Speaker 1: In a world where you end up standing in a
Speaker 1: two hour line to buy mediocre and not climate friendly water. Sorry,
Speaker 1: this is it could happen here. Uh, this is Sophie.
Speaker 1: I really wanted to do that for a really long time.
Speaker 1: Well now I want to watch it. Thank you that
Speaker 1: those voices you hear are James Stout and Margaret Kildroy
Speaker 1: and we're here. We're here to talk about the water
Speaker 1: crisis that seems to be getting worse and uh, these
Speaker 1: United States. Yeah, James, what's what's it? What's what's what's happening? Well,
Speaker 1: and ever things are happening, right. I think should probably
Speaker 1: emphasize at the start that water contaminants have been affecting
Speaker 1: people outside of like the kind of colonial core for
Speaker 1: a very long time long and and uh, legacy corporate media,
Speaker 1: whatever you want to call it, hasn't given it a
Speaker 1: solitary fuck about it until it affects people inside the
Speaker 1: colonial core. So what we're seeing right now is in
Speaker 1: two places. East I believe it's pronounced Palestine, right, I
Speaker 1: believe so too, Yeah, yeah, okay, East Palestine, Ohio. And
Speaker 1: in Philadelphia I believe it's pronounced phil A Delphia. Okay,
Speaker 1: they did like someone's name, like Phil. It was named
Speaker 1: for Phil a Delphia, the founder of the city Phil
Speaker 1: from Delphia. Like the oracle. I see, he predicted that
Speaker 1: one day there would be a spill from a PLC
Speaker 1: chemical plant near the Delaware River, and famously he was right.
Speaker 1: We've they built a city there anyway. Yeah, yeah, and
Speaker 1: for years they've been so angry about not having a
Speaker 1: chemical plant, they've just climb lamp post and throwing batteries
Speaker 1: at a boasting football teams. Yeah. And I feel really
Speaker 1: good about starting with such heavy jokes about this thing. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's three million people, I think anyway. Yeah, if you're
Speaker 1: in philadel we do want to express solidarity with you,
Speaker 1: I guess as you wonder what the fuck to do
Speaker 1: about your water supply, which is currently contaminated, as we understand,
Speaker 1: by something called beautiful acrelate, which is a chemical that
Speaker 1: is found in paint. And the reason that there is
Speaker 1: a paint chemical in your drinking water if you live
Speaker 1: in Philadelphia is that a PLC manufacturing chemical plant called
Speaker 1: I think it's trinso tr I n SEO had a leak,
Speaker 1: and that leak when it's a storm, drain that storm
Speaker 1: drain went into the Delaware River, and that river feeds
Speaker 1: into the Samuel s Backs to water treatment plant, and
Speaker 1: obviously that water treatment plant feeds into the tap that
Speaker 1: you turn on to drink water when you live in
Speaker 1: your house. And this has, as it always does when
Speaker 1: there are like these somewhat bungled announcements of chemical contamination
Speaker 1: in drinking water. Caused people to shout to buy bottled water,
Speaker 1: which is an understandable response if you think you're not
Speaker 1: going to be able to drink water, which is caused
Speaker 1: people to wait in long lines to access sometimes like
Speaker 1: a limited supply of water. And what we wanted to
Speaker 1: talk about today a little bit was not so much
Speaker 1: like what to do if you're in Philadelphia right now,
Speaker 1: but how we can better prepare to be ready for
Speaker 1: water emergencies, water shortage, is water contamination, things like that,
Speaker 1: which is why Margaret has joined us, because she is
Speaker 1: the prepper anarchist queen and knows a lot about these things.
Speaker 1: So yeah, Margaret, should we I think you said you
Speaker 1: wanted to break us down by like bad things it
Speaker 1: could be in your water, and things you can do
Speaker 1: to get those bad things away, right, Yeah, Although I
Speaker 1: will say only a minority of this information directly relates
Speaker 1: to people who are dealing with toxic chemical spills. So
Speaker 1: if we're I have a lot of information about general
Speaker 1: water safety, it's long term storage of water, things that
Speaker 1: you don't want in your how to get those things
Speaker 1: out of your water? And I know you have a
Speaker 1: lot of experience with that stuff too. Um. But the
Speaker 1: very specific thing that people first in Ohio and now
Speaker 1: in Pennsylvania are dealing with, um of chemical stuff is
Speaker 1: worse than other stuff and way harder to get out,
Speaker 1: especially on a DIY level. UM. So I don't know
Speaker 1: what what feels best like, should we do an overview
Speaker 1: or should we try and first talk about the chemical
Speaker 1: stuff and then talk about like the fun easy stuff
Speaker 1: like not getting giardio when you're camping. Yeah, let's maybe
Speaker 1: start out with the kind of this is the scary
Speaker 1: you know, you can't buy a LifeStraw for this, fear first,
Speaker 1: fund later, Yeah, because people might be listening and they
Speaker 1: might be afraid of they might be concerned that they
Speaker 1: might be in one of these places. Right, Michigan, we
Speaker 1: still haven't fucking fixed the water, Yeah, And so yeah,
Speaker 1: let's start fucking flint Michigan. What a just disasters incompetence. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean yeah, it's it's extremely sad that the country
Speaker 1: that is as rich as any country has ever managed
Speaker 1: to be in human history is still poisoning people with water.
Speaker 1: But yeah, let's start with that. Let's let's start with
Speaker 1: what to do when you get a reverse nine or
Speaker 1: one phone call tending you know, to drink from your tap.
Speaker 1: I mean, honestly, going out and getting bottled water was
Speaker 1: the right move. Or also since people did have a
Speaker 1: heads up that their tap water was safe for a
Speaker 1: period of time, storing water in various containers is the
Speaker 1: right move, because once your water is contaminated with chemicals,
Speaker 1: it's really hard to get it out. The main method
Speaker 1: that well on an industrial scale, the thing that someone
Speaker 1: can use the way they treat wastewater with beautile as late,
Speaker 1: I didn't write down the name in my notes acrelate,
Speaker 1: Oh like acrylic. That makes sense because slate text paint.
Speaker 1: It's something called a fluidized bed reactor, which Frank I
Speaker 1: did not know about until I started doing this specific
Speaker 1: research for this specific chemical. People who are like more
Speaker 1: at a high science level will know more about this.
Speaker 1: This is basically like you're using different bacteria to eat
Speaker 1: and I don't know, fucking clean out this shit. This
Speaker 1: is not what's going to be happening in your kitchen
Speaker 1: sink anytime soon. This is not going to be part
Speaker 1: of your Brita filter anytime soon, ironically, And this is
Speaker 1: not how am I going to say this. Don't drink
Speaker 1: this chemical water if you have any possibility, right, if
Speaker 1: you can get other water, do that. And I believe
Speaker 1: in our current society it is a better and safer
Speaker 1: bet to get water from elsewhere if you were in
Speaker 1: some situation, which I suspect most people are not. I
Speaker 1: suspect most people could access supply lines. If you're in
Speaker 1: some situation where the only water available to you has
Speaker 1: these types of chemicals in it, the most likely guess
Speaker 1: about a way to deal with it is activated car
Speaker 1: and charcoal, and is actually the home filters that a
Speaker 1: lot of people use. Is your Brita filter, is your burkey.
Speaker 1: Although I'll talk some shit on burkey in a little bit,
Speaker 1: and and when we go over the more like nitty
Speaker 1: greedy details about each filtration method, maybe we can we
Speaker 1: can talk more about this. But basically, it is like
Speaker 1: it is not tested to do this. No one has
Speaker 1: ever been like, man, what if we get a bunch
Speaker 1: of budle accrelate in our water, will our britta filter
Speaker 1: it out? No one is running tests on this because
Speaker 1: it is not a thing that normally is in the
Speaker 1: water historically, although clearly it is often in the water now. However,
Speaker 1: the method of filtration of the various home level acts
Speaker 1: various home level methods of filtration adsorption is what it's
Speaker 1: called with a D instead of a bee, is the
Speaker 1: method that is perceived as most effective at reducing chemicals
Speaker 1: in water. However, again we're talking about like maybe this
Speaker 1: reduces some chemicals, maybe not. Oh you run this through
Speaker 1: this and now you're fine. Yeah. Yeah, it's if there's
Speaker 1: a lot of things that could get no water right
Speaker 1: that we don't really have like any any like decent
Speaker 1: research on how to get them out of a water. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: Margaret James, is there is there a say, say, you're
Speaker 1: not living in a place where you get a text
Speaker 1: letting you know that in Tuesday at three pm your
Speaker 1: water will not be safe to drink, which is really
Speaker 1: just uh, is there a home testing kit or a
Speaker 1: water testing kit that that is accessible for for most individuals,
Speaker 1: or what resources can people use to understand their water
Speaker 1: at home because you want to I'm not really going
Speaker 1: to trust the government on that. Yeah, And Margaret, do
Speaker 1: you want to take that I only know about I
Speaker 1: do not know about testing for beautiless accrelate. I think
Speaker 1: that this is the kind of thing that they are
Speaker 1: not people are not prepared for, like at a society level,
Speaker 1: I don't. I believe I could be wrong. All of
Speaker 1: the water testing that I have done has tended to
Speaker 1: be around like I live on a well, right, and
Speaker 1: so there's a lot of testing things that are available
Speaker 1: to tell you the acidity of your water, the hardness
Speaker 1: of your water, which is how how many dissolved minerals,
Speaker 1: whether or not your water contains things like lead and
Speaker 1: arsnic heavy metals which we'll talk about in a little bit,
Speaker 1: and also bacteria, right, like all of the stuff that
Speaker 1: we normally prepare to filter out of water. There are
Speaker 1: home tests available to you that you can use to determine.
Speaker 1: I don't know, and I wish I had done more
Speaker 1: research ahead of time. There's like some talk about like
Speaker 1: possible smells and stuff for some of these, but I
Speaker 1: don't feel confident. Yeah, I mean, I know there's the
Speaker 1: eat wg's like website where you can put it in
Speaker 1: your your your zip code and get more information on
Speaker 1: if there's been contamination or anything like that, but like
Speaker 1: that's you know, reported things, not necessarily on an individual
Speaker 1: level for testing. Um. Yeah, I'd definitely do that. Anytime
Speaker 1: I have moved anywhere, I'll type in my zip code
Speaker 1: and then I go, ah, that sounds bad. Um, I
Speaker 1: don't like that, but yeah, you can find out, you know,
Speaker 1: once you put in you can find out who who,
Speaker 1: Like you put in your zip code on This is
Speaker 1: just ewg dot org. You put in your zip code
Speaker 1: and you can put who you pay for water, and
Speaker 1: then it goes in and it tells you. You know,
Speaker 1: it's really it's really fun. Four In my mind, I
Speaker 1: read four e w E Health Guidelines fourteen contaminants. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I think a combination or two it's probably your best bet.
Speaker 1: Like unless you happen to do a laboratory like because
Speaker 1: there's stuff coming like if there is like lead like
Speaker 1: in between the water mains and or like you know,
Speaker 1: wherever the EDWD is getting its information and your tap,
Speaker 1: then you're still risking like heavy metal contaminants, right, or
Speaker 1: if you're on a well, you should test that it.
Speaker 1: I think it's every year, right, you're supposed to test
Speaker 1: your well water probably should. You know, You'll be fine,
Speaker 1: you'll know. But yeah, I think it's important that, like you,
Speaker 1: I have definitely got super sick from water that looks
Speaker 1: super clear, had no odor, looked fine, And I have
Speaker 1: drunk from turbit as fuck stagnant water and not been sick.
Speaker 1: Like at your nose is not going to tell you,
Speaker 1: and you do need some kind of help. Yeah, let's
Speaker 1: talk about storing water first, and then we'll talk about
Speaker 1: the more sort of established solutions so that the more
Speaker 1: expected contaminants. Yeah, how would you go about Let's say
Speaker 1: you're not in Philadelphia right now and you want to
Speaker 1: prepare for something that could happen in your area, how
Speaker 1: would you go about storing water? So the easiest ways
Speaker 1: that you go get bottled water, if it is sealed,
Speaker 1: and you keep it out of the sun, you keep
Speaker 1: it out of the heat, even though you're it's supposedly
Speaker 1: good for a year or two whatever. I feel like
Speaker 1: really nervous on this, like this is what's safe, even
Speaker 1: though it's not safe, right, but you can. Water itself
Speaker 1: doesn't go bad. That is a thing that is worth understanding.
Speaker 1: Left to its own devices, water does not go bad.
Speaker 1: Water goes bad when there's like something in it that replicates,
Speaker 1: like bacteria or something like that, or when something leaks
Speaker 1: into it. The main reason that you want to keep
Speaker 1: your water out of the sun and out of the
Speaker 1: heat is because if you're storing it in plastic, that
Speaker 1: can eventually kind of leach into it as the plastic degrades,
Speaker 1: and that I don't know, there's probably long term health effects.
Speaker 1: But like I would drink a water bottle that has
Speaker 1: been in the vaccinat in my car for a year
Speaker 1: before I would drink beautile acrelate water, And which is
Speaker 1: I mean, it's I guess that's just plastic or plastic
Speaker 1: pick your poison. But but yeah, so bottled water is
Speaker 1: generally very safe and it is sealed and it has
Speaker 1: no particular reason to go bad. You don't want to
Speaker 1: store it next to kerosene or gasoline. Like if you
Speaker 1: are the kind of person who keeps five gallon jug
Speaker 1: of gasoline around, you want that a different place than
Speaker 1: your water. Usually you want the gasoline outside your house
Speaker 1: in a outbuilding. Everyone lives on acreage in the rural
Speaker 1: areas the country, right, so many outbuildings around here, Yeah,
Speaker 1: everyone's outbuilding. Just go out to my urban bond, Yeah exactly.
Speaker 1: So okay, well, okay, Then the other thing, if I'm
Speaker 1: actually preparing go out and get some five gallons cherry cans.
Speaker 1: You're going to pay between twenty and fifty dollars and
Speaker 1: you'll get a little bit of different quality depending on that.
Speaker 1: You want something that is BPA free, you want something
Speaker 1: that is opaque, and you want something that is like
Speaker 1: not really bigger than four or five gallons because it's
Speaker 1: clumsy and unwieldy. Yeah. You also don't want to stack
Speaker 1: these things unless they specifically say this one is stackable
Speaker 1: to such and such depth. Like most stackable containers are
Speaker 1: also only stackable one or two high, well two or
Speaker 1: three high, and I don't know, I mean, like frankly,
Speaker 1: on some level, that's what there is, okay, And if
Speaker 1: you're going to fill your own water containers. There are
Speaker 1: a couple of weird things about it. One, people argue
Speaker 1: about how often you should rotate it. I rotate in
Speaker 1: mind about once a year. You should theoretically rotate them
Speaker 1: somewhere between six months and a year or something like that,
Speaker 1: depending on how you store it. The other thing is
Speaker 1: that if you are I actually think living off of well,
Speaker 1: you should probably rotate it more often. If you're on
Speaker 1: a municip municipal water, don't run it through your britta
Speaker 1: before you store it, because that britta is going to
Speaker 1: pull out all the chlorine, all the bleach. And people
Speaker 1: are like, whoa, I don't want to drink bleach. I
Speaker 1: listen to that punk song Dead Dead milkman um whatever.
Speaker 1: People don't want to drink bleach, right, you actually do
Speaker 1: want to drink tiny amounts of bleach. You want medical solution. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it keeps bacteria from growing. So if you filter out
Speaker 1: all of that and then you put it the water
Speaker 1: in the thing, if there's the tiniest little bacteria that
Speaker 1: got through, it's like sweet, the defenses are down, you know.
Speaker 1: Um So, But yeah, honestly, story and water, like people
Speaker 1: like they're gonna sell you lots of products, and like
Speaker 1: prepper sites are full of people selling you shit. Um.
Speaker 1: But it's just a matter of like finding containers and
Speaker 1: filling them with water and then rotating them every now
Speaker 1: and then, and it's not actually that big of a
Speaker 1: deal or super complicated. That's my take on it. UM
Speaker 1: live off of I used to live entirely off grid
Speaker 1: and then had to just drink water out of fifty
Speaker 1: gallon drums, and I just I didn't even you know what,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to say how bad my practices were
Speaker 1: because I don't want anyone to emulate me. I was
Speaker 1: gonna say, if you are, like, if you're storing on
Speaker 1: a scale, I don't know why they'd say you live
Speaker 1: on a compound in the desert. You know you can
Speaker 1: get big water tanks, right, I just looking at moving
Speaker 1: out to the desert a couple of years ago. I didn't,
Speaker 1: but yeah, you can get big water tanks are pretty cheap.
Speaker 1: You should some place at a dollar a gallon. Last
Speaker 1: time I looked for like a fifteen hundred gallon tank. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I found them cheap, like gov sp plus ones as well.
Speaker 1: Pretty often. Oh really, Yeah, we'll talk like, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: well I'll send you some send you some links, but
Speaker 1: you might want to check it. At some places you
Speaker 1: actually can't legally have those. It's getting better now with
Speaker 1: that stuff, but you do want to check on that.
Speaker 1: I think if you or you could get like a
Speaker 1: water buffalo, which is an industrial device for shipping water, Um,
Speaker 1: you can probably pick up those pretty cheese. It's an animal.
Speaker 1: I don't want to. Don't dehumanize it calling it an
Speaker 1: industrial machine. It's an animal, has feelings, Yeah, it does,
Speaker 1: and you just keep that in your backyard. And then
Speaker 1: what that does is attack anyone who comes after your water.
Speaker 1: So it's quite effective. Yeah, they are toughest nails. I've
Speaker 1: had some runners with buffalo um animals. Okay, another thing,
Speaker 1: I guess that like, if you're like going hardcore on
Speaker 1: this and storing thousands of galanto of water, maybe you
Speaker 1: could invested something like a chlorine maker and that way,
Speaker 1: if you do like mess up with your storage, I
Speaker 1: guess that that could maybe give you some leeway in
Speaker 1: terms of purifying afterwards. Who's out fair to say, Margaret, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that makes sense. Like chlorine maker is the
Speaker 1: next step up from basically because like bleach itself does
Speaker 1: go bad and if it's not a shelf stable for
Speaker 1: I don't remember how long it lasts, Um, it's not
Speaker 1: indefinitely shelf stable, and so people often especially in places
Speaker 1: of that access to clean water and stuff. I will
Speaker 1: say though, when we get into it. Chemical treatment is
Speaker 1: really good for the main stuff that people normally worry about,
Speaker 1: such as protozoa, bacteria, and viruses. But once again, isn't
Speaker 1: going to do shit for some stuff that goes bad? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I think it might. There's one thing, maybe cryptosporidium. There's
Speaker 1: something that chlorine specificitally doesn't work for. Oh, that's right. Actually, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's actually not very good at protozoa. It's weirdly good
Speaker 1: at viruses, and then whereas most of the filters are
Speaker 1: not good at viruses and are good at bacterium protozoa.
Speaker 1: So we should probably explain these different things right right, ways,
Speaker 1: you can treat your water. Okay, there's a bunch of
Speaker 1: stuff that you can be in your water that you
Speaker 1: don't wish was in the water. The one that is
Speaker 1: like kind of off the top of my head, the
Speaker 1: one that I think about the most because if I
Speaker 1: had to deal with it and it sucked, are protozoa.
Speaker 1: The two big ones are Giardia and Cryptospidium. And these
Speaker 1: are tiny little animals in the water. If you can
Speaker 1: look at pictures of them, they're really cute, and they
Speaker 1: make you shit a lot forever, sometimes until you die,
Speaker 1: mostly immunocompromise folks, but everyone really unhappy. And if you're
Speaker 1: in a survival situation already, diarrhea is like no laughing matter.
Speaker 1: Your inability to keep in fluids and nutrients will dramatically
Speaker 1: affect your your chance of survival. So that's protozoa. They
Speaker 1: are the biggest of these things and therefore sort of
Speaker 1: the easiest to actually don't know whether they're bigger in
Speaker 1: bacteria or not. Then there's bacteria, which it can also
Speaker 1: be in water and do bad stuff to you. And
Speaker 1: then there's viruses, and viruses can be in the water
Speaker 1: and do bad stuff to you. Largely in the United States,
Speaker 1: and people don't worry about viruses and water. And that's
Speaker 1: not because our heads are in the sand. It's because
Speaker 1: we don't have as many viruses in our water. Then
Speaker 1: there's chemicals you can have in your water. We don't
Speaker 1: like them. There's dirt that can be in your water,
Speaker 1: which is just like not fun. There's heavy metals like
Speaker 1: lead and iron that can have deliterious effects on your health.
Speaker 1: Some people want to get water hardening minerals like calcium
Speaker 1: and magnesium out of their water. But you actually don't
Speaker 1: want to get rid of all of them. That's the catch.
Speaker 1: That's what we're gonna have to talk about, because your
Speaker 1: body wants some of those things. They mostly just like
Speaker 1: make your house has all the all the plumbing breaks.
Speaker 1: That's like the main stuff. There's also things like nitrates
Speaker 1: that I don't understand well enough to talk about. How
Speaker 1: we get rid of things. The most common way that
Speaker 1: like backpackers and stuff who are a lot of the
Speaker 1: people who diy this on a regular basis use is
Speaker 1: something called filtration, or I'm going to call filtration first
Speaker 1: use you screen your water as in, you get out
Speaker 1: the large chunks usually people use like a bandana or
Speaker 1: a sock or just some piece of cloth, right, and
Speaker 1: you want to use that so you're not gumming up
Speaker 1: your filter and then it goes into something where it's
Speaker 1: forced through a membrane with micropores. These used to be ceramic,
Speaker 1: but these days they're like a bunch of tiny little
Speaker 1: tubes like the internet, and most of these are basically
Speaker 1: la tubes have holes in them that are so small
Speaker 1: that it stops protozoa and bacteria from going through it.
Speaker 1: That is it's like main claim to fame. It is
Speaker 1: very effective at it. Now that they're not ceramic, you
Speaker 1: don't have to clean it like every fucking gallon. And
Speaker 1: these are really good top brands that I am not
Speaker 1: sponsored by our sawyer and life Straw. They're going to
Speaker 1: use slightly different methods. People have opinions about them. I'm
Speaker 1: not going to offer mine right now. And they're measured
Speaker 1: in the size of the holes. Anything that's like one
Speaker 1: micron is small enough to stop most protozoa. Most of
Speaker 1: these ones are either point one or point two. These
Speaker 1: don't block viruses, so they make ones that have even
Speaker 1: smaller holes that can deal with viruses. And this also
Speaker 1: blocks microplastics, but you know whatever. Then there's chemical treatmentchemical treatment.
Speaker 1: The two most common ones are bleach, chlorine or iodine.
Speaker 1: And there's also like chemical tablets that you can buy
Speaker 1: that are like worth keeping around. They weigh almost nothing. Whatever. Um,
Speaker 1: I am not going to give you the chart of
Speaker 1: how much bleached to add your water, and don't just
Speaker 1: go listen to me and add bleach to your water.
Speaker 1: Fucking look it up. Uh, do not use color safe bleach.
Speaker 1: Do not use scented bleach. It's just disinfected bleach. But
Speaker 1: it will probably either come in six percent or eight
Speaker 1: point two five percent sodium hypochlorite chlorite. Um, and sounds
Speaker 1: so grosss just that those commination Yeah, it's what they
Speaker 1: sent it with. Uh, the blood of I don't know,
Speaker 1: my god. Yeah, poisoned blood. That sounds so gross. I
Speaker 1: used to wear a lavender all the time. I actually
Speaker 1: I stopped for two reasons. First, I stopped when I
Speaker 1: was in college because like my girlfriend was like, you
Speaker 1: smell like soap and was like really mad at me. Um,
Speaker 1: if you're listening whatever, I don't care. And then I
Speaker 1: stopped get what in Hugert go on off? Looks good?
Speaker 1: Look at me now? Yeah, thanks for turning me on
Speaker 1: the lots of cool stuff. Um, that was much healthier
Speaker 1: than I would have been. I'm proud of you. And
Speaker 1: then uh, um, the other reason I stopped wearing lavenders.
Speaker 1: That attracts ticks if you're out in the out in
Speaker 1: the woods. Um anyway, okay, so that's chemical treatment. Chemical
Speaker 1: treatment is really good for bacteria, viruses, It's not great
Speaker 1: for parasites. It is a really good backup system, right. Um. Actually,
Speaker 1: I'll go over the fucking king of all of them
Speaker 1: for for bacteria, vias and parasites. You want to get
Speaker 1: rid of it, you fucking boil your water. Um the
Speaker 1: like classic way to do with it. As you boil
Speaker 1: your water, and it only needs to get above sixty
Speaker 1: degrees celsius, which is like one hundred and forty something
Speaker 1: in regular human um. And I actually don't know the conversion.
Speaker 1: I actually know when you're talking about qui fahrenheit. Okay,
Speaker 1: fahrenheit is really good about humans because zero is cold
Speaker 1: and hundred is hot. Yes, celsius is really good about water.
Speaker 1: So we're we actually are talking about water right now.
Speaker 1: So celsius is the proper scale because it goes from
Speaker 1: zero is freezing to one hundred is boiling. Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: go ahead, Yeah, it's uh, you know we should do
Speaker 1: before before we talk about about water. Do you know
Speaker 1: what will not make you shot yourself to death? Reagan coins? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it probably is Ronald Reagan coins. Again. All right, we're back,
Speaker 1: Thank you very much, Uncle ron to continue to pay
Speaker 1: for my healthcare and interlude needs. So, Margaret, we were
Speaker 1: we were talking about boiling fuck boiling water, that's it. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so how long do we need to boil stuff for change?
Speaker 1: Depending on what we got. It does but not really.
Speaker 1: It's like all of the main and do do the
Speaker 1: actual instructions. Overkill is better than regular get killed, right, um,
Speaker 1: but most shit dies off at sixty degrees celsius, which
Speaker 1: is below the boiling point of water even at high elevation. However,
Speaker 1: basically the deal is at you want to boil water
Speaker 1: for one minute at sea level three minutes above five
Speaker 1: thousand feet um or five kilometer No wait, no, go on,
Speaker 1: it's not a thousand feet okay um And yeah, So
Speaker 1: so boiling water is actually the one of the main
Speaker 1: things you can do. It doesn't get rid of everything.
Speaker 1: It gets rid of those three things protozoa, bacteria viruses
Speaker 1: very effectively. And that is most of the time what
Speaker 1: most people are treating water for. A lot of the
Speaker 1: other stuff is like long term health effects like heavy
Speaker 1: metals and chemicals. Right. Yeah. Other methods that you can use.
Speaker 1: The other like kind of gold standard, which isn't as
Speaker 1: good as it seems like it should be, is distillation.
Speaker 1: Distillation gets out lots of stuff. Distillation is basically you
Speaker 1: evaporate the water and then let it run down into
Speaker 1: another container. You're moonshining your own water, and and you
Speaker 1: can do this DIY fairly well. And there's like solar
Speaker 1: stills that are really cool. I've never actually built one,
Speaker 1: I've always wanted to. The downside is if you'd live
Speaker 1: off of distilled water for a long time, it gets
Speaker 1: out the magnesium and the calcium, It gets out the
Speaker 1: minerals that you actually want in your water, so it
Speaker 1: can have negative effects on your long term health if
Speaker 1: you only drink distilled water. The main thing that distillation
Speaker 1: does that I think no other method on this does
Speaker 1: besides a reverse osmosis, which I'm not really going to
Speaker 1: get into it. Desalinates water go ahead. That's a big deal,
Speaker 1: right because like if we look at long term water insecurity,
Speaker 1: like certainly where I live, we live in a place
Speaker 1: where people like to play golf in the desert and
Speaker 1: that has become an issue as far as water supplies go,
Speaker 1: and so desalination is often proposed. It's like a way
Speaker 1: to deal with our water crisis in California and the
Speaker 1: fact that the Colorado River is getting lower and lower
Speaker 1: and we rely on it. But like you said, lots
Speaker 1: of these methods aren't going to pull the salt out
Speaker 1: of water, right, didn't let you drink seawater, right, But
Speaker 1: this one does. And so I mean, actually, I don't
Speaker 1: really care about the health of golf course. I have
Speaker 1: actually negative feelings about the health of golf courses. But theoretically,
Speaker 1: maybe water in your lawn with the desalinated distilled water
Speaker 1: and then drinking the water that actually has minerals in it.
Speaker 1: But then again, like maybe the plants need that shit too,
Speaker 1: I don't fucking no, m so. And in distillation, it's
Speaker 1: very good at getting out heavy metals also like iron
Speaker 1: and lead, and it the reason it gets out the
Speaker 1: bacteria and viruses. It is not because they can evaporate,
Speaker 1: but because they die getting boiled because you boiled distill. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and some pesticides are filtered out if their boiling point
Speaker 1: is greater than the boiling point of water. Benzene and
Speaker 1: too lean which I don't know what is. I don't
Speaker 1: know too lean is. These are examples of things that
Speaker 1: do not get distilled out. Then there's a couple more.
Speaker 1: There's adsorption. Adsorption rules. This is the thing that I
Speaker 1: always misspell and so that's why I emphasize the ad absorption,
Speaker 1: and I don't really understand. Go ahead, how do we adsorb?
Speaker 1: Is that just like absorption with adverts? You know? It's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like I took three years of Ladin and all
Speaker 1: I remember is that ad means towards, an ab means
Speaker 1: away from, and maybe a gorkoli is either farmer or farmhouse. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I got poor poor re sum sum aramat aramasama saratta.
Speaker 1: I remember that one. Now. Yeah, great, Yeah, there you go.
Speaker 1: You've something today. Yeah. I wish that my school had
Speaker 1: made me take Spanish instead of letting me take some
Speaker 1: bullshit like Latin. H Yeah, exactly. So adsorption is good
Speaker 1: for pesticides, heavy medicals, heavy metals, chemicals, viruses, and bad tastes.
Speaker 1: It's the only one of these things that I'm aware
Speaker 1: of that actually use can get rid of bad taste,
Speaker 1: because this is pulling out all the weird stuff in
Speaker 1: the water. And what it is is it uses activated carbon,
Speaker 1: which is basically just some shit that's fucking burned and
Speaker 1: then crunched up real small. It is a huge surface
Speaker 1: area because it's like little powder, right um, and then
Speaker 1: the water passes through it and then by some weird
Speaker 1: science shit. The bad stuff tends to stick to the
Speaker 1: carbon um. This is great. This is what your Brita filtered.
Speaker 1: This is what your burkey does. This is what You're
Speaker 1: pure filter does. It. It's not as good, I believe
Speaker 1: for bacteria and stuff, and specifically the biggest problem with
Speaker 1: these things is that bacteria can grow on them, and
Speaker 1: so some people, I mean, that's why you replace it
Speaker 1: every so often. It's not because it's like slow or clogged.
Speaker 1: It's like literally unhealthy. And so sometimes what people do
Speaker 1: is they treat for bacteria with UV or some other method,
Speaker 1: bleach whatever, all the other shit that we talked about.
Speaker 1: We haven't talked about u V yet. After it goes
Speaker 1: to the carbon filter. I'm really excited about like kind
Speaker 1: of learning more about these because you can theoretically diy
Speaker 1: carbon right, Yeah, yeah, you're definitely could. Right. I know
Speaker 1: that it's not the same as this, but one of
Speaker 1: the things you can do if you're in the back
Speaker 1: country is like if you have water with a lot
Speaker 1: of turbidity, which is stuff in the water, right, if
Speaker 1: you can't see through the water, you know, if it's
Speaker 1: got a lot of cloudiness, you can use white ash
Speaker 1: from a fire, and that will increase the rate of
Speaker 1: which it deposits a sediment if you see what I mean.
Speaker 1: So you how interesting because yeah, it sticks to it
Speaker 1: and then slowly filters through the bottom of them. I
Speaker 1: think the gold standard is a loom, which is something
Speaker 1: using canning that increases it even quicker. But yeah, you
Speaker 1: can use white ash from a fire if you're dealing
Speaker 1: with I think that's I don't think that's activated coup
Speaker 1: but I think that's a different mechanism. Yeah, no, I
Speaker 1: don't know. UM. And then one of the methods that
Speaker 1: is actually mostly done on an industrial scale that actually
Speaker 1: is like I think the main way that people filter
Speaker 1: water in this world is through sand, and I didn't
Speaker 1: do enough research about um. There's both slow sand filters
Speaker 1: and fast sand filters, and some of them like literally
Speaker 1: depend on certain bacteria, good bacteria, like having a healthy
Speaker 1: culture of them that like eat the bad stuff and things.
Speaker 1: I used to know more about that than I do currently.
Speaker 1: And then the last one I'm going to cover, Okay,
Speaker 1: then those reverse cosmosos, which you might have a kitchen
Speaker 1: thing that does and it also removes minerals. It's a
Speaker 1: very effective method of filtering out lots of stuff. It also,
Speaker 1: I don't know, causes wastewater, and it's complicated in some ways.
Speaker 1: And then there's UV disinfection, and this is like one
Speaker 1: of the ones that gets touted as this like this
Speaker 1: is going to save the developing world or whatever, right,
Speaker 1: And uvy disinfection is cool and good. Basically it uses
Speaker 1: UV light to kill off bacteria, parasites, and viruses. Again,
Speaker 1: these three things that are the main things people are
Speaker 1: usually going for. The biggest downside of UV disinfection, there's
Speaker 1: two of them. One is that it requires low turbidity water.
Speaker 1: Thanks for introducing that term clear water. It has to
Speaker 1: be fairly clear water because it's about light, right, that
Speaker 1: makes sense, and because you have to be careful to
Speaker 1: do it right. You just have to like actually get
Speaker 1: all of it with all of it. Yeah, So this
Speaker 1: is why I haven't, like, for a moment, I got
Speaker 1: really excited about these things, and then in the end
Speaker 1: I was like, I like my water filter that I
Speaker 1: already have. Yeah, I think with UV filteration as well,
Speaker 1: it's been big and the outdoor world kind of relatively recently.
Speaker 1: You have to be conscious of storing it in a
Speaker 1: opaque container afterwards because the bacteria can UV like reactivate.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I f that's like any of it that
Speaker 1: it doesn't get is like fuck, yeah, it's my time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because it stops them reproducing. That's how it interest still
Speaker 1: in there. But they don't so it doesn't really matter.
Speaker 1: You drink them and then you pass them through your
Speaker 1: system and it's fine. But if they reproduce, that's when
Speaker 1: you get sick. So somehow they can UV reactivate. So
Speaker 1: like if you have a you know, the classic like
Speaker 1: like through hiking thing, it's to use a smart water bottle,
Speaker 1: right because it's cheaping, it's dirty, and but if you
Speaker 1: are UV filtering and then travling in your smart water
Speaker 1: bottle and then putting that in the back of your
Speaker 1: pack and hiking all day, you might get some difficulty.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I know it's not Yeah, I haven't really
Speaker 1: messed with it much like like, yeah, I have my
Speaker 1: comfortable setup and that's what I'd like to use. And
Speaker 1: I will say that like something that people who don't
Speaker 1: go camping much might not be aware of. There's almost
Speaker 1: nowhere in the United States that you can be confidently
Speaker 1: drink wild water without it without risking something like giardia. Um,
Speaker 1: there are places where you can directly from a spring
Speaker 1: is the most likely to be good. Um. People used
Speaker 1: to say that you can you can drink high elevation
Speaker 1: water if you're up in an alpine area because there's
Speaker 1: like no calves or whatever, because like giardia, and I
Speaker 1: believe also crypto, but I'm um the other poop transferred crypto,
Speaker 1: the cryptosparodia, not the not the multi level marketing scam. Um.
Speaker 1: They it's it's passed in the fecal oral tradition. What's
Speaker 1: the word here? Uh uh, there's a word here forget yeah,
Speaker 1: pathway yeah, and so um, because it's passed that way.
Speaker 1: It's like basically the fact that there's livestock everywhere is
Speaker 1: the reason that's not safe to drink the water. And
Speaker 1: so people are like, oh, if you go up high enough,
Speaker 1: you're safe. But there's still animals up there. And there's
Speaker 1: also like more and more hikers up there. Almost anywhere
Speaker 1: you're going to be hiking, someone else is hiked, and
Speaker 1: someone else is hiked, and they have drank the water
Speaker 1: without filtering it because they're not thinking properly, and then
Speaker 1: they've shit in not in a hole, but just shit
Speaker 1: somewhere on the ground, because they're also a bad person
Speaker 1: in that way. Yeah. Um, And so they've like tested
Speaker 1: a while ago in the high Sierras that there's garda everywhere,
Speaker 1: which doesn't necessarily mean it's going to make you sick,
Speaker 1: but it can make you sick. So it's just like
Speaker 1: worth knowing that. This is the reason that backpackers know
Speaker 1: so much about water filtration, although again they don't know
Speaker 1: as much about chemicals filtration, which is why I had
Speaker 1: to go and learn more about that, less because I'm
Speaker 1: a backpacker and more because they used to live off grid.
Speaker 1: But yeah, they're different, Like, like, there are definitely a
Speaker 1: lot of products out there that are very affordable that
Speaker 1: work for like that specific specifically they giardia concern, right,
Speaker 1: which is the one that most people have, And that's
Speaker 1: probably if you're like if you're in a place where
Speaker 1: you hear there's industrial water contamination and you go to
Speaker 1: RII and you buy a sawyer make a tap filter,
Speaker 1: for instance, it just clamps onto your tap. It probably
Speaker 1: won't work for the stuff that you're concerned about, but
Speaker 1: it will work if you're yeah off a while. Then
Speaker 1: you have giardia or something. Yeah, and it also won't
Speaker 1: work for like lead, which is one of the reasons
Speaker 1: why the carbon filters are the more common ones at home,
Speaker 1: because city water that is a higher you know, if
Speaker 1: you live in some cities, you're gonna have lead in
Speaker 1: your water, right, Yeah, because we used it in pipes
Speaker 1: for decades. Yeah, but I don't know. Oh, let's talk
Speaker 1: shit on Burkey's really quick. Yeah, let's do it. What's
Speaker 1: up with Burkey? Why are they bad? So? I was like,
Speaker 1: I personally the other day after this thing, because that's
Speaker 1: my fun joy of being a prepper is going to
Speaker 1: Twitter and being like, here's what I know about that thing.
Speaker 1: You know, whenever a thing happens while like safe on
Speaker 1: my mountaintop and drinking out of my well, which whatever
Speaker 1: has its own problems, I'll take those problems anyway, Okay.
Speaker 1: So um, so I post about this, and then I
Speaker 1: pointed out that like, overall, there's like the different filters
Speaker 1: that you can have her home, and then the only
Speaker 1: one that seems to sort of do it all is
Speaker 1: the Burkey. It's this very expensive brand. You've probably seen
Speaker 1: them in your hippie friend's house or you're the hippie,
Speaker 1: and there's one in your house, there's one in my house.
Speaker 1: And it's a big silver canister that looks like it
Speaker 1: comes from the fifties or whatever, and and it's a filter,
Speaker 1: and it's somehow filters more than everything else. And the
Speaker 1: way that it does that is by lying or rather,
Speaker 1: I don't know what using the way. Yeah, the way
Speaker 1: it does it is it says it can do these things,
Speaker 1: and it is not certified to the what is it
Speaker 1: a NSF slash ANCI standard that all of your other
Speaker 1: filters are testing themselves too. So everyone else is saying
Speaker 1: we have passed this following certification, and Burkey is saying, oh,
Speaker 1: we tested, and it does all the stuff. All the
Speaker 1: other ones probably do kind of all the stuff too,
Speaker 1: but the only things that they're actually certified to do
Speaker 1: or what they say they do. And so Burkey basically
Speaker 1: charges a mint in exchange for using their own testing
Speaker 1: standards instead of the testing standards of other people independent testers.
Speaker 1: Google Burkey wire Cutter and you'll find a good article
Speaker 1: that where people conducted a bunch of tests. And it's
Speaker 1: a shame because it would be nice to have this
Speaker 1: sort of all in one filter because it's very annoying.
Speaker 1: If you want to filter something out of your water,
Speaker 1: you have to go, Okay, what's in my water that
Speaker 1: I don't want? And then you have to go find
Speaker 1: the filter for that, and it's not going to be
Speaker 1: the same as the other filter. Is not gonna be
Speaker 1: same as the other filter. Like, oh, you live some
Speaker 1: more leading your pipes. You can't buy a regular britt
Speaker 1: You've got to buy the lead pipe Montreal special Breada,
Speaker 1: you know, and like, you know you want an undersinc
Speaker 1: water filter? Well, do you want this one or this
Speaker 1: one or this one? It would be nice if there
Speaker 1: was a yeah, like buy once, cry once, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: go to Amazon two days later you're fine. Kind of situation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but there isn't one new I was going to go over,
Speaker 1: like just in case people are curious more about the
Speaker 1: back country stuff. I guess I have three different levels
Speaker 1: of stuff that I use for back country. If I'm
Speaker 1: just going out and I don't think I'm going to
Speaker 1: filter water, I just take a stainless steel single wall
Speaker 1: water bottle and some iodine or another chemical purifier. I
Speaker 1: didn't works really well, but you don't want to be
Speaker 1: using it long term. It's not good for you long
Speaker 1: term for your thyroid and then I'll filter it through
Speaker 1: like a buff or a kaffir or something to get
Speaker 1: the tability out and use that. If it's a trip
Speaker 1: where I'm just in the back country in America, I
Speaker 1: take a squeezy filteration catedine beefree is the one I
Speaker 1: tend to use. And you want to have a dirty
Speaker 1: bag and a clean bottle, right, so you're squeezing from
Speaker 1: the dirty water into the clean water. And then if
Speaker 1: I'm going somewhere for work where there are virus risks
Speaker 1: and where it might be like what you'd call like
Speaker 1: a non permissive environment, at place where you don't want
Speaker 1: to hang around near a water source for a long
Speaker 1: time because it's dangerous. I have this thing called an
Speaker 1: MSR Guardian, which is not cheap, and you probably don't
Speaker 1: need it for what you're doing, but if you are
Speaker 1: concerned about viruses, it has a dirty bag and a
Speaker 1: clean bag, and it's a hang filter, so you can
Speaker 1: fill up three liters of water, bugger off to somewhere safe,
Speaker 1: hang it up, and let that filter from the dirty
Speaker 1: bag into the clean bag, and then you're not standing
Speaker 1: by the water filtering or pumping. I'm a few seconds
Speaker 1: a pretty fettied. Situations have been fine. And I'll say
Speaker 1: that the thing that I used off grid as they
Speaker 1: used a sawyer, just a regular sawyer water filter. They're
Speaker 1: like thirty bucks. And I attached it to a five
Speaker 1: gallon bucket with some hoss and then I gravity fed
Speaker 1: it and I just left it drip in from one
Speaker 1: five gallon bucket to another. And that's for a stationary
Speaker 1: place in the United States. That worked for me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I can see that working really well, Margaret. Do you
Speaker 1: want to think where can people learn more about prepping?
Speaker 1: Would there be a podcast they could listen to? You
Speaker 1: mean one that just went weekly, Live Like the World
Speaker 1: Is Dying. I am one of the hosts of Live
Speaker 1: Like the World is Dying. The reason it went weekly
Speaker 1: is now there's more hosts and you can listen to
Speaker 1: that wherever. You listen to podcasts every Friday, and soon
Speaker 1: you'll be able to hear James on it. But I
Speaker 1: don't know when you just have to listen to all
Speaker 1: of them. Yeah, where can people see you gloating on
Speaker 1: Twitter from your mountaintop? Magpie killed Joy until I finally
Speaker 1: get sick? Of Twitter, which is increasingly likely every single day.
Speaker 1: Hell so yeah, yeah, thank you very much, Margaret No,
Speaker 1: thanks for having me informative. You are welcome. All right,
Speaker 1: Ali everyone, Maybe it could Happen here as a production
Speaker 1: of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media,
Speaker 1: visit our website cool Zonemedia dot com, or check us
Speaker 1: out on the iHeart radio app, apple Pot Podcasts, or
Speaker 1: wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for
Speaker 1: It Could Happen Here, updated monthly at coolzone meta dot
Speaker 1: com slash sources. Thanks for listening.