Water! Not just for drinking anymore.

“Boring!” You say to yourself. “Why start the interesting part of this blog with water?” Well every living thing on earth needs it to live so, you know, you should probably have some and shut your fat mouth. Seriously. Most emergency prep lists will tell you to have a gallon of water stored per person per day for however long you think you’ll be without access. This means no running water. You're left with one flush in the top tank of your toilet and if you're lucky a full water heater. Most homes are gravity fed so even if the power goes you will usually still have water. At least until the towers run out. But what if it's not that simple. What if the water is there but it's contaminated? (Looking at you Flint.) What happens if the magic of indoor plumbing just up and disappears completely? What are you going to drink? How are you going to cook? Wash the dishes? Wash your clothes? Your hands? Your body? Where ya gonna poop?! Huh!? Not so boring now is it!

Tier 1- Easy. A gallon of water per person in your home... per day! Shoot for a weeks worth. This is not just for drinking. This is for cooking, cleaning, and… well yea drinking. Family of 4? 28 gallons for a week. This is easy math people. And it's not as much as it sounds. Roughly 15-30 bucks depending on your local prices. There's some debate on whether water “goes bad” if stored in a cool dry place. I would recommend either rotating in new and either simply using/drinking the older or save it for the old porcelain throne. I personally freeze a good bit. Provided I have freezer room. Not only does this save some space and keep it fresh it also helps to keep my freezer cold in the event of an outage. Before you even say it!... yea fill up the bathtub but if you're gonna do that why not fill the washing machine too (if its a top loader), didnt think about that did you? Also make sure pet dishes are filled and if you have a baby on formula I recommend the liquid concentrates. They require far less water than the powders but also last longer (and are cheaper) than the ready-to-use liquid type.

Tier 2- Before you get out your calculator and start figuring out how much you need for weeks and months let talk about some more efficient methods for long term water storage/retrieval. Now in a perfect world you are on well water and have a generator or a manual pump to get water out for a long term situation. But you probably don't. You city slicker. In that case let's talk about bulk water storage. Rain barrels are a great place to start if your city or town allows. Now this water would need to be purified but there are lots of ways to do this. Boiling, Iodine tablets, Or even small amounts of bleach can be used in a way that is still safe for drinking. I am not going to give you instructions for that though. Look that shit up elsewhere. Easiest though would probably be a filtration system. Sawyer makes some nice gravity fed ones and single use models. They last WAY longer than the stupid life straw. Much easier to backwash and usually very compact. I keep them in my car and BOB. If rain barrels ain't your style you should make note of any natural water sources nearby. Creeks, ponds, lakes. Hell a puddle will do in a pinch. Again the same purification rules apply but I'd add a few steps like straining the water thru some plain coffee filters to get out big old chunks and maybe even toss in some powdered drink mix. Yea it’ll be safe to drink if you sterilize it properly but it may still taste like pond water.

Tier 3- I don’t know man. Can you dig a well? I can’t. Should look that up. Tier 3’s are often going to require moving to survive. Life goes where the water goes and in this situation that'll probably include you.