I've gone blank....water boiling with no supplies?

I'm not having a great day today, feeling rough as anything and it looks like the mind has gone that way too.

Water treatment in a survival situation. Forget about yorur EDC and BOB's, you've somehow ended up in a sitiuation where you are miles from anywhere, in a wooded area which has a stream.....but you have no kit.

Methods of cleaning the water again for treatment? Filtering, drinking caught rainwater or plant moisture. What about boiling though? Without a pot to boil it in, you're pretty much stuck aren't you?

Thanks for any reminders on this basic one, one of those days and this question is bugging me.

CX.

reply to post by CX


No kit at all whatsoever? Not even a knife? Well then you're in trouble basically. Even our most primitive ancestors realised the importance of having tools. So my first thing to do would be to make a knife. Flint napping is a very old and complex skill but you can learn to make a rudimentary knife with a few hours practice. It would be a very basic knife. After i have that i can make a fire. With the knife you can make a bowl and use that to boil water in.

If you don't want to do all that then the only real thing you can do is try and take water rom the safest spot available. Avoid still pools as they can habour bacteria and are regular places for flies to lay eggs. Not to mention animals can drink from them and introduce their own brand of bacteria and parasites. Look for clear running water, where there are few insects around.

In the end though you'll probably get unlucky and catch something at some point so try and learn the flint napping and bowl carving skill. If you can make those two objects you can make a lot more and survive. If you have no tools for cutting anything then you're really in trouble.

Edit

Oh and a word on raindwater. Lots of people think that it is pure and drinkable. However rain water often carries avian fecal matter. In villages where water is collected like this it is either boiled or filtered before use.

[edit on 4-8-2009 by ImaginaryReality1984]

reply to post by CX


if you have some plastic and vegetation you can use the sun's raise to pull the water out of the vegetation. might only be a small cup, but none the less

Thanks for the replies, yes i know it's not a lot to go on, not having anything at all with you.

I guess it's a reminder to have at least something in the way of EDC kit with you, even it's just a knife.

CX.

Originally posted by CX
Thanks for the replies, yes i know it's not a lot to go on, not having anything at all with you.

I guess it's a reminder to have at least something in the way of EDC kit with you, even it's just a knife.

CX.

If you have a knife you can make tools and fire to boil your water. However learning flint knapping, just basic stuff is a good idea. Knives can break or get lost. I mean it's rare that happens but best to be prepared and for only 4 or 5 hours of learning it seems like a good trade to learn to make a flint knife.

No supplies? Are you naked?

The biggest issue would be fire. Can you make fire?

After that, you need a container. Got that covered? You can make one from wood if you have access to a large enough piece to cut about a gallon's worth of volume out. Use a coal from your fire to burn a depression in your wood by placing it on the wood and blowing to get it to burn a hole. Just keep burning down into it and removing the charred stuff and you can dig out a bowl or a pot with some patience and little effort.


Now, to boil water in a non-metal container, just heat up some dry rocks (make sure they're not from the riverbed) and using some smaller rocks in the bottom of your pot, place the large hot rock in your pot with water. A few rocks of similar size can be rotated by keeping a group in the fire and one in the pot, switching out as needed.

Around here there'd be a good chance i could find a natural stone kettle that can be cleaned out and used to hold water. There are plenty of small natural catches that are dry except right after rains, and would make a nice pot once i scrubbed it out. I'd do the same thing, just toss heated rocks into my kettle.

Catch fish and just eat them raw - epically the eyes, loads of moisture and a free lunch.

You could also make up some kind of filter - start with larger rocks at the top and progressively smaller right down to sand - maybe use a large sheet of bark at an incline for that - pour the water in the top and draw it off at the bottom - not perfect by any means, maybe charcoal from a camp fire...

if you can make a pot out of wood, there's no need to heat rocks in order to boil water. Just put the water in your pot and put the pot on the fire. The water will prevent your wooden pot from burning away. Don't believe me? Try it with a paper cup sometime.

You said a stream right ?

Well as it's a flowing river and not a static source of water i say just drink it as it is.

Any water is better than no water right.

Take care.

Regards
Lee

I've done this a few times in th ebush to have fun (its kinda frustrating but is easier enough once u get the hang of it)

Indigenous Australians made fire with no flint for 60 000 years

Heres how
Zazz

dry leaves, shrub and fine twigs and sticks to create the friction. RUbbing viggoursly between your palm
Full explanation artice, and a video of 1 technique.

There are at least two different methods used by the Aboriginal people of Australia to start fires. This article describes them. Australian Aborigines are one of the few remaining cultural groups which are still familiar with their traditional subsistence methods.

www.primitiveways.com...

easiest way to filter water from a stream:

about 2-3 inches from source dig about 2-3 inches down in the sandy mud. Waterwill filter through the sandy mud from source and colect in the hole you dug. it will not be clean, as it will be a lil muddy. but the sand filters all bacteria and pathogens out making it safe to drink.

No kit, drinkable water.



Posted Via ATS Mobile: m.abovetopsecret.com

Part of USAF boot camp is survival 101. THats where I learned that from along with quite a few other survival skills.
Only thing they didn't teach was how to rebuild civilazation and towns, which is something I would like to learn


Posted Via ATS Mobile: m.abovetopsecret.com

Originally posted by nasdack24k
if you can make a pot out of wood, there's no need to heat rocks in order to boil water. Just put the water in your pot and put the pot on the fire. The water will prevent your wooden pot from burning away. Don't believe me? Try it with a paper cup sometime.

I'll see your paper cup and raise you a paper frying pan

reply to post by Taikonaut


Cool!
That video explained the science behind it very well.
Starred.

I was thinking of using solar powered distillation.

You need a big enough foil-like container (something that heats easily) for the unclean water, a lower height container for the clean water, plastic wrap, and a few rocks.

Over time, it could become difficult to find these things. If so, I was thinking of buying them now. Hopefully the plastic wrap is reusable.

Solar powered water distiller

Sand won't filter out bacteria. Filtering through sand and charcoal will remove some things - large particles, some toxins, but not bacteria etc.

There's been some conceptual work done with solar ovens for poor nations - its' possible to use a solar oven to heat water beyond boiling, but for that you'd need at minimum a pot with lid, plastic bag, and some sort of highly reflective stuff.. But it is an alternative to having to make a fire, and while you might not have supplies, there's a lot of garbage in the world just kind of floating out there..

If at minimum, you can find a plastic bag, you can tie the bag around a tree limb and wait - water will evaporate from the leaves etc, leaving you at least a few mouthfuls of clean water (hopefully anyway). I think that'd be preferable to drinking the water from a stream if you had no way of boiling it, though you wont' get much water from this method, just a few tablespoons probably..

For the safest water, you need some sort of filtering system, and some way to boil it. No supplies at all is a tough one, because whatever you do, you're going to have to find something as a "supply" and how you take care of your water is all based on that.. Eg, can you tear up your cellphone and use the battery + wire to create a closed loop? If you can, your closed circuit will heat up hot enough to be able to light something flammable.. (In grade school I found this out by using a regular battery and some wire and basically skipping the lightbulb in my circuit to turn it off.. Apparently I was supposed to design a switch, instead of just a loop of wire. All they told me was to make the bulb go off.. I did, but accidentally melted the plastic battery holder too)..

Obviously there's the stick and grass way to make fire.. there's using glass to create fire.. flint, etc.. But all results depend on where you are, what you have on you and around you, what you can find. A survival situation with no supplies all depends on the knowledge in your head, which is why it's especially important to know as many different ways of obtaining water as possible.. Shelter and food (the two other basic requirements of immediate survival) can be winged by most people.. water, and by extension fire, less so.

also, found this one.. I'm not entirely sure this will work, and one of the comments mentions that it doesn't.. Could possibly depend on the type of plastic, also I'm a bit dubious about heating plastic at all, since you could have chemicals leaching into the water from the bottle, but..

www.wonderhowto.com...

[edit on 5-8-2009 by Inannamute]

reply to post by CX


With regards to filtering the water I once watched a clip of Ray Mears making his own water filter.

Basically he had a 1 litre plastic drinks bottle, cut off the bottom of it and filled it with Spagnum moss, charcoal and peat I think.

Just found the episode Ray Mears Country Tracks

I found it very interesting.

reply to post by Death_Kron


I saw that episode with Ray Mears but the OP asked how to do it without any equipment, which would include a bottle

However thinking about it, if you could fashion a crude knife you could make a tube out of birch bark and seal it with pine pitch. That would give you a proper tube to put the filter ingredients into

I think in a real situation that you would be very hard pressed to be in a situation where you have NOTHING. I mean a car wreck, ship wreck, boat wreck, plane crash....whatever it may be there will be something to use. I dont think I have been anywhere lately that within an hour of searching you couldnt find an aluminium can or empty water bottle...and you can boul water in either of those....leaching toxins from plastic you may say. I'll take my chances. Odds are I would die from dehydration or some bacterial infection before the toxins hurt me.

use evaporation to clean the water.

but you need 3 things, something to hold dirty water, something to hold clean water and something to cover (plastic, peice of tarp, something)