Survival Sunday

As many of you already know, I am the libertarian wing of the TSLR, while TOR is the survivalist wing. That said, I am working on increasing my knowledge of survivalism. One thing which we don't have much of on this blog is actual "how to" posts. Therefore, I am starting a new weekly post- Survival Sunday, which I am going to either link, or write my own, "how to" posts. This should help me acquire some of this knowledge, and link you guys to stuff you know, or give you new information. Some of it will be really simple, but hopefully it should get more complex. So without further adieu,

Water Purification

Water purification is of utmost importance. There is what I call the 4-4-40 rule- You can live 4 minutes without air, 4 days without water, and 40 days without food. Air purification is a little more complex than what I am doing today, so water purification becomes important.

Building a water purifier isn't all that tough.

Materials Required

Water Container
Activated Charcoal
Coarse Sand & Fine Sand (separately)
Coarse Gravel & Fine Gravel (separately)
Cotton or Pebbles
Knife/Scissors

Method

1) The first step would be to put the water container upside down. Cut the bottom (now top) of the bottle. This is where water would pour in, once the water filter is done.
2) Now, block the mouth (now base) of the container with cotton. Cotton would prevent filtering materials from entering the bottle. In case you do not have cotton, use a couple of inches of pebbles for this purpose.
3) Put an inch of fine sand over the layer of cotton. Now, place a layer of activated charcoal on the top of the sand.
4) Once this is done, fill in layers of coarse sand, fine gravel and coarse gravel, in that order, from bottom to top
5) Now, pour water into the top end of the filter and collect the filtered water at the bottom, into another container.

Another way

Material Required

Plastic Bottle
1/2 cup Dirt
2 cups Sand
2 cups Gravel
Glass of Water
Knife/Scissors

Method

1) The first step would be to cut the base of the bottle using a sharp knife or a pair of scissors.
2) Place the bottle in an inverted position, so that the cut base is on the top and the mouth lies below.
3) Pour gravel in the container, so as to stuff the base. Make sure you put larger gravel in first, because it will plug up the hole easily.
4) Now, pour the sand over the gravel. This would help seal the base, as it would occupy space in between the gravel.
5) Though this might be very yucky, you need to mix dirt with water. Now, pour the dirty water on top of the sand in the bottle.
6) Carefully remove the cap from the bottle and place the bottle into a tall glass or some container that holds your filter upright.

No, I didn't come up with these on my own, I got them from here

A few more links worth checking out are, Distillation of Water, and Filtering Radioactivity