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Recommended Books
Survival Wisdom & Know How: Everything You Need to Know to Thrive in the Wilderness by the editors of Stackpole Books.
Hawke's Green Beret Survival Manual by Myke Hawke.
When Technology Fails: A Manual for Self-Reliance, Sustainability, and Surviving the Long Emergency by Matthew Stein
When All Hell Breaks Loose by Cody Lundin
Primitive Wilderness Living & Survival Skills: Naked into the Wilderness by John and Geri McPherson.
SAS Survival Handbook: How to Survive in the Wild, in Any Climate, on Land or at Sea by John Lofty Wiseman
US Army Survival Manual: FM 21-76 by Department of Defense
Websites
Waterborne Illness Prevention Guide
download PDF
Waterborne Diseases
Lenntech
TV Programs and DVDs
Discovery Channel's Man vs. Wild
See also the Dual Survival
More recommendations available at Amazon...
Water: Survival Techniques and Tricks
The conventional wisdom about survival is that you can last a month without food, but only three days without water. In addition to locating sources to drink from, it's essential to remove bacteria, toxic chemicals and other contaminants before ingesting it. Even crystal clear water found in wide open terrain may contain harmful microbes. So water gathering becomes a three step process: finding it, filtering it and disinfecting it.
Finding It
There are a few common-sense rules to keep in mind during your search. First, water generally flows downhill. Snowmelt and rain accumulate in channels cut into the land, forming creeks and streams. Even when the waterways dry up, the green growth around them lingers. Large amounts of water may be holed up a foot or two underground. You should also look for water on the north side of hills and trees, or other places where there's plenty of shade, causing water to evaporate more slowly. Of these locations, the best is the base of a hill, the bottom of a ravine, and inside a narrow canyon.
The exception to the downhill rule is a phenomenon called capillary action. That's why you can often find large amounts of water inside some trees (even a cactus). But even without tree roots, water deep in the ground will climb to the surface. You can sometimes watch it collect in a hole you've just dug a few feet away from a waterway. Another example of capillary action is a spring. Look for a large, very healthy tree in otherwise dry terrain and it's possible that a subterranean water deposit will be available. In the Sahara Desert and other parts of the world massive amounts of water reside in aquifers. (If you do a little geological research, you can identify these underground reservoirs long in advance of an emergency evacuation.)
When searching a dry riverbed, you may have better luck digging at a point on an inside bend, since this is where the water was more likely to collect and gain depth while the river was flowing. Dig down a foot or more to see if there's any left. You can also try walking over a dry bed in your bare feet, since your nerves are sensitive to moisture.
Another approach to locating water is to follow heavily trafficked game trails downhill. Look for tracks, an abundance of droppings or other signs of critter activity. Predators almost invariably head off to get a drink after consuming a kill, so you can follow (or track) them directly to their water hole.
Although seawater is unhealthy and can destroy your kidneys, some anecdotes suggest that ingesting a very limited quantity over time may be survivable. It's better to mix it with a fresh water, if you have any. Skim the very top layer of the sea, which contains less salt. (Ingesting a little bit of salt is not a bad thing, either, if you're floating beneath a hot sun for many days.) If you have any plastic on your boat, you can use the condensation process to create water from the vapors that hang over the sea. (More on this below.)
Other ways to find and collect raw water on land:
- Look around tangles of alder, willow or cottonwoods, reeds or palm trees, since these usually reside next to a waterway.
- Catch the morning dew before it evaporates by tying a cotton shirt around your lower leg and walk through the high grass. When it's saturated, squeeze the water out of the shirt into a cup.
- Some vehicle radiators contain water (instead of anti-freeze), and you can extract it by loosening the bottom bolt with a wrench or pliers. Then place a pan underneath to catch the outflow. Remember to filter, decontaminate and boil this water before drinking it. Never, never ingest anti-freeze, however. This chemical solution is fatal.
- While often dismissed as hocus-pocus, people have used water witching for millenia to find underground sources. Use a forked willow branch or two narrow lengths of steel (wire or rod) with one end turned at 90 degrees to make a handle. Loosely hold the non-forked end of the willow, with the forked end out in front of you, then walk forward. If the willow senses any water, it should bend down towards it. For steel wires/rods, loosely hold the bent ends in either hand, with the two straight ends out in front and parallel to each other. The ends will either cross or diverge over a water source, as if drawn by a magnetic force.
In a situation where there's no water source available, use the moisture in plants, fruit, animals and fish to stay hydrated. For example:
- You can suck edible berries, palm fruits or prickly pear (on cactus) for moisture. Always spit out the pits afterward.
- Pull open plant stalks, bamboo and thick vines to look for rainwater or internal plant moisture. (Don't drink from roots, as they're generally toxic.)
- Some cacti contain water, but be sure to cut off the spines completely before tryin to access it.
- Green coconuts contain drinkable water. Brown coconuts contain milk, but drink it sparingly to avoid diarrhea.
- Tap into a fig tree. Make sure you have a tube and container ready once you drill in your hole.
- Fish, camels and other animals contain water, so be sure you have a basin or bowl ready to collect it as you gut them.
- Bird and turtle blood, as well as fish eyes can provide liquid sustenance in a pinch.
- If a rainstorm is on the way, lay out large leaves, sea shells or bamboo cut in half to capture the water as it falls. Set out the bamboo beneath your shelter roof to catch the runoff. Or dig a hole and line it with plastic.
More Ways to Find Water
Converting Snow - Dig up the oldest snowfall you can uncover for water. Powder has very little water content, while ice holds more water than snow. To melt, put a little in the pot first and heat lightly so as not to burn the bottom. Keep adding snow as it melts down in the pot. Frozen water may still have germs, so check it out carefully.
Never use a surface layer of snow for drinking, especially if it's colored or dirty. If you can't light a fire, fill your canteen or water bottle with snow, then stick between layers of clothes and allow body heat to melt it. At camp, place a snowball on a stick near the fire and let it drip into a cup. Or heat up some rocks, toss them into a pile of clean snow/ice, then collect the melted water.
Along the Seashore - Near ocean water, wait for the low tide, then dig a hole below the high water mark. Stop digging as soon as you see water starts seeping in. Fresh water rises to top of salt water, so that first seepage should be good to drink.
Icebergs - Water from ice bergs contains much less salt (if any) than seawater. Take ice from the side of the berg that gets the most sunlight. Blue ice contains less salt.
Other Water at Sea - Extract condensation water from sails (leave a little slack) and tarps. Near the mouth of a river, start testing seawater to see if it’s fresh. In hot weather, add 1/5 to 2/5 salt water to fresh to replace salt you sweat out. Drinking salt water straight will destroy your kidneys and make you delirious.
Swamp Water - Where possible, follow the instructions for "Along the Seashore" above. If that's not possible, skim water off the top, preferably in a sunny spot. This water should be a little less murky and teeming with microbes.
Underground Springs - These are common in the forest and around volcanoes, both active and dormant. Look for wet patches of ground, water dribbling out of cracks in rocks, unusual areas of lush growth, or seemingly stagnant marshes that in fact are flowing in some direction.
Wells - Beneath all land, there's a water table. It's usually pretty deep down, but wells may have been dug into the ground for generations. If you find an old abandoned one, check it out. Unless you're close to large-scale farms, or near a power plant or chemical factory, the ground water you retrieve should be good to go after disinfecting it. (See below.)
Creating Water through Condensation
The basic idea here is to use a combination of heat and glass or plastic (and occasionally metal) to convert undrinkable liquid or moisture in the environment into a clean liquid. You can extract water from green leaves this way, as well as seawater, since salt and certain other elements won't convert to vapor. The source of heat is typically the Sun, but you can also light a little fire beneath a metal can or near your plastic to stimulate the condensation. Here are a few methods:
Solar Still - Dig a 3 by 3-foot hole in a place where it looks like water might have been pooled underground in the recent past. (See suggestions above for finding water.)You'll lay in a sheet of 6 by 6 foot clear plastic over the hole, with a rock in the middle of the plastic to create a cone shape.
Just beneath the plastic, where the rock is placed, you'll secure a container about the size of a large coffee cup. The container will catch the condensation rolling down the plastic from all sides, hence its cone shape. To hold the plastic sheet in place, cover it around its border with dirt.
Makedistilledwater.com
On the ground around the cup, place cacti, grass or green leaves (non-poisonous) that will contribute their own condensation.
Run an intake hose from above ground to the bottom of the hole. Use this to transfer urine, seawater or other undrinkable liquid into your still. This method works at night as well as in the daytime, but produces 25 percent less water than transpiration. For converting lots of seawater, use the method below.
Solar Distiller - You build a water box that you can divide into two separate sides. One end of the box is higher than the other. You cover the box with a sheet of clear Plexiglass or plastic, so that it slants downward, enabling the condensed droplets that form on it to roll from the bad water-side and drop into the good-water side.
Into the bad-water side you put in seawater, urine or other undrinkable liquid, preferably through a hose, so you don't have to take the lid off the box and disrupt the condensation. The other side will catch the clean water when it drops off the plastic after rolling over. You should try to run a hose from this side as well to extract the liquid without disrupting the process.
Alternatively, you can use a simpler design as shown below, with the box holding all the salted or dirty water. The plastic sheet sits on top, and as the Sun beats down on it, the water evaporates upward, then runs down the sheet and into a container. Unfortunately, this side view neglects to show how water droplets along a rectangular sheet all land in the mouth of the flask. But you get the idea of how it works. (Check out Matt Stein's book When Technology Fails for a diagram of the distiller described in the previous paragraph.)
Transpiration - Find a sunny spot and wrap a plastic bag around a big leafy branch. Make sure the plant isn't poisonous first. Willow or oak work well for this. Ornamentals are bad, as are leaves which ooze white when cut. Look for leaves that are thin and a light shade of green. Tie the open end of the bag to the branch. Depending on the temperature and humidity, you may be able to catch up to a half cup of water after a few hours. Be careful around thorns and other objects that can pierce holes in your bag.
Fire in metal container - Stick a lantern at the bottom of a larger container, then light it and cover the container, except for an air hole. Set the container in the contaminated or undrinkable liquid. Condensation will transfer the good water into the can as it heats up.
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Filtering Methods
Wherever you locate water, you shouldn't drink it until you're sure it's safe. (That is, unless the situation is dire and delaying could be fatal.) Even in the most pristine backcountry, bacteria and other pathogens may be present. Some animals urinate and defecate in waterways, while the dead bodies of others can get swept up into river during a storm. Colder water is generally safer to drink without treatment, since microbes generally (but not always) thrive in a warm environment.
Microbes, however, are not the only concern. Heavy metals are occasionally present in streams and creeks flowing down out of mountains. These metals include copper, arsenic, lead and mercury. Another pitfall to watch out for: wells, springs and other underground water sources near power plants, chemical factories, mines and farmland. In addition to the metals, it's possible you may find high concentrations of nitric acid and ammonia (from fertilizer), pesticides and other toxic compounds.
Water retrieved through rainwater collection and clear melted snow, or that's retrieved from a high-altitude underground spring may not require any filtering.
A basic, improvised water filter
Filtering removes silt, gravel, organic matter, metals, most chemical compounds and some (but not all) bacteria. To filter water, you can use a plastic container, a sock, a seashell or even a bowl shape that you've dug into the ground. You might also fashion a funnel out of organic materials, like bark and grass. The ideal filter will have several layers that your liquid passes down through, starting with the coarsest material at the top.
In the drawing above, the bottom of a plastic container has been cut out, then stacked with filtering material. The mouth of the bottle (i.e. the twist-on cap end) is where your filtered water will emerge. You can also filter water in separate steps or containers, if that's easier. Before it enters your cup, tie a scarf or other tightly woven piece of cloth around the mouth (cap end) to provide the most impenetrable filter of all.
Charcoal from your campfire is one of the most effective ways to filter out toxic chemicals, which is why most home water filters are charcoal-based. Charcoal has numerous crooks and crannies in it, capturing the unwanted microbes. Backpackers generally carry filters that contain activated carbon (like the Katadyn model featured at right), made from a carbonaceous material enhanced to make it more porous. You can make your own charcoal with a wood fire, or by burning nutshells, coal or peat.
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At left, activated carbon made from coconut shells. At right, a drawing of a birch bark filter.
Just remember not to use the same charcoal again and again and again, since the holes will eventually fill up, allowing pathogens and other contaminants to pass through. Charcoal filters must be changed periodically.
Red sphagnum moss in bogs and marshes is also an excellent filter, since it contains natural iodine to disinfect the water at the same time. (It won't remove the heavy metals.) If you're in a hurry, you can squeeze water out of the moss and into your mouth, but it's better to collect the moss, pour your water through it and filter the liquid through a cloth.
Here are a few other filtering suggestions:
- Fashion a funnel out of an ice-cream cone-shaped strip of birch bark. (See drawing above.) Alternate layers of grass, gravel, sand and charcoal. Use a scarf over the catch container as the final filter.
- Pour contaminated water through a sock or other thick-woven cotton garment (preferably white or light-colored) to remove any live organisms, mud or other solid material, like radiator rust.
- If a pond or spring looks murky, dig into the sand or gravel a foot or two away from it. The water that fills the hole from below is naturally filtered by the silt and sand. Then cover the mouth of your container with cloth and fill it with the water.
Remember that filtering will limit the number of microbes, but not necessarily get all the bad stuff out. And toxic substances like arsenic may still get through, so it's essential to scan the area surrounding the water for signs of trouble. A lack of green growth or dead animals lying nearby is a reliable indication that the water isn't safe. If you're near an urban area, agricultural or livestock tracts, a power plant or factory, you'll likewise have to be extra careful.
However, if you're in the wilderness, especially the high country, the danger from contaminants is much less. Cold water rushing down a river generated by snowmelt in the mountain has a good chance of being safe to drink. Try to collect it after it splashes hard across some rocks, since this roiling action kills bacteria as well.
Disinfecting Water
As mentioned above, water retrieved through rainwater collection, condensation, evaporation, clear melted snow, or that's retrieved from an underground spring shouldn't require disinfecting. However, if there's any doubt about microbes or other contaminants, take the time to disinfect it.There are several ways to do this:
Boiling – If you have access to fire, this is the quickest way to kill the microbes. Warm water bacteria takes longer to disinfect, so if your source is a hot spring, plan on boiling it for ten minutes. Cold water requires a couple minutes, although if you're at a high altitude, the experts suggest doubling the time.
Iodine Method – 1 tsp disinfects 1 quart of water. Or use 1 iodide tablet and wait for 3 minutes, then shake container and let water leak out to disinfect screw thread and drinking surface. Wait 20 minutes, or 30 minutes if water is cold. Use 2 tablets for murkier water. If you're using an iodide crystal solution, make sure the crystals themselves don't get into your water, since they're toxic. If you're using a dropper, the conversion is 10 drops per gallon and 2 drops per liter.
Bleach – Use liquid bleach only, not a powder, and not a scented bleach. Add roughly a teaspoon or two per gallon. Slosh the water around and wait 20 minutes.
Solar/UV Ray Method – When other methods aren't available, submit your water to the light and heat of the Sun. On a sunny day, one hour may be all you need. On a cloudy day, leave it for several hours, and in overcast weather, leave it out for two days. Experts say UV rays only penetrate up to four inches through clear water. If the color is murky, this method won't work. Window glass also blocks UV rays, so use only bottle glass or plastic to hold your water. (On the other hand, too much heat makes plastic break down and contaminate water.)
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Keep in mind that heavy metals and many other chemical contaminant won't be removed using evaporation or any of the other disinfecting techniques. You'll need to use the filter method described above.
After disinfecting water, slosh it around to oxygenate the H20. That should dispel any flat taste. If you used the solar method, drink the water fairly soon, since bacteria will start reproducing soon after being removed from the UV rays.
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Finding Food and Cooking: Page 3
Other Survival Topics: Page 4
Building a Shelter: Page 1
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Copyright 2009-2012TheCityEdition.com---------------------------------------------------------------
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Please note: A wilderness expedition can be dangerous or life-threatening. Always consult a professional outdoors expert before undertaking one. Whenever possible, avoid solo adventures. Discuss any first aid or medical issues beforehand with your health care provider. When researching survival techniques, be sure to consult multiple sources to insure accuracy.
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Wilderness Survival
Vibrio cholerae
Waterborne Illnesses
Here are four good reasons to be careful about the water you consume in a survival situation:
Giardia lamblia – One-celled microbe that enters the environment from the feces of infected animals or other people. The organism lives in the intestine, but because it has a protective shell, it can survive for long periods of time outside the body. Symptoms may take one to two weeks to appear after infection and may persist for two to six weeks. They include diarrhea, gas or flatulence, greasy stools that float, stomach cramps, pain or nausea.
Cryptopsoridium – Once entering the body, it lives in the intestines, and has a resilient shell that fends off chemical water treatment. Symptoms include watery diarrhea, dehydration, stomach cramps or pain, fever, nausea, vomiting and weight loss.
Cholera – This disease is generated by the bacterium Vibrio cholerae and more likely to show up in Africa, Asia, Latin America and Oceania than the United States or Europe. It typically takes up residence in brackish rivers, coastal waters, and municipal water supplies and sewage systems that aren't maintained properly or chemically treated. Symptoms include profuse watery diarrhea, vomiting, leg cramps, and rapid loss of body fluids. Without treatment death can occur within hours.
Typhoid – Fairly common disease affecting about 17 million people annually. The symptoms appear 10 to 14 days after infection, They include high fever, rose-colored spots on the abdomen and chest, diarrhoea or constipation, and enlargement of the spleen and liver. Complications arising from the symptoms result in a mortality rate of about ten percent.
Additional Water Tips
- Drink as much water as possible before hiking into an area where water is scarce. Drink more water in cold weather. Don’t drink alcohol and medicine, as these liquids can dehydrate you.
- When necessary, ration water by taking a swallow’s worth, sloshing it around mouth and wetting your lips. Don’t start drinking more on the assumption that a new water supply may become available. Conserve it until you’re sure an anticipated source is both accessible and drinkable. Keep a pebble or button in your mouth for moisture. Breathe only through your nose, and talk as little as possible. And once you reach a new water supply, keep in mind that drinking too much at once will cause it to sluice right through your kidneys. It may also cause you to throw up.
- In the most desperate circumstances, you can hydrate yourself with dirty or salty (but not toxic) water by giving yourself an enema. About 15 percent of the liquid inserted into your rectum will be absorbed, without introducing those other unsavory ingredients into your intestines. To do this you'll need to get a tube of some sort at least two inches into the hole. You can use gravity to create the necessary pressure to push the liquid upward. (Bear Grylls demonstrated the technique in one of his Man vs. Wild seagoing episodes.) It kind of works like an IV, but you'll need to stay reclined for a short time afterwards, since the liquid will want to exit quickly. Limit any enemas to twice daily.
- Finally, many survivalists recommend drinking your urine in a pinch. This only works for the first urination after you run out of water. Before collecting it, let the first bit of it go, as this cleans out any bacteria lodged in the urethra. The rest should be sterile and safe to drink, but you must do so immediately, as urine attracts bacteria quickly. Naturally, if you think it will make you vomit, don't drink urine. Instead, add it to your solar still. (See info on left.)
