Water is the absolute hardest thing to prepare IMO. I can’t come up with good ideas for water storage for long periods of time. A week maybe...forgetting about anything but basic washing, of course.
Plan your survival near a stream or fresh-water lake.
Storage is tough for several reasons. Space & water just doesn’t store will for extended periods.
Look at this:
http://www.drinkwell.com.au/
I am going to contact the mfg, see what shipping cost is like to the states.
This will purify a LOT of water and is designed to draw so little power you could run it with a small solar powered generator.
The electronic treatment of water can be used to both capture the pollutants and disinfect water. It also liberates gas bubbles and under the right circumstances, these can float the captured pollutants to the surface, leaving the water crystal clear. Dr Vivian Robinson and his team at DrinkWell have developed a way of combining all these properties into a small, light weight, portable system that can fulfill all the goals of treating water at any turbidity, removing a wide array of chemical pollutants and disinfecting the water. All of this is available at the press of a button.
A complete system consists of a container, a plate set, the electronics controller and a power supply. It uses so little electricity that a 200 gram rechargeable battery pack could clean some 40 liters of quite muddy water (200 NTU) before the batteries would need recharging.
The result is a portable lightweight system that can clean contaminated water to a better quality than would be obtained by conventional large scale treatment plants if they treated the same water.
DrinkWell is not affected by the initial startin turbidity, it can be in excess of 2,000 NTU, and will get it to below 1 NTU if required. And even our smallest unit will do this for many thousands of liters.
Water is the easiest thing to prepare.
Focus on surface and ground water,...just like our present water supplies.
Store them in above ground storage tanks or simply save 5-10 gals in jugs with a drop of bleach, then replenish them once a year.
Bottled water at the store lingers for months without any treatment, by less standards than tapwater.
If you have a pool, invest in a lightweight pool cover, and a heavy-duty water purification kit.
If you don't have a pool, make a deal with the neighbor who does, like perhaps providing the cover and his own purification kit.
Evaporation is the highest source of water loss for pools, particularly in hot climates.
“Water is the absolute hardest thing to prepare IMO. I can’t come up with good ideas for water storage for long periods of time. A week maybe...forgetting about anything but basic washing, of course.”
I have a 25,000 gallon storage facility for water - it is called a swimming pool. We do not use chlorine; we keep it purified with hydrogen peroxide. Nice to swim in, and a few drops of hydrogen peroxide or SSKI (potassium iodide) will render it safe for drinking.