Did you know that when it comes to survival, you can stay for up to 4 weeks without any food but with no water, your chances drop to a bleak 3 to 5 days? Furthermore, in extremely high temperatures, you may only last a few hours! Water is essential for the functioning of your bodily organs and when you go out for camping or hikes, you may not have enough room to carry portable water for the adventure. In such a situation, you must know how you can take advantage of the wild in order to quench your thirst or else you risk significantly reducing your chances of survival. But then again, the water that you drink must be purified or else you will expose yourself to a risk of contamination, parasites and bacteria. Here are a few ways of how you can purify your drinking water in the wild:
Boiling
This is the simplest way of water purification as long as you have the necessary equipment and a campfire. You should heat up the water over high temperature until it starts having some rolling bubbles. Leave it for five more minutes as the bubbles roll the allow it to cool down and you are good to go.
Purification or Filtration Pumps
These can be found in outdoor supply stores and there, you will get a vast range of pumps with purifiers and filters which will ensure that that your undrinkable water is purified to make it drinkable. Usually, thus process involves squeezing some water through a charcoal or ceramic filter and then treating it with some chemicals to make it safe for drinking.
Also, if you look hard enough, you can get a hi-tech water bottle which has the process built into the bottle itself. With this kind of bottle, you won’t have to pump water into a different bottle.; the purifying process takes place as you suck the water into your mouth.
Tablets and Purification Drops
This is also another simple method that is used in purification of water in the wild. You just need to drop a couple of purification drops or tablets into the water. These drops and tablets contain chemicals such as potassium permanganate, chlorine or iodine which is the most popular of the three. Allow the chemicals to treat the water for a minimum of 20 minutes before it is ready for drinking. Since these tablets and drops don’t have a very inviting taste, you can use powder mixes to deal with the unwelcoming taste.
Evaporation Trap
This method is most suitable if there is no source of water nearby or you haven’t carried some portable water. You can draw out the earth’s moisture by digging a hole in the earth and then insert a container at the bottom. After that, seal the hole with plastic to prevent the escape of moisture then place a small rock in the middle of the cover to make the center dip. As the water starts to evaporate from the ground up, it will condense on the plastic cover then drip into the container.