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What your family members who scoff don't understand is that circumstances this time are unique - the nation's credit card has been maxed out.

I've been running a preparedness group in Central Florida for the past 18 months, so I study and prepare on a daily basis. Let me recommend a low cost and very critical purchase to everyone, calcium hypochlorite. A small bag of this can purify your family's water for YEARS.

Many municipalities use calcium hypochlorite to purify city water supplies. Commercially it is most often sold as 'pool shock', however you must select a product carefully to make sure it truly is calcium hypochlorite, and that it doesn't have harmful additives (e.g. algaecides, etc).

One of our group members located a good, low-cost source. The price was so good that I ordered ten bags just yesterday. Here's the source:

http://www.poolgeek.com/GLB-Super-Charge-P2273.aspx

Other things to know:

It takes 40lbs of wood to boil 5 gallons of water - this is the reason you don't want to count on boiling water for purification.
Don't count on a bottle of bleach, because it has a more limited shelf life than most people realize.
Using calcium hypochlorite is a two-step process. In the first step you make a batch of bleach, in the second step you use the bleach to purify water (and do other things, such as sanitization, etc).

Calcium hypochlorite is one of the essentials for the serious prepper. If you obtain it be sure to look up instructions for using it to purify water on the Internet and have them printed somewhere for future reference.

Thanks for the suggestions. yep - print it out now because the internet may not be there when you need it. Sadly - Americans voed for destruction in 2008 and they drool over TV and TV keeps him in power.

I feel sorry for seniors and baby boomers the most. The young will have a chance to start over after TEOTWAWKI. Sadly - I feel America will be more like Mad Max/Zimbabwe than Argentina or the collapsed USSR. It will be worse.

It takes 40lbs of wood to boil 5 gallons of water - this is the reason you don't want to count on boiling water for purification.

I agree with you calcium hypochlorite recommendations based on my experience with bleach and a well injection system in our home.

I think you may need to recalculate your estimates for the water boil. With a Rocket Stove and an average Chord of wood (seasoned) one would have a minimum of a 2152 degree rise in temperature of 40lbs of water with 40lbs of wood.