Sand = free
Charcoal = free
Boiling = free

Well, I lie... It cost's your time and effort to put together. If you can do it yourself, then don't waste your money on something that will need to be bought again. Water purifiers last only so long before the filter is useless, if sitX hits you could have all the money in the world to buy a new one and you won't be able to. Rely on yourself and what nature provides and you can do anything you want.

I have a Berkey at home. I like it because I can clean the filters and I can just dump a few gallons of dirty water into it and in a little time I have gallons of clean water.

For travel/camping/bugging out I have an MSR MiniWorks. The plus is that it is field serviceable meaning I can scrape the crap off the filter and just keep using it over and over. It will keep working if all the hoses and connections get damaged. I think some branches of the military use them because of their field serviceable design. The negatives are that pumping can be a royal pain though it will grab you water from all sorts of awful nasty puddles and pools. I used it on Mt. Washington to get some water from a collected clump of slime. Something else to keep in mind is that the filter is ceramic so a sudden shock could crack or smash the filter. Replacements are like $60. I'm not gentile with it and havent broken one yet.

There's always filling a sock with sand, clay and pebbles and doing it that way. Or just filling a clear bottle with water and leaving to bake on a rock in the Sunlight for 12 hours. Or boiling it for 5 minutes.

Depends on how much water you need, what you have on hand and how fast you need it.

Get a filter for convenience but learn to filter for the long haul cause you never know.

It's like carrying a lighter is all good until it busts so you better learn at least one way to start a fire by hand.

For your BOB I would recommend having a bottle of Iodine tablets for quick on the spot filtration. They are lightweight and travel well. These tablets are a short term solution and should be used only until you can set up a better solution.

As other have said, a Katadyn filter is great to have. We keep a katadyn pump in our families survival kit. It can produce a good amount of filtered water with one filter. katadyn also makes bottle filters that you can use as well. Fill the bottle and it will purify it.

The best long term solution in my opinion is to use an activated charcoal filter, and then boil the water. Boiling water will kill most (if not all) microorganisms in the water. The big ones to avoid are Giardia and Cryptosporidium. Boiling water will kill these, and the charcoal filtering will remove chemicals and heavy metals.

In higher elevations, you may make the use of a pressure cooker to boil the water, as the boiling point is lower and it takes longer.

Chlorine purification is another method, but again I would only use it short term until you have a properly setup activated charcoal and boiling system.


-xmad

Wouldn't it be best to distill your water? I mean, what good is filtered radioactive water? I'm pretty certain that distilling water removes everything, including microscopic radioactive particles..

Originally posted by Anjaba
Wouldn't it be best to distill your water? I mean, what good is filtered radioactive water? I'm pretty certain that distilling water removes everything, including microscopic radioactive particles..

The water itself does not become radioactive, but the tiny particles
in it do.

Distilling is good, but there is a gotcha over time.

The container will become more and more "hot" over time,
and the residue in the bottom will be as well.

Something to consider, and the fact that the dust particles you
may be breathing in are radioactive too.

Post nuclear war is a VERY ugly and dangerous world.

Half life on some of the common elements will be 27 years,
like Strontium-90.

Some of the more exotic will be much longer.

Detectors and breathing thru cloth, etc etc will be needed.

It can enter the food chain too, so you will want to grow your
veggies in containers, and keep contaminants out.

Iodine-131 can end up in cow's milk, etc etc.

Its a pretty ugly scenario and will require tedious amounts of caution.

Originally posted by defcon5
Katadyn is hands down the best water filter ever made.
Just a pocket filter will last you 13K gallons of water. That is a gallon a day for the next 35 years, on one filter if its properly maintained. Two filters will last you pretty much your entire lifetime. They are rugged, and will stand years of abuse, but they are pricey. You certainly don't want to skimp on a water filter and end up with a piece of junk that breaks after 5 uses. They are used by professional military, aid, and rescue workers around the world. Make sure you get the one with the ceramic, silver infused, filter though.

[edit on 3/17/2009 by defcon5]

I checked this out, looks like a good deal. Like you said, not exactly cheap, but you get what you pay for! Thanks for the suggestion!