Water, Water, Water

There's the rule of four - you can go four minutes without oxygen, four days without water, and four weeks without food. In my way of thinking, if there's an emergency that requires I supply my oxygen... well chances are I ain't gonna survive that anyway. Perhaps someday I'll be able to make preparations for that, but financially and space-wise that's a ways off. Food is a pretty large concern, so I'll address that in another blog. For now it's all about water!

The adult human needs about 1 liter of water daily to survive. To be comfortable you need a bit more water than that, figure about 3 liters. A young child of about 40 lbs needs about 1 liter. A cat should have about a 0.25 liters available. In my house there are 2 adults, 1 toddler, and 4 cats. Daily water consumption stands at about 8 liters a day. This factors in exercise, physical work, and/or illness. Hopefully this is entirely over-planning.

We have 5-gallon jugs of water delivered to our house. We have anywhere from 1 to 4 of this jugs at any given time. We have an old house that has a lead pipe for the water feed from the city. To minimize exposure to the lead in the water we mainly use bottled water. The fact that we have this water on hand is fine then because we use it regardless if there's an emergency going on so it stays fresh as we cycle the jugs out. Hypothetically something happens where the water supply is tainted - we have anywhere from 2+ to 9+ days of drinkable water. This should hold us out comfortably until the water supply can be cleaned or relief supplies arrive. If it's a situation where there isn't a likely water source coming, we can ration the water supply (2.5 liters/daily for humans and 0.5 liters/daily for cats). Rationing would give us anywhere from 6+ to 25 days worth of water. Figure in all the soda, juice, canned goods, and so on that you have around the house and you can last for a good long time.

Another thing to consider is that normally we get about 20% of our daily water through the food we eat. This will stretch your water supply by, you guessed it, 20%!

Even considering all of the above, we're increasing our water supply by ordering an extra jug of water. I will rotate this jug out with our normal cycle every few months so it too will stay nice and fresh.

For longer term concerns, you have to think about purifying water or finding alternative sources. I was going to talk about these here, but really there is so much to think and talk about regarding this that I won't be able to cover it all now.

Thanks for reading!