviving a disaster. You could easily die before any help gets to you if you do not have water.
Therefore, I would recommend that you store some water for emergencies. I would also like for you to do that. Please store some water for emergencies. The minimum is a gallon a day per person. Include extra if you have pets or plants. That is very minimum. It does not include enough for keeping yourself or your surroundings or your clothes clean. Three gallons a day is more realistic. If you live in a dry climate you will need to drink all three gallons to stay alive, so then you will have to allow more for cleaning and cooking.
If you do not want or cannot afford to buy water containers to store emergency water in, you need to save up plastic bottles and clean them out to use.
They can be pop bottles, juice bottles, and milk bottles. It would be best to use bottles that held food or drink.
There are some kinds of plastic that leak chemicals into whatever is in them that are not good for you to drink. If the bottles you use came with food or drink already in them, you have a pretty good chance that they will be ok for holding your water safely.
There are several different types of plastic, classified in the United States according to recycling numbers. One can tell by those numbers whether the plastic is safe to put water in. Numbers 1-5 are good. Numbers 6-7 are bad. The numbers are usually in a little triangle on the bottom of the container.
I filter my water before I store it. That is because I filter all of my tap water. My city floods the tap water with chlorine and fluoride. Neither of those agrees with me, so I get the fluoride and chlorine out before I drink it. I don't want it in my stored water either.
Most authorities say to put a couple of drops of chlorine in your stored water to keep it clean while it is stored.
It is also recommended that you change your stored water every six months. That also involves cleaning the containers.
I think it is a lot easier to rotate my water storage into my daily water use. That way you don't have a huge operation every six months.
I like to use a Mr. Coffee coffeemaker. They have a permanent filter that is in addition to the regular paper filters that most coffeemakers have. The permanent filter has charcoal in it and is supposed to remove 97.something percent of bad stuff out of the water. I like it. The water tastes much better out of that than the tap and I don't get sick from it like I do tap water.
I never use that Mr. Coffee coffeemaker for coffee. It is only for water. It is too hard to keep cleaning it when it is used for coffee. That is the cheapest and still easy-to-use system for getting clean water that I have found so far. The coffeemaker is not part of my actual emergency preparedness system because it requires electricity. Most disasters mean no electricity. It is part of the water storage part of my emergency preparedness. I have other plans for ongoing clean water during an emergency.
It is possible to do a lot of blog posts on where to put your emergency preparedness items, so I will. Later. I am roughly posting according to priorities in what will kill you first if you don't do it.
I want to post next about different kinds of commercial filters available on the market and the advantages and disadvantages of them.
Therefore, I would recommend that you store some water for emergencies. I would also like for you to do that. Please store some water for emergencies. The minimum is a gallon a day per person. Include extra if you have pets or plants. That is very minimum. It does not include enough for keeping yourself or your surroundings or your clothes clean. Three gallons a day is more realistic. If you live in a dry climate you will need to drink all three gallons to stay alive, so then you will have to allow more for cleaning and cooking.
If you do not want or cannot afford to buy water containers to store emergency water in, you need to save up plastic bottles and clean them out to use.
They can be pop bottles, juice bottles, and milk bottles. It would be best to use bottles that held food or drink.
There are some kinds of plastic that leak chemicals into whatever is in them that are not good for you to drink. If the bottles you use came with food or drink already in them, you have a pretty good chance that they will be ok for holding your water safely.
There are several different types of plastic, classified in the United States according to recycling numbers. One can tell by those numbers whether the plastic is safe to put water in. Numbers 1-5 are good. Numbers 6-7 are bad. The numbers are usually in a little triangle on the bottom of the container.
I filter my water before I store it. That is because I filter all of my tap water. My city floods the tap water with chlorine and fluoride. Neither of those agrees with me, so I get the fluoride and chlorine out before I drink it. I don't want it in my stored water either.
Most authorities say to put a couple of drops of chlorine in your stored water to keep it clean while it is stored.
It is also recommended that you change your stored water every six months. That also involves cleaning the containers.
I think it is a lot easier to rotate my water storage into my daily water use. That way you don't have a huge operation every six months.
I like to use a Mr. Coffee coffeemaker. They have a permanent filter that is in addition to the regular paper filters that most coffeemakers have. The permanent filter has charcoal in it and is supposed to remove 97.something percent of bad stuff out of the water. I like it. The water tastes much better out of that than the tap and I don't get sick from it like I do tap water.
I never use that Mr. Coffee coffeemaker for coffee. It is only for water. It is too hard to keep cleaning it when it is used for coffee. That is the cheapest and still easy-to-use system for getting clean water that I have found so far. The coffeemaker is not part of my actual emergency preparedness system because it requires electricity. Most disasters mean no electricity. It is part of the water storage part of my emergency preparedness. I have other plans for ongoing clean water during an emergency.
It is possible to do a lot of blog posts on where to put your emergency preparedness items, so I will. Later. I am roughly posting according to priorities in what will kill you first if you don't do it.
I want to post next about different kinds of commercial filters available on the market and the advantages and disadvantages of them.
Monday, December 26, 2011
More About Water For Emergency Preparedness
There are several places to get water that most people do not think of right off. One of these is your hot water heater. You can get a special tool made only for turning off your hot water heater. That discourages it from ending up in somebody's toolbox, but a wrench will work. You can tape the special tool onto the back of the hot water heater to help keep it there for an emergency.
Another water source is the back of your toilet. The hot water heater water is fairly likely to be clean, but the water in the back of your toilet is not good to consider clean. I never use those automatic toilet bowl cleaners since I first thought of the idea of needing the back of the toilet for drinking some day. Most have instructions for accidental ingestion and the phone number of the poison control center.
If you are in an emergency, you may want to prioritize shutting the valves in and out of the hot water heater and the back of the toilet to trap the water in there. If you do that don't forget to unhook the float valve in the toilet tank so someone doesn't flush your drinking water away to the sewage plant.
If you live in a rainy or snowy area during a disaster you have an easier time getting water to drink. Snow can be melted and you will have clean drinking water. Skip the yellow snow, especially if it has someone's name written in it. They can drink that snow.
If it is raining during most disasters you can put out every container you can manage and catch your drinking water. If you want the water from your rain gutters and spouts off of your roof you will have to clean it before you drink it unless your roof and gutters are very clean.
If there is volcanic ash, a dust or sand storm, or nuclear fallout, your outside water sources are more of a problem. I will cover nuclear emergencies later. The ash, dust, or sand are just things that must be filtered to get clean water.
There are three main ways to clean water, filter it, heat it, or put something in it to kill germs. If you heat it you can either boil it to kill germs, or distill it to leave the germs and other impurities behind. Distilling can take a lot more fuel.
Iodine and chlorine are two of the most popular ways to put something in water to kill germs. You can get tablets or filters that have something in them to kill germs. I like the ceramic with silver because the silver is less hard on your body than the other things you put in water to kill germs. It kind of defeats the purpose if you kill yourself along with the germs.
If you want to filter, and you have an expensive filter or one that has a very limited amount of filtering it can do, you can protect the filter. That is done by using a pre-filter. That means something to take some of the bigger stuff out before it clogs up your expensive filter. That could be cloth. If you have a lot of big stuff in your water, you could run it through more than one pre-filter. Start with the biggest pre-filter first. That could be rocks then, pebbles, then coarse sand, then fine sand, for example.
There are some tricky military survival ways to filter or distill water, but this is too complex for this point in my blog posts.
I want to blog about storing water for emergencies next.
Another water source is the back of your toilet. The hot water heater water is fairly likely to be clean, but the water in the back of your toilet is not good to consider clean. I never use those automatic toilet bowl cleaners since I first thought of the idea of needing the back of the toilet for drinking some day. Most have instructions for accidental ingestion and the phone number of the poison control center.
If you are in an emergency, you may want to prioritize shutting the valves in and out of the hot water heater and the back of the toilet to trap the water in there. If you do that don't forget to unhook the float valve in the toilet tank so someone doesn't flush your drinking water away to the sewage plant.
If you live in a rainy or snowy area during a disaster you have an easier time getting water to drink. Snow can be melted and you will have clean drinking water. Skip the yellow snow, especially if it has someone's name written in it. They can drink that snow.
If it is raining during most disasters you can put out every container you can manage and catch your drinking water. If you want the water from your rain gutters and spouts off of your roof you will have to clean it before you drink it unless your roof and gutters are very clean.
If there is volcanic ash, a dust or sand storm, or nuclear fallout, your outside water sources are more of a problem. I will cover nuclear emergencies later. The ash, dust, or sand are just things that must be filtered to get clean water.
There are three main ways to clean water, filter it, heat it, or put something in it to kill germs. If you heat it you can either boil it to kill germs, or distill it to leave the germs and other impurities behind. Distilling can take a lot more fuel.
Iodine and chlorine are two of the most popular ways to put something in water to kill germs. You can get tablets or filters that have something in them to kill germs. I like the ceramic with silver because the silver is less hard on your body than the other things you put in water to kill germs. It kind of defeats the purpose if you kill yourself along with the germs.
If you want to filter, and you have an expensive filter or one that has a very limited amount of filtering it can do, you can protect the filter. That is done by using a pre-filter. That means something to take some of the bigger stuff out before it clogs up your expensive filter. That could be cloth. If you have a lot of big stuff in your water, you could run it through more than one pre-filter. Start with the biggest pre-filter first. That could be rocks then, pebbles, then coarse sand, then fine sand, for example.
There are some tricky military survival ways to filter or distill water, but this is too complex for this point in my blog posts.
I want to blog about storing water for emergencies next.
Sunday, December 25, 2011
Water For Emergencies
Water is extremely important to being comfortable during or even surviving an emergency. Most people can survive for at least a week with no food at all. If you don't have water you may be lucky to live a few days. Water should be an important part of your emergency preparedness.
People often do not understand why water might be a problem during an emergency. They can just turn on the tap and water will come out, right?
Nope.
It is not that easy. Many disasters involve no water coming out of the faucets or bad water coming out that is not safe to drink. Earthquakes often break water lines and wreck wells and city water reservoirs or purification plants. Floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, and tsunamis often cause contaminated water. Those are just a few of the highlights of why you want to have water stored for emergencies.
An alternative to storing water is to have a very good purifier to be able to clean up whatever water you can get. That one is dependent on being able to get any water to clean. Not all disasters will leave you that option. If you want to leave your options open, you could keep some water stored and have a filter system as backup.
If you intend to filter water you need to consider impurities and disease. Just running your water through progressively smaller layers of filters will work like a stream in nature and take out most of the dirty things from the water. Then you need to think about disease causing organisms, like parasites and germs. Boiling will kill most diseases and parasites, but that requires fuel that might be scarce.
You can buy filters that take care of both types of water cleaning problems, but the really good ones can be quite expensive. I used to have a very good one that had ceramic filtering elements with silver in them to kill any germs that were small enough to get through the pores in the ceramics. It worked on gravity. You simply poured water into the container and it went through the filter and into another container with a spigot for draining out clean water. I used it all the time because I lived in a city with very bad water. That was made in Switzerland, but the same type is also made in the United States now. I do not know whether it is made in other countries as well.
I plan to go into more detail about different emergency preparedness areas after I hit the highlights.
Next post is for more about water for emergency preparedness.
People often do not understand why water might be a problem during an emergency. They can just turn on the tap and water will come out, right?
Nope.
It is not that easy. Many disasters involve no water coming out of the faucets or bad water coming out that is not safe to drink. Earthquakes often break water lines and wreck wells and city water reservoirs or purification plants. Floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, and tsunamis often cause contaminated water. Those are just a few of the highlights of why you want to have water stored for emergencies.
An alternative to storing water is to have a very good purifier to be able to clean up whatever water you can get. That one is dependent on being able to get any water to clean. Not all disasters will leave you that option. If you want to leave your options open, you could keep some water stored and have a filter system as backup.
If you intend to filter water you need to consider impurities and disease. Just running your water through progressively smaller layers of filters will work like a stream in nature and take out most of the dirty things from the water. Then you need to think about disease causing organisms, like parasites and germs. Boiling will kill most diseases and parasites, but that requires fuel that might be scarce.
You can buy filters that take care of both types of water cleaning problems, but the really good ones can be quite expensive. I used to have a very good one that had ceramic filtering elements with silver in them to kill any germs that were small enough to get through the pores in the ceramics. It worked on gravity. You simply poured water into the container and it went through the filter and into another container with a spigot for draining out clean water. I used it all the time because I lived in a city with very bad water. That was made in Switzerland, but the same type is also made in the United States now. I do not know whether it is made in other countries as well.
I plan to go into more detail about different emergency preparedness areas after I hit the highlights.
Next post is for more about water for emergency preparedness.
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