Purifying Water Long Ago..How?

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greg2935

Nomad
Oct 27, 2004
257
1
55
Exeter
Absolutely, when my father first went to Zimbabwe (Southern Rhodesia in those days) the infant mortality due to cholera and other water bourne desease was very high. I seem to remember a figure of one child in three making it to adulthood due to mortality from these deseases only. Adults did not tend to get the same deseases as the vast majority of the liquid they drank was in the form of weak beer. I would think most hunter-gatherer and/or primitive peoples around the world do something similar.
 

isotonicpies

Tenderfoot
Jul 28, 2005
65
0
52
Hello,

This is my understanding of a home or bush water-purification system.

Get two buckets, one with a hole in the bottom.

1/3 Fill the 'holed' bucket first with stones, then fill with 1/3 gravel, then top it with 1/3 sand. Hole your bucket filter over your other bucket and pour the water slowly. until the botttom bucket is filled.

Repeat until water is as clear as possible.

Then either;

Boil water for ten minutes.
or
Add Iodine tabs (wait for half an hour for the residue to settle)
or
Add 1 drop of bleach per litre

leaving you with drinkable water.

If you suspect water is contaminated with radioactive particles then you can even make a bastic distillery out of a sausepan, a sausepan lid, a cup and some metal wire.

1/2 Fill the sausepan with water
Suspend the lid upside down above
attach the cup to the bottom of the upside down lid
boil the water

the water vapour will condense on the lid and drip into the cup

in other words.. you cannot take the radioactive particles out of the water, so you take the water out of the radioactive particles!

I hope all that makes sense.

Any corrections to my methods are most welcome!
 

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