Today we’re going to go through a survival prepper homestead kit that everybody should start putting together. We’re going to go through one item at a time, and we’re going to go through it in detail so you know what you need, and why you need it, and where you can get it.
Over the next few weeks I’m going to cover the 10 most important items you should get first. Today we’re going to talk about the #1 most important item…water.
You will be in way better position if you have these things ready before a crisis.
Rely on yourself, don’t stand there waiting for somebody else to save you. Your stress level will be through the roof while you’re waiting and wondering, it’s so much better to just know you have your stuff right there and you’re fine. That gives you confidence, not stress.
Why is water so important for survival?
Every function in your body uses water.
Without water you die after 3 days, but you’re falling apart way before that. If you’re in the heat or living outside it’s even shorter than that. Without water you start going down hill the first day.
We never think about not having a drink, because when we walk into the gas station, it’s just wall to wall drinks, so it’s hard for us to imagine not having any.
When a disaster happens the stores get cleaned out faster than you can believe. Who wants to be at the store fighting the crowds at the last minute, it’s way better to be at home prepared, calm and confident. It literally puts you in a better place than everybody else.
Tell me about how important clean water is?
NOW, Picture yourself in a desperate situation, you might think you can go to the river and fill up 5 gallon buckets and drink that. Don’t ever do that, because dirty water can give you something that will kill you faster than no water at all. And that’s diarrhea.
Diarrhea is your enemy when you’re trying to survive.
I’m going to tell you about 2 things that you’ve probably never heard about, that you can get from drinking dirty water.
The first one is Giardia, Giardiaa is a parasite that’s in the water, and when you drink it, it causes cramps, nausea, and diarrhea.
The 2nd one is Cryptosporidium, it’s another parasite that causes diarrhea, but it also gets in your lungs and makes you cough. So imagine coughing diarrhea.
You don’t want to get that one ! ! !
The point of all this is you want to store clean water ahead of time in your kit, so you’re not desperately drinking dirty water because you’re unprepared.
‘ SO . . . What’s the best way to store water ? ‘
I want to tell you a quick little story about water containers.
You might think, I’ll just run to the store and buy some 1 gallon jugs of water and put that in the house for emergencies Because they’re sealed and uncontaminated, and I’m good to go.
WELL, That’s what Scott did, but about a year later he noticed the 1 gallon jugs all collapsed and the water was gone, and he doesn’t know where it went or how it got out. So the moral of the story is, gallon jugs are not good storage containers for water.
They make proper water storage containers, THIS is the one I use Aqua-Tainer 7 Gallon Rigid Water Container.
Depending on the size of your family and where you live you might need a lot of these.
Just to give you a rough idea, each family member will need 2 gallons of water a day for drinking and cooking. And the bare minimum you want to keep on hand is a 3 day supply. It’s that simple, don’t complicate it, but it’s very important.
Before you fill up your containers, you need to wash your hands, and keep everything very sanitary. don’t use the garden hose. They make this special clean little hose just for filling. It hooks to your sink. Make sure you clean your sink nozzle with soap and water too.
If you have a big family and you don’t want to get a million of these little containers…. they do make this 55 gallon drum.
There’s a link in the description for these containers.
What’s the best way to purify water?
NOW. We need a way to purify the water just in case we think it got contaminated.
I’m always double triple careful because I don’t want coughing diarrhea. But seriously imagine IF a baby got that.
There’s 3 ways to purify your water,
I’m going to start with the most effective then go down to the least effective.
#1 is boiling, boiling kills pretty much everything, but you have to have a rolling boil for a full minute.
#2 is water purification tablets…specifically chlorine dioxide, The tablets work fine for the water in your containers sense you got it out of the tap, if you’re drinking water from a river you HAVE to boil it.
#3 is bleach, using bleach is better than nothing, you can put 1/8th teaspoon of bleach per gallon of clear water, double that for cloudy water. then let is sit for 20 minutes.
What do you think, is a survival kit a good idea? what do you have in your kit? tell me in the comments below. Stay tuned for next week, when I’m going to talk about the next item you need in your kit.