Category: Water Storage & Filters

Letter Re: Drinking Water Sources and Microbes

Water is essential for human life and unfortunately some sources provide water unsafe for human consumption. There are several methods for treating water including osmosis, distillation, ultra violet, boiling, filtering, and chemicals such as chlorine or iodine. Most of these treatments are aimed at biological contamination and each of them has disadvantages in a WTSHTF scenario. My solution is to first pre-filter the water using coffee filters or a clean rag, then use a quality microfilter such as the Katadyn Pocket filter, and then boil or chemical treat the water as the situation allows. In this article we will briefly …


Letter Re: Reverse Osmosis Water Purification for Urbanites

Dear Jim, Concerning Justin B.’s letter on reverse osmosis: Why go to all the trouble of using a reverse osmosis system and having to Jerry-rig a way to use it if the electrical system goes on the blink? Use a non-electric, non-water wasting, gravity-based water filtration system like the Big Berkey (30,000 gallons on one set of filters!) and get used to using it for your drinking water every day. It’s a great way to develop a habit and a mind set of preparedness. Every time I fill my Berkey (once or twice a day) I think about my preps …


Letter Re: Reverse Osmosis Water Purification for Urbanites

Dear Editor: Greetings, fellow urban dwellers! As an intermittent 10 Cent Challenge subscriber (I put in money when I have it, the Lord has seen fit to test our family lately) and semi-survivalist, I would like to talk about reverse osmosis (RO) filtration systems. Can you afford to depend on the municipal water system to provide clean water? In the event of water supply contamination, you can use portable systems such as the Katadyn or Big Berkey filters, but I want to save my bug-out supplies for bugging out. Also, the first indication that there is a problem is when …


Letter Re: Mylar “Wine in a Box” Inserts for Liquids Storage

Mr. Rawles I stumbled upon this thread about these guys doing a cross-Africa trip. Its pretty long, but worth the read. One piece of interest was the use of the bags that wine-in-a-box comes in to store fuel. Here is the link to the start of the thread, just keep clicking “continue” at the end. Warning: There is some National Geographic-type nudity. – Slinger JWR Replies: This topic came up once before in SurvivalBlog. OBTW, it would be quite dangerous to store anything that is more flammable than waste vegetable oil (WVO) in a Mylar bag. Use only proper containers …


Letter Re: The Southeastern US Drought

JWR: I was talking to a friend in North Carolina this afternoon and he was telling me about the drought conditions in the Charlotte area and he relayed to me some interesting drought news. – The several acre sized lake on his property has dried up. – Duke Power has issued a statement, in the local area, to expect power disruptions in the coming months due to low water levels in the reservoirs that Duke operates that is used for hydro power, cooling towers, and such. Here is a link from the DOE about a drought’s drain on power. The …


Letter Re: Les Stroud (aka “Survivorman”) Off-Grid Living Videos

James, I’m not sure if you’ve mentioned this series before, but on YouTube there is a video series called “Off the Grid” hosted by Les Stroud of Survivorman fame. He moves his family out of the city and into the country in search of an off-the-grid home and lifestyle. It’s a fairly realistic look and (I think) good introduction to what it would take to make the jump to living in the country and self-sufficiently. The other videos in the series can be found linked from the first page, or just search for “Off the Grid”. Hope you enjoy this, …


Letter Re: Comments on Polar Pure and Hawaii as a Retreat Locale

Aloha Jim & Memsahib, Per your advice in an earlier blog posting, I rushed in an order for 16 bottles of Polar Pure water purification crystals from the folks at Ready Made Resources. I placed the order on August 26th and received my shipment on September 14th. The entire shipment of 16 bottles (enough for our family of three for quite a while plus something extra for barter and/or charity) arrived via Uncle Sam’s snail mail in what I thought was a surprisingly short time. (I had been expecting something like 6 to 8 weeks from Tennessee to the islands.) …


Letter Re: Suburban Survival

Hi Jim and Family, I truly enjoy reading your survival blog and learn from it daily and weekly. However I believe you are skipping over a topic that would benefit your readers….most of your readers. I would think that most of your readers who check out and read your site on a daily basis do not have a remote retreat in Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Utah, or Wyoming. Most of your readers I’m sure live like me in American Suburbs, trapped and looking for a way to get out but in the mean time prepping for what we all know is …


How to Make Old Fashioned Homemade Soap (Part 1 of 3), by Grandpappy

During hard times sooner or later everyone runs out of soap. To make soap you only need three things: 1. Rainwater, 2. Cold ashes from any hardwood fire, and 3. Animal fat from almost any type of animal, such as beef, pork, goat, sheep, bear, beaver, raccoon, opossum, groundhog, etc. All soap consists of the above three ingredients in one form or another, and that includes bath soap, dish soap, laundry soap, and hair shampoo. Soap is not difficult to make and it does not require any special equipment. And soap can be made from things that exist in large …


Letter Re: Recent Floods in the UK and the Impact on Our Preparations

Further to my recent post about the recent flooding In the UK, things in the immediate area are pretty well back to normal now, aside from some continuing disruption to the road network due to land-slips, undermining and in some cases, bridges across water courses being washed away. Here, we got off very lightly, compared to some. No loss of life, no injuries, very little property damage. There are many families, however, who will be counting the cost of this incident for a long time, both in terms of loss of loved ones and of property and livelihood. One’s heart …


Letter Re: Povidone (Betadine) Will Be Exempted from the New U.S. Iodine Ban But Polar Pure Will Not

Jim, I was reading through FR Doc E7-12736 (Federal Register: July 2, 2007, Volume 72, Number 126, Rules and Regulations, Page 35920-35931, online at your link this morning when I found this language at the bottom of the document: Sec. 1310.12 Exempt chemical mixtures. … (4) Iodine products classified as iodophors that exist as an iodine complex to include poloxamer-iodine complex, polyvinyl pyrrolidone-iodine complex (i.e., povidone-iodine), undecoylium chloride iodine, nonylphenoxypoly (ethyleneoxy) ethanol-iodine complex, iodine complex with phosphate ester of alkylaryloxy polyethylene glycol, and iodine complex with ammonium ether sulfate/polyoxyethylene sorbitan monolaurate. It appears that Betadine and some other organic iodine …


Letter Re: Observations on the Flooding in Central England

Jim: Wow, good thing our cousins across the pond had firearms to defend themselves from the looters… I was in Jersey City [, New Jersey, USA] about two weeks ago when a 46 inch[-diameter] water main broke and there was no water pressure for 48 hours. My friend that I was staying with had no water at all except half a case of 1/2 liter drinking water bottles. We were able to get to the supermarket where they were rationing the stock to four gallons per person. So we bought the maximum and [did the same] again the next morning. …


Letter Re: Garage/Shelter for RVs as a Retreat Option?

Jim- A few days back a contributor asked about hardening up her mobile home. That reminded me of a plan I have been considering over the last couple of years. This might work for those who can’t relocate now to their retreat. I was motivated to write because I just saw a news report of a family offering a considerable reward for the recovery of their ATVs which had been stolen from their vacation cabin.[My idea is to] develop a retreat location with: 1. A water supply and septic tank and [leach] field (all disguised, to discourage squatters.) 2. Underground …


Letter Re: Observations on the Flooding in Central England

Sir: You might have seen the news reports about the flooding in Central England last week. We’re in amongst it, but fortunately (and thanks to forward planning) high enough to have remained dry. The primary cause of the floods was a prolonged period of exceptionally heavy rain, up to 131mm (c.5-1/2 inches) in one day. This followed hot on the heels of a very wet summer which left the ground sodden an unable to absorb the downpour, which caused flash-flooding as it ran off. Areas not normally flood-prone have been inundated. Rivers broke their banks and filled their flood-plains. Now …


Letter Re: Betadine and Polar Pure from Ready Made Resources

Jim, [Regarding the recent mention of soon-to-be-banned Polar Pure water purification and Betadine iodine products,] Just to let you know, today I picked up some Betadine at my local Walgreens store [a discount drugs store] and it was $17.99 for the name brand (8 oz.) and about $13 for the Walgreens’ [generic] version (also 8 oz). I got home, and called Ready Made Resources, and their’s is $12.96 for a QUART (32 oz). This is between four and six times less expensive! The owner was very courteous, mentioned that he has two sons in the military, and I look forward …