Ragnar Benson - Ragnar's Urban Survival - A Hard-Times Guide to Staying Alive in the City

Little cans or bottles of water are not practical for city survivors. The large quantity of trash they create may expose the survivors' retreat.

STORING WATER

The need for potable water is of such a high order that an initial emergency storage supply must be provided. Waterbed bladders, cheap fiberglass tanks, blue barrels, or whatever else work nicely, just so long as you don't use those ridiculous small packets and cans that some survival houses sell. The huge amount of trash generated by these little packets alone may expose the retreat. I personally use a 250-gallon fiberglass tank purchased for $150 (peanuts, given water's importance).

This storage will get you past the onset of an emergency, but it's absolutely not meant as a continuing means of survival. How much water will you need Figure about 1 gallon a day per person if no one washes anything except teeth and a single cup or plate. As a simple matter of hygienics, this is practical only in the very short run.

In other words, when the sound of gunfire can be heard in the distance, fill all the fiberglass tanks, blue plastic barrels, waterbed bladders, 5-gallon jugs, and whatever else. Uncovered water, as in bathtubs, usually doesn't work. There's too much pollution accompanied by evaporation. I don't even own a bathtub, but if I did, I wouldn't want it full of slimy; green water!

Shallow-well water must be chlorinated, but does not generally have to be filtered. As always, common sense in your individual situation is advised.

SALTWATER

Saltwater will be available to many city survivors. Lehman's has small, reverse-osmosis water purifiers and filters. Model TEC 25D for about $325 looks like it might work. Under normal conditions it is rated at 18 gallons pe - day. I called Lehman's to find out whether this unit would function as an emergency small-scale desalination plant. One person said "probably," another "might," and the third, most knowledgeable, guy said, "Probably not, because ocean water carries salt concentrations that are too high." I personally would like to field-test this outfit. Let's say it cleaned half its rated capacity, or 9 gallons per day, and that the membrane lasted 1 year rather than 3 (replacements cost about $100). These would be good units for some city survivors. The only restriction is that a water pressure of 40 pounds per square inch is required to operate. This pressure could be achieved by generator-run electric pumps or by a 2-story column of water in a standpipe. I live 500 miles from the nearest saltwater, so field-testing a model TEC 250 probably won't happen.

Inexpensive and small desalinization plants such as this one in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, provide potable water. Reduction in unit size is occuring, but most are still too large and expensive to be of practical use for individual survivors.

Common reverseosmosis desalinization units require very little power. Smaller and smaller sizes are increasingly on the market. I looked at one in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, that cost U.S. $175,000 installed! It produced 80 gallons of pure, fresh water per minute. Practical for some cheap, deserted islands, but certainly not for most city survivors.

One fellow survived several weeks under really desperate conditions in Mombasa, Kenya. He had made a tiny distillery unit that produced about a gallon per day, but his method doesn't sound particularly practical because of the vast amount of energy required. He soldered a long coil of 3/8-inch flexible copper pipe to the lid vent of a 16-quart pressure cooker pot. During the cool of the evening he slowly boiled away salt water, allowing water vapors to condense in the tube. Mere cupfuls of water were all he got. Had he not been able to supplement this with rainwater, he probably would have been toast.

BUYING WATER

In aggressively capitalistic Beirut, water sellers quickly took to the streets after the city collapsed. Theirs was a profit motive that ended up saving lives. They trucked in relatively safe, pure drinking water they loaded at outlying springs and wells and sold it by the liter. While you can't depend on entrepreneurs appearing, unless you are in a previously hard-core socialistic area with few remaining entrepreneurs, it is reasonable that such suppliers will quickly evolve.

But you can't always count on the marketplace. I know about the tremendous importance of this firsthand. It involved my being sent to Algiers on business. Really the end of the earth. There were many, many things to do, all heavily hindered by the fact that I had to spend large blocks of time each morning in search of drinking water. The climate was hot and loathsome, requiring lots of water. Much against my will, the experience became deeply educational.

Downtown Algiers, where the author wandered from shop to shop each day searching for bottled water.

After 3 days I had a regular route moving from shop to shop, inquiring about the day's supply. No Wal-Marts in Algiers or anywhere in Algeria. For unfathomable reasons, the owner of one obscure little shop or stall might have a liter bottle to sell, when previously he just shook his head. Price was about $1.80 but I certainly didn't quibble. Usually only a single bottle was available; when it was a half-liter, I continued the march. For about 10 days I lived on 2 liters of purchased bottled water per day. Most days it took 3 hours to line up a supply.

In many places throughout the world, private suppliers with transport trucks step in to provide safe drinking water when other supplies fail.

I'm sorry to report that finally, good old intrepid Ragnar was done in by the Algerian system. No busi ness could be done; everything was too inefficient. I booked the next flight out. Back in Paris I sat in a tub for 3 hours!

City survivors often talk about stealing needed supplies. Of lining up with the enemy to receive water from the supply truck, of breaking into factories, or hospitals, and so forth, to appropriate supplies. These targets of opportunity may work on a temporary basis, but along with windmills, eating seaweed, apples, or whatever else are not considered here. The Rule of Threes requires that we plan for what at the time appears to be a certain source.

Chapter 5

Sources of Energy

Mannan Sheikh was 12 years old when Britain dissolved its Indian Empire on Friday, August 15, 1947. Independence granted to the subcontinent led to immediate, serious-often vicious and irrational-violence. Mannan, a Muslim, vividly remembers the terror, bloodshed, pain, and great destruction as Hindus and Muslims sorted themselves out into two separate countries. Mannan and his family walked from their previous homes in New Delhi, India, to their new place in Karachi, Pakistan.

I asked what they did for fuel along their exit route.