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Survival Basics: Water
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NEVER RISK HAVING TOO LITTLE WATER
A PERSON CAN SURVIVE ABOUT 3 DAYS WITHOUT WATER
Water is the key to survival. It is essential for human life and it makes up about 60% of a person's body weight.
Every day, a person needs to drink about two liters of water to stay hydrated. Water helps regulate the body's temperature and lubricates joints.
Water also helps remove waste from the body through urination and sweating.
When you don't have enough water, you can become dehydrated, leading to health problems such as heat stroke, seizures, or even death.
That's why it's so important to make sure you're drinking enough water every day!
When it comes to having a readily accessible water supply, there are a few things to be aware of.
First - If you have your own land, make sure it has permanent water rights or access.
Second - Consider areas with good yearly rainfall amounts. Even if rainwater is not "directly suggested for drinking", it does provide for food growth and can be boiled or purified before being useful.
Third - Consider stockpiling water, often in large tanks, or bottled water, before the need arises.
The more you learn and practice, the better you hone your skills and the less you will need to practice the basic skills you already know, this will free up your time and brain power so that you can learn and grow newer skills.
While natural springs might feed into a lake, there is no guarantee that the lake itself isn't contaminated. Do not forget that animals also use these water supplies, and may be readily urinating or defecating near the shore.
Survival Water Supply: Purification To Avoid Illness
Just because you have access to a water supply during a survival situation does not mean that you are going to want to, or be able to drink that water.
It is unfortunate that with modern pollution, acid rain, and other environmental concerns, many present water tables around the globe have a high degree of contamination.
Because this is such a wide concern, you should be potentially weary of all water sources at least to some degree.
For example, you can consider how much the water moves, as a relatively decent guide to the freshness of that water.
Small streams, where the water is constantly cold, flowing at a fast pace, where you might consider swimming or fishing are often going to disperse most potential contaminated relatively quickly.
Whereas a lake, that has been sitting stagnant for months, with a green film on top of it, and a ton of bugs flying around is highly likely to be quite covered in potential bacteria.
While this is only a general guide, as even fast-moving water can be contaminated upstream, it's a good indication that moving water has a greater chance to "refresh" the overall quality.
What You Really Need is to Purify Your Water Supply
Water purification is the process of removing undesirable chemicals, materials, and biological contaminants from water. The goal of water purification is to produce water that meets drinking water quality standards.
There are many different methods for purifying water, but all share the same goal: to make sure that the end product is safe to drink.
The most common method of purifying large quantities of water is a filtration system. Filtration involves passing the water through a filter media in order to remove particulates and other impurities.
We often take for granted that our "normal" at-home faucet supply of water is actively being filtered as part of nearly every municipal water supply.
In fact, there are often large industrial plants devoted to this process to remove contaminants, and bacteria, and even to reintroduce minerals to make our water more palatable.
There are many different types of filters available, each with its own set of benefits and drawbacks.
Activated carbon filters are often used for removing organic compounds from contaminated waters, while ceramic filters can be effective at removing bacteria and parasites.
Another popular method for disinfecting small quantities of drinking water is ultraviolet light treatment or pasteurization. In this process, UV radiation destroys microorganisms such as viruses, bacteria, and protozoa.
For larger volumes of purified drinking water, however, a more elaborate system using sand –filtration followed by chlorination might be employed.
Chlorination has been used extensively as a means of disinfecting public supplies since 1908 when Jersey City became one of the first municipalities in the United States to treat the entire supply with chlorine gas.
It is extremely important that we drink plenty of water each day.
Dehydration can lead to health problems such as heat stroke or kidney failure, but drinking unclean or unsafe water can also lead to severe problems, dysentery, and other water-borne illnesses.
So make sure you drink plenty of fluids – especially clean water – every day!
There is a high chance that if you become lost, that you did not bring a water purification device.
If that is the case, do your best to boil any water you plan to drink before you consume it. Make sure to let it cool down first.
Dangers of Drinking Dirty Water
Tainted water supplies and lack of sterilization practices are connected to the transmission of many illnesses,
Diseases and medical conditions such as cholera, loose bowels, diarrhea, hepatitis A, typhoid, and polio are only a few potential issues that can be transmitted through drinking water.
This has more to do with the completely missing, lacking, or improperly overseen water and sterilization administrations in those regions. This quickly opens up the community to preventable health risks.
On a worldwide scale, nearly 15% of medical patients foster contamination during a medical clinic stay, with the extent a lot more noteworthy in low-pay nations, simply because they are using water supplies that are not properly decontaminated or sterilized.
These deficient administration practices from local governmental regulatory agencies that control metropolitan, modern and rural wastewater imply the drinking water of a huge number of individuals is hazardously defiled or synthetically contaminated.
The normal presence of synthetic substances, especially in groundwater, can likewise be of importance to your health.
Chemicals including arsenic and fluoride, while different synthetics, like lead, might be found at high levels within your drinking water because of contact with areas of potential contamination.
Worldwide millions of people are medically impacted because of risky drinking water.
Poor drinking water quality has also been linked to a high number of child fatalities each year due to the unfortunate issues involved with dehydration, vomiting, and associated problems.
Loose bowels are the most commonly realized sickness connected to tainted food and water however there are different risks. In 2017, north of 220 million individuals required safeguard therapy for schistosomiasis - an intense and persistent illness brought about by parasitic worms contracted through openness to plagued water.
In many regions of the planet, bugs that live or raise in water convey and send illnesses like dengue fever.
A portion of these bugs, known as vectors, breed in clean, as opposed to grimy water, and family drinking water compartments can act as favorable places.
Proper water purification and processing of contaminated water supplies can diminish these vectors and can decrease waste pollution of water at the family level.