Imagine a biological attack on our country or some other form of attack that could cripple our public utilities’ ability to purify water. Imagine there being no news outlets to notify the public about the contamination and how to deal with the situation. We take it for granted and turn on the faucet and assume our water is safe. In the dependent society we live in, most people would consume the water without thinking of the consequences. I would take a gamble and say 60-70% of our society doesn’t know the first and most basic way to purify water for consumption. The whole premise of self-reliance is to not be dependent on anyone else including our government to provide anything. Making sure you have safe drinking water is the most basic necessity for surviving a catastrophic event.
The first and most basic way to purify water is to boil it. Ten minutes of boiling usually does the trick. If there’s no modern source of heat (electricity, natural gas), you’ll need to build a fire to sustain the heat to boil it and of course some sort of container that can withstand boiling over a fire. Without electricity this can certainly become a tedious process to gather firewood, start a fire, boil the water, keep the fire going, let the water cool and restart the process. The boiling process eliminates any impurities or viruses that may be lurking in the water that are not visible by the naked eye.
