Survival: Water | Colorado Parks and Wildlife

The Art of Survival
Shelter Fire Signal Water Food Minimum Equipment Procedures Hypothermia Summary & Suggested Reading

Many years ago finding safe drinking water was one of the easiest of survival techniques. Water was readily available from lakes, ponds, streams, springs or snow banks. Today all these sources must be considered suspect, and the collecting of drinking water much more of a problem. Keeping oneself hydrated can be quite a problem at any time of year. In a survival situation (except in a desert) a person needs about three quarts of water a day to metabolize our own body’s energy reserves and to carry away the waste. Your body will not demand this much water, so you must measure your daily intake so that you get a minimum of three quarts a day. Another thing to remember; warm up water when in a cold environment. Drinking three quarts of ice cold water could lower your body’s core temperature and put you in hypothermia.

Water can be gathered in lots of ways and places, it can even be squeezed out of damp moss. The beneficial effects of water can be cancelled out if that water contains one or more disease causing organisms. Giardia lamblia is a surface-water born intestinal parasite. It produces a disease called Giardiases and is now found throughout the U.S. Man carried it back into the country and animals spread it around. Do not drink raw (untreated) water anywhere in the back country. For short trips take your own water supply with you. For longer trips be prepared to purify your drinking water.

The most common method of drinking water purification is by boiling. You must not start counting boiling time until you have a rolling boil, start with five minutes at sea level; add one more minute for every 1,000 feet of altitude you think you are at, then add a couple more minutes because you probably don’t know where the heck you are anyway.

Water Purification Tablets

When you follow the directions on the bottle carefully, they will take care of most water borne diseases. Check the label to determine what disease organisms it is effective against. Chlorine bleach and 2 percent tincture of iodine is also effective. Use 10 drops of either in one quart of water. All three methods of water purification require a minimum of 30 minutes contact time. Do not cut the time short. If your water is very cold or cloudy, give additional time.

Solar Still

If you are low or out of water in a semi-arid region you may wish to construct a solar still. This takes some specialized equipment so it is only for the well prepared. A solar still consists of a bowl-shaped hole in the ground about 3 feet in diameter and 18 inches deep. A one-quart, squat, plastic container is placed in the bottom of the hole. A 4- to 5-foot section of surgical tubing is secured to the bottom of the water collection container with a piece of duct tape. A sheet of clear plastic, 6 foot by 6 foot, 3 mil in thickness, covers the hole. The drinking tube extends to the outside, under the plastic. A 4-inch square of duct tape is placed the center of the plastic to support a small rock placed there in the center to cause the plastic to form a cone shape. Water condenses on the underside of the plastic sheet, runs down and drips into the container. The tubing lets you sip collected water without dismantling the still. Vegetation put into the hole during construction will increase water output. One solar still might give you one to three quarts of water per 24-hour period. This is not enough to keep you alive so you must build three or four stills. Remember, soils in many semiarid areas are baked hard by the sun. If you waste more body water digging through the ground than you are going to get out of it, you are quickly in the area of diminishing returns.