To Insure Domestic Tranquility

[Luke]

I admit it, I hate shopping. My idea is make a list, gather items as fast as possible and get the hell out. Unfortunatley. Ms. Luke takes a different approach. I can site several other instances where I take a backseat to Ms. Lukes wishes. I suppose on some levels I am what many may called whipped?
My question is am I alone? It is bad enough being the only one of my species on this planet, but I am begining to think I may be alone in this galaxy. Crap.

[American Patriot]

You are not alone.

I detest going to the grocery store. Absolutely DETEST it. I hate people anyway. People in public are assholes. They run their carts into your ankles and you can't kill them.

They block the aisles with their carts and you can't kill them. They STOP for no APPARENT reason, not collecting anything when you're in a hurry, and damn it you can't KILL them.

They even deliberately will grab something you're reaching for saying "pardon me" and you know they aren't sincere... and you can't kill them.

By the way, you're not "whipped", you're "careful". When the wife cuts you off, she cuts you off. To prevent getting cut off you deal with her wishes. That ain't whipped, that's being married and knowing you better not go elsewhere when cut off or you'll get something cut off....

/grin

[Luke]

Lol, very true

[American Patriot]

BTW when I go "shopping" i have something in mind, I know where I am going, I go there, go straight in, go to the place where "something" is, pick it up, walk to the counter, pay and leave.

I don't look around, I don't "shop". I don't compare crap I know I don't want because I already know what I want.

Women love to look, wish, hold things, touch things, smell things, try things on (leaving us standing in the Bra aisles, which sometimes isn't too bad...) and they want you to compliment them on what they tried on, not once, but eight or twenty times. Women like to talk to other women (whom they don't even know) about everything from the lacy underthings (to embarrass us) to how difficult child bearing is and how much blood there was.

When I find myself caught in this position, I find the other poor schmuck stuck there with me and we talk about how killing, skinning a deer, and how much blood there was, or the best shot we ever took splattering brain matter through the forest floor. Usually that gets us dragged out of the mall

[Ryan Ruck]

You are not alone Luke!

When I go shopping I've got my list, I grab the items I need, and I'm out.

That's one thing I hate about going to Sam's Club. They're constantly rearranging the damn stores so it takes more effort to find something. Most other places I can go in, get what I need, and be out in 15 minutes. Sam's I usually (but not always) have to double that.

One thing that will hold me up is price comparison if a new product pops up to compete with something I'm already buying. The other exception is if I start shopping at a new store and am trying to get a handle on their offerings. I just started picking up some stuff from GFS and it has taken me a bit of time to see what all they have. So far I like that they offer a lot of stuff good for prepping (just-add-water mashed potatoes, beans, just-add-water biscuit mix, etc.)!

[American Patriot]

Ryan, is that the store that has dehydrated water?

/snicker

[Ryan Ruck]

LOL, they just might...

[American Patriot]

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Ok... you win.

ROTFLMAO!

[Malsua]

Ok, so this is a REAL question...I realize that dehydrated water is a contradiction. It's like Vacuum packed air. Are there basic survival powders or whatnot that you can add to water that aren't protein/food/flavored that fortify the water and at the same time treat it?

Like a vitamin supplement that also kills any bacteria, parasites, amoebas, etc.?

[American Patriot]

I'm not, OFFHAND, aware of such a thing Mal. I assume though you mean something like say Tang with chlorine in it?

Most purification additives that I've tried, experimented with or tested in the wild/military were either a chlorine or iodine based additive.

I know there are vitamin type powders (never tried or used them) and honestly if you've got water, a simple daily vitamin is probably the best thing to take in a survival situation.

My wife and I have actually discussed this extensively for a boat "go bag" (also known as a ditch bag). It will be packed with vitamins, basic first aid, and some water, a water maker (a device that converts salt water into fresh using arm power to pump the unit through micro filtration devices - a reverse osmosis system) as well as high energy food to keep us alive while we figure out where we are, etc.

But a powdered "vitamin/purification" powder isn't something I've personally seen (or thought of for that matter).

[American Patriot]

(just doing some quick searches and found the following... not sure about them though, never heard of them)

http://www.alibaba.com/showroom/wate...on-powder.html

My thinking is that obtaining water is a first priority and actually making it drinkable a second. That is, first you have to have a source of water and then depending on the source's quality, you might have to filter it (to remove heavy materials including radioactive contamination, which can generally be removed by filtration if not dissolved!) and then simply boiling it will sterilize it.

If you're pulling your water from a river/stream source then at most usually boiling is what you would do.

If you can't boil, iodine and simple household bleach kills the living crap that eat you alive.

Getting it to TASTE good... well, that's where the vitamin/tang/whatever comes into play I think.

For me... plain, pure water is the most important thing and the protein, vitamins and nutrients come from food sources.

[American Patriot]

Oh, and if I'm in the woods (or even in some cities) I carry a Katadyne filtration system. It contains micro-filters which according to the literature will "remove 99.9% of all bacteria"

I have something like this:

http://www.katadyn.com/usen/katadyn-.../katadyn-mini/

(Mine is older, different but works the same)

[American Patriot]

Sorry, THIS is my unit, except it is white instead of charcoal grey

http://www.katadyn.com/usen/katadyn-...r-microfilter/

I can produce a gallon of fresh water in about 15 minutes (not counting hiking to the stream). I never use a lake, I only use running stream water. This will remove anything that will give me the shitz or make me ill.

It won't I don't believe remove viruses. For the most part you will never get infected with a VIRUS from water (almost never). With the exception of Hepatitus A, I don't know of any viruses that can be found in streams.

You can get things like Giardia (a protozoan), Coliform bacillus (a bacterium), Cryptosporidum (another protzoan) and Helmiths (a worm) in water (and sometimes in infected marshes, swamps, walking on wet/damp ground in bare feet or drinking it directly out of the water.

A simple pump filter for fresh water systems will remove all this stuff.

If you're near salt water, you must either distill it or you have to convert it like I mentioned before using reverse osmosis filtration.

(I'm sure Mal you know all this, but since you asked, I can't pass up the chance to educate others! HAHA)

[Ryan Ruck]

As Rick mentioned, I know there are iodine tablets but that won't get rid of solid matter in the water.

You can also use powdered pool shock (its shelf life is much longer than liquid bleach) though I'm not sure on quantities.

Those will all purify water. Not sure what you can add to water for nutrition. I just stock multivitamins.

[American Patriot]

Yeah, if you use the pool stuff... MAKE SURE it is a chlorine type thing and has NOTHING else in it.

I have some of that stuff that comes in tablet forms (and also powdered form) and it contains a copper sulfate or some other copper compound.

That shit will kill you if you drink it!

The stuff I use in my hot tub is chemically nothing more than a chlorine compound (like 10% active ingredients, the other 90% are considered "inert", non-reactive, non-poisonous minerals or compounds).

Basically that means as long as no one pees in the damned tub (I don't let the grand kids sit in there any more LOL!) you can still USE the tub when the filtration is running keeping the solids out (dead skin cells, bugs, leaves, whatever) out of the water and the chlorine makes the water potable. Just like you could drink pool water if treated properly.

I would limit the use of "hot tub water" to washing things most likely (as I have about 300 gallons stored in other manners right now) unless desperate for H2O.

Then I'd probably re-filter it, boil it and re-chlorinate it prior to internal use.

[American Patriot]

Solid matter is easy to remove from water. Most of the time it will simply be sand or clay in the water, but you can filter that out with old tee shirts (in 2-4 layers, doing it twice works best) to get out the sediment.

Then boil the water (and you can do it in a reverse order, but I would filter first as boiling the water might cause minerals in sediments to actually dissolve into the water making it less than healthy for you!) for about 20 minutes.

Finally put the water into a clean container you can seal (with a lid) and SHAKE IT UP after it cools. This will re-introduce air into the water (dissolves O2) into the water to make it taste better. Both distilled and boiled water tastes "flat" because there is no oxygen in it and it takes days to get O2 back into the water if left on its own.

If you do this, you don't need to add any chemicals.

If there are heavy metals dissolved in the water, you can't do anything about it, except to distill the water, catching the steam as clean, fresh water minus ANY minerals, metals or other unwanted dissolved materials.

(When I say "heavy metals" I'm referring to things like mercury, copper, iron and radioactive materials that might have fallen into the water and contaminated it).

[Ryan Ruck]

Yep, fabric filtration is surprisingly effective. I could have sworn I saw somewhere that it will remove something like 96% of contaminates.

[American Patriot]

By the way... something I just remembered. The dry chlorine for pools is "Calcium Hypochlorite".

According to stuff I've read, roughly 1 lb of powder will treat something around 10,000 gallons of water. That's assuming the water is just water, and isn't full of stuff that shouldn't be there in the first place (crap, dirt, radiation, etc). Water can't be "radioactive" but it can carry dirt that IS. Or it can carry tiny particles of radioactive metals!

I stole this off some site somewhere.... It's in my "survival notes" so here's a copy/paste:

How to Disinfect Water Using Calcium Hypochlorite

Using granular calcium hypochlorite to disinfect water is a two step process.

To make a stock of chlorine solution (do not drink this!) dissolve 1 heaping teaspoon (about one-quarter of an ounce) of high-test (78%) granular calcium hypochlorite for each two gallons (eight liters) of water.

To disinfect water add one part of the chlorine solution to 100 parts water to be treated.

Let the mixture sit for at least one-half hour before drinking.

If the water is dirty, filter it first, buckets at a time. I keep several five gallon buckets for this (and brewing beer and so on).

[American Patriot]

Depends on the material used, Ryan.

But yes. Coffee filters work on small quantities of water. But for LARGE quantities, I would suggest (5 gallon buckets) and a wire mesh.

Some kind of screen formed into a funnel like device. Then use several layers of cotton cloth in the mesh (the mesh is acting as a porous holding device for the cloth) and pour the water through the funnel you made. I've actually done this before. It DOES work well.

I've filtered rain water collected in barrels and buckets like this. I usually treat it (if it's more than a couple gallons) instead of boiling.

Personally, I would always boil or treat even rainwater from a roof catchment because birds SHIT everywhere where I live. Roof, antennas, trees, my deck, my head if I don't scare them off. Fuckers.

[American Patriot]

(I think we officially jacked Luke's thread! LOL)