Purifying water in the wild can be difficult if you don’t prepare beforehand. There’s no supermarket where you can get purifiers in the wilderness. So, failure to prepare ahead may subject you to extreme conditions.
While I am not denying that we may have no choice but to drink impure water in the face of the worst, I am a supporter of preparing ahead. Because, although you can survive drinking contaminated water, you’ll be exposing yourself to much more diseases than you think.
5 Methods For Purifying Water In The Wild
Should you fall sick in the wilderness, the chances of becoming better are slim. There’s no professional medical doctor to help, and even if your partner is a nurse, there’s no special equipment to run a diagnosis. So, it may be best to pursue good health as much as you can, which in this case, translates directly to: “drink only purified water.”
Let us look at 5 methods through which we can purify water in the wild.
Boiling
Boiling remains the most potent way to kill bacteria and parasites in water. Without doubt, it is the most reliable method to purify water in the wild. When you boil water, the heat is enough to wipe out all pathogens that may be in the water. Usually, 5 minutes of boiling is sufficient, but you may want to use 10 minutes to be on the safer side.
An advantage of boiling is that it can be done through a number of options. You can use a metal or ceramic container on the stove or hold over a wildfire. If you do not have a container that can be placed over the fire, you can decide to leave some stones in the fire for about 30 minutes, after which you drop them in the water. You don’t even need to have brought a cooking pot from home. You can use a rock depression, folded bark, animal stomach or hide. Avoid using river rocks, such as quartz, as they may explode when heated.
However, boiling as a method of purification has its limitations. Boiling does not guarantee 100% elimination of chemical toxins in water. Don’t get it wrong. Boiling will purge your water of chemical toxins, but not in its entirety. So, if you come across heavily chemically polluted water, boiling may not be enough for you. These chemicals kill, you know.
Distillation
When dangerous water is all you can afford, distillation might be your best option, because (as already mentioned), boiling does not eliminate chemicals. Distillation is different. This process can rid your water of harmful substances that it may contain after a disaster. Some of these substances are heavy metal, lead, salt and even radiation.
Distillation works by capturing the steam of contaminated water as you boil it. Steam is basically dispersed water, but when you gather in large quantities, it becomes water. And not just water but water relatively safe for drinking regardless of the contaminants previously contained. This process may not get rid of organic compounds and volatile oils, but it makes water drinkable.
How To Make A Distiller In The Wild
The downside of distillation is that it requires technical know-how, and this may be impossible if you can’t fix one or two. Anyway, we are preppers; and we prepare ahead. Let’s see how we can set up distillation machinery.
To start, you’ll need to make a solar still, which will help you to gather and distill water underground.
- Install a transparent plastic (preferably 5×5 or 6×6 FT) over a 3FT-deep hole that has a water container in it. That is, dig a hole that is deep by 3 feet, place a water container inside it and install a see-through plastic over it.
- Connect a drinking tube to the transparent plastic, so you can drink gathered steam without scattering the still.
- Use dirt to completely bury the water container in the ground. That means that you fill up the holes that may be gaping around it. The dirt to be used includes urine and green vegetation. They will help to provide more water.
- Place a clean rock in the middle of the above ground plastic, such that it presses inward, thus assuming the shape of a 45° cone over the water container.
- Lastly, you should still be in a sunny location.
Survival Straw
A survival straw is small and light, making it a good choice to carry about in the wild. You can carry about for as long as possible until it is needed. There’s no complex mechanism behind this method; it’s merely a water filter in the form of a straw.
A survival straw works like an ordinary straw. Just use to suck water and that’s it. This is much easier. Your straw has other purposes. You can attach to a drinking hose to directly filter water being transferred. Typically, water filters come with a powerful carbon filter element that filters out large pathogens, including bacteria, and eliminates weird odor and flavor.
UV Light
This must be a surprising inclusion, but thinking of it, it shouldn’t. Everyone knows UV light is not merciful to small organisms, so isn’t it logical that we can use it to kill these organisms in water? Now you see.
These days, there are UV lights specifically produced to kill germs in diseases. These products help to distort the chemical structures of harmful microbes in an instant, thus causing immediate death. A good UV light purifier is typically hand-cranked and battery-free.
SODIS
SODIS stands for Solar Water Disinfection. Does that give you a hint of how it works? Above, we looked at using UV light to eliminate harmful microbes. Well, does it not please you to remember that the sun is a rich source of UV light?
So, by exposing a filled container of water to the sun for a minimum of 24 hours, you can rid the water in the container of virus, bacteria and other pathogens. This method is free and widely available, but has its shortcomings anyway. There has to be 2 days of bright sunlight to ensure optimum effectiveness, and it may not be very helpful in eliminating bacterial cyst and spores.
Conclusion On Purifying Water In The Wild
Purifying water in the wild is important to your health. It is difficult to recover from an illness in the wilderness, so be careful not to fall at all. Thankfully, there are several ways to rid your water of impurities in the wild. Apart from the highly effective methods above, you can use disinfecting tablets, normal water purifiers and household chemicals like hydrogen peroxide and chlorine.