Cleaning Wilderness Water by @cahlen on 3Speak
Cleaning wilderness water in order to remove the various organisms which can make you sick is the second most important thing you need to know when living outdoors. --- ▶ Watch on 3speak.tv
Tags: #survival #health #water #nature #outdoors #travel #camping #backpacking #life
Hey everyone, Callan here, and in this video, I'm going to talk about the second most important thing you need to know if you're spending a lot of time living outdoors, okay? So the first would be how to stay warm and dry, which is what I talked about in my last video, and the second one would be how to clean water, okay? Because you can only last a few days, allegedly, without water, although I know lots of people who've gone much longer than what they say you can go without water. and they were still fine, okay? So it's not necessarily true that you can only last two to three days, but still, this is one of the things that will end you sooner than, for example, starvation, okay? So water, extremely important, but if you're out in the wilderness, water is often contaminated with all kinds of different microbes and little organisms which can mess you up, and depending on your situation, they can mess you up in such a serious way that you're you might not survive, right? Okay, so it's important to clean your water, and I'm going to talk about the ways that I have cleaned my water, and then I'm also going to talk about the ways that, you know, you probably should use to clean your water because the way that I do it, I've never gotten sick using this method, but, you know, maybe I will at some point, and I would say it's probably best to be cautious, okay? Okay, so I clean water with chlorine dioxide. These are the two solutions you need. Basically, one is sodium chloride in water, and then the other is an acid, and this is citric acid in water, okay? You add these together, and they're going to turn into chlorine dioxide, and then you add that to the water, okay? So I believe it's like the CDC or some government agency who says that this is basically the best way to kill things like georgia, which is one of the worst things that you can get. and the water that I'm drinking out of here is basically a little stream, which has been dammed up by beavers, so it's a little bit of a pond here, and that's basically the place where you're going to get GRJ if you're going to get it, okay? So I use chlorine dioxide, but I'm also going to show you the other methods, which I basically never use, but I probably should be, honestly, okay? So I got this 3-liter water bag. Canock, like I said, I've never used it. I don't even remember why I bought it, I've had it for a long time, but I think it got good reviews or something like that. And then I'm going to use this water filter, and this one's a platypus, there's another brand, I'm forgetting the name of it, and that one's just as good, okay? One thing that you have to keep in mind with here is once you start using these and there's water in them, if it gets below freezing, then it might actually burst the little tubules that are in here and it will no longer filter your water effectively, okay? So if it is getting that cold at night, make sure that you keep this in your sleeping bag with you. Okay, the other thing I want to talk about before I go fill up with water is the containers that you could use, okay? So I use a couple different containers. This is a... Nalgene, the standard one liter Nalgene, but this is the model which is high density polyethylene, okay? So that's pretty much the only plastic that, you know, I personally feel comfortable with drinking out of. It's basically mostly safe when it comes to contaminates from plastic. I'm not saying there aren't any, but it's the least of the plastics that are available. Okay, and this works just fine with chlorine dioxide. Then titanium also works good with chlorine dioxide, and this is my other water bottle, and basically chlorine dioxide will degrade metal, so if you're using stainless steel, you're going to be drinking stainless steel that the chlorine dioxide has kind of dissolved off of the walls of your bottle, so I don't recommend using stainless steel. Most of the bottles out there for camping are stainless steel. but I don't think you should use those. I'd say get something that's titanium, okay? And then the other would be something like this. I don't know what kind of plastic this is, but it's not high-density polyethylene. So, I mean, that's one of the reasons why I just don't really use it. But sometimes you need to carry a lot of water with you. Maybe you're traveling across an area that doesn't have a lot of water available, so you need extra storage in something like this. It's most backpacks are going to have something. where you basically fit this that just slides right in, and it's going to be held up right against your back where you want all that weight to be, okay? So anyways, let's go fill up our water bottles. Okay, so here's a little pool, and you actually, it looks like there's actually gold in here, so this might be a good place to pan for gold. So one thing you need to be aware of is that you don't want to stir up the muck while you're doing this, okay, so basically just set the bottle in there carefully, just on the surface. There you go, don't disturb anything on the bottom. Okay, let's see how this works. I think you slide this thing off somehow. There we go. Okay, and open it up. Just kind of lay it on the top of the water here. This isn't quite as easy as the water bottles. And I don't really have a whole lot of experience doing this, so you're watching me learn right now. And really what I could do is I could take the water bottles and just pour it in here, that'd probably be easier. but I'm just going to go with what I got here. Okay, so what I'm going to do is I'm going to unscrew the cap on the bottle of the acid, okay? This is, I'm going to use this bottle cap to mix it up, and I'm just going to unscrew the other one and put that aside. I don't like to use the one which goes to the actual sodium chloride. Okay, so for a liter of water, I generally use six, but... In a situation like this where, you know, it's almost for sure there's GERG in here, I use 9 or 12 drops, okay? So you just do, I'm going to do 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, okay? And then you do the exact same amount of the acid. So 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12. and it is activating right now as we speak, and it is turning yellow inside, and you can actually see a little bit of the chlorine dioxide gas, and you can smell it, okay? So you want to let it mix in there for about 30 seconds. I usually don't wait that long, I don't really think it's totally necessary, but again, I don't err on the side of caution, and maybe I should, and I think you probably should, okay? All right, so we got it, and all we do, and we just pour it in there. I dip the cap in there just to wash it off, and then I close it up. Okay, so the recommendation is that you let this sit for, like, I think, four to six hours or something like that. Now, this is another thing, which I don't take into account, I don't do that. I actually generally only wait about five to ten minutes, and like I said, I've never gotten sick, but, you know. You should probably wait that long. Okay, so let's do the other one. I'm just going to pour this out because we're going to filter the water right into this bottle here. Okay, so first, we've got, this thing has this little flip up. This is where the water is coming out, okay? And it's got this little screw thing, and this is what I'm going to screw on to the bottom here. Okay, so this has a little screw thing, and then I screw this on. Okay? Let's see how this works. So, oh, I'd have to take this off. So you don't see any water coming out, right? You have to squeeze it, okay? So how am I going to do this on camera? Let me turn this down a little bit. Can you see? Okay. There we go. Seems like once I got it started with a squeeze, it's just going through, okay? Okay, and just keep going until you've filled your water bottle. Now, my understanding is, like I said, I don't have a lot of experience with these things, that this by itself is really all that you need. You could drink this water right now. But I was reading recommendations online and they say to be as safe as possible, you should use the filter method, and then still use the chlorine dioxide method. Now, I think that's going over the top, but you probably should do that. So that's basically all you need to know. Of course, there are other ways. For example, you can boil your water. That's not something I ever do because I don't like... all the time that that takes, I think you have to leave it boiling for a long time. So I don't even know what the recommended length of boiling is to clean it all these things, but it is an option available to you. Another reason why I don't do that is because, you know, like especially right now in the late summer or early fall, there's burn bands. So where I am, you can't burn even in a stove designed for sticks and twigs. You're not allowed to use those either, okay? So the boiling method is not always going to be available to you. and don't think that you're going to get away with it because if you're burning, that smoke is going to be noticeable, and during a burn ban, you know, there's rangers going around all over the place, and they're looking for that smell, and as soon as they find it, they're going to, they're going to pounce on you, okay? So anyways, I'll just finish up by telling you about... Where to get chlorine dioxide. First of all, I recommend just making it yourself. I have a video on my website I made several years ago showing you the entire process. So you just buy sodium chloride flakes and you can basically buy a lifetime supply for like less than $100 and then citric acid powder. Okay, and I think in that video I'm using hydrochloric acid, which is a liquid, so that'd be a little bit different, depending on which one you decide to use. If you use citric acid, you're going to need to look up other instructions on the ratio there. I think it's 50% to 1, 50 to 1, no, it's 1 to 2, right, basically two parts of water, one part citric acid powder by weight, okay? But I think I am using citric acid. This, I can't remember, I've had this bottle for a long time, I don't remember whether I'm using hydrochloric acid or not, but. Anyways, you can also just buy bottles like this, unlike Amazon, and they're probably going to be advertised for cleaning water, or there's like little tablets that you can buy, which you just plop in your water and they activate and turn into chlorine dioxide in the water, though I've never used those, okay? And then while I'm at, I do want to mention that chlorine dioxide is... basically the most effective way to not ever get sick, okay? So basically, I just, when I discovered chlorine dioxide almost 10 years ago, I stopped getting the yearly cold or yearly flu, because as soon as you start noticing you're getting maybe a little bit of running nose or a scratchy throat, if you drink chlorine dioxide, it goes away and you don't get sick. If you wait too long and you allow it to progress too far, then drinking chlorine dioxide is going to make it end quicker. but you're probably still going to go through a day or two of basically the intense symptoms of your illness, okay? So the key thing is that you hit it as soon as you see the symptoms. And also, chlorine dioxide can help you with all kinds of different things, including people report it helping them with cancer, helping them with diabetes. It's basically a miracle cure, and it's one of these things that, you know, you discover something amazing. which you think everyone would want to know about, but then you tell people about it, and they just think you're crazy, right? But anyways, I know a lot of you out there who watch my videos are aware that chlorine dioxide is basically a miracle. Okay, for example, yesterday, because I ate something that was sugary, I was starting to get a little bit of a, the start of an infection underneath a tooth. which I could feel draining down in the lymph down here, and I could tell it was going to become a problem, so I just made a strong batch of the chlorine dioxide water, and I switched it around in my mouth, and then I drank it, and I did that three or four times, and within less than an hour, it had basically all gone away, okay? So I definitely recommend looking into this stuff. If you want to see a list of things that people have had success with, there's a website called MMS. testimonials, I think.co, I'll put it down here, just so when I double check that that's the actual red address. It's an old site, and I don't know if people still update it, and, you know, not many people know about it, so there's not that many testimonials there, but there's enough that it will give you a sense of what this definitely works for, so I recommend looking into it. It'll change your life, and I don't know anyone who has actually used it correctly. who hasn't, you know, basically come to that same conclusion. There's a lot of people who will use it incorrectly. For example, well, first of all, one thing you should know, if you drink too strong of a dose, it'll give you an upset stomach. Now, that's not going to hurt you, it's just going to make you uncomfortable, and you never need that much, okay? That's way beyond what you need. So if you're getting an upset stomach, you're probably half the amount that you're doing, okay? But I wanted to give an example of a situation where people use it incorrectly, and then they just decide that it doesn't work at all. So one time I had a friend whose wife was getting sick, and I said, okay, you use chlorine dioxide, and I said, okay, but when she takes this amount, if she gets a sick stomach, the next time you give it to her, give her half as much, okay? So what he did is she did get a little bit of upset stomach. And so the next time he gave it to her, he gave her twice as much, right? And now, you know, and that wasn't a good experience for her, and now, neither one of them use it, right? And to me, that's just, it's just a tragedy, you know? But that type of thing happens all the time. So, anyways, so that's how I clean water, and, well, I talked about how I clean water, which is, like I said, not really, you should be more careful than I am. But like I said, I haven't gotten sick yet. But Georgia takes a couple of weeks sometimes to come on. So maybe in a couple of weeks here, I'll be eating crow, and I'll be like, hey, like I said, you should be more careful than I am. But if that happens, I'll let you know. So anyways, I hope that's useful to you, and I'll see you guys next time.