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Hydrate or die! By Will Dabbs MD
Water, H2O — the universal solvent — the elixir of life. It makes up about 3/4 of your body
mass and roughly the same percentage of the planet is covered with the stuff.
Water, H2O — the universal solvent — the elixir of life. It makes up about 3/4 of your body mass and roughly the same percentage of the planet is covered with the stuff. Second only to air, clean water is the substance most critical to life. No matter your circumstances, you’ll not go much more than three or four days without it before succumbing to a most unpleasant demise.
Those three tiny atoms bound together at an angle are the most fundamental component of life on our planet. In a solid blow the collective egos of physicians everywhere, more lives are saved worldwide each year by clean water than by all medical efforts combined. No matter the circumstances, climate, season, or threat, clean water is always at the top of anyone’s list of critical commodities in any survival situation.
At a minimum you will require two quarts per person, per day, of decent drinking water to keep the human machines running smoothly. At times when water is scarce, drink infrequently. But when you do drink, try to drink your fill. This will squeeze the most mileage out of a limited supply.
In most places save the desert, water will be readily available in the environment. The rub is we are not the only organisms who value it. An awful lot of microscopic creepy crawlies like the stuff as well. The only thing worse than trying to survive a catastrophic event is trying to do so while managing a raging case of infectious gastroenteritis with its nausea, vomiting and explosive diarrhea.
Once you have your water, there are three broad techniques for rendering it safe for human consumption. In each case let your untreated source sit for a while if possible then decant the clearest quantity off the top to minimize contamination as your
starting point.
The heart of the DIY water filter kit is a ceramic filter core containing activated charcoal. The cloth sock fits over the filter and secures with a food-grade rubber band to exclude gross contaminants. The filter may be back washed and cleaned with pure water for extended use.
This may look like a discarded water bottle filled with old socks and some generic household cleaning supplies. It is actually several thousand gallons of drinking water if used appropriately.
The resulting water will likely make you feel queasy but remains safe to drink.
Sterilization
Sterilization is the simplest approach and requires little as regards supplies. In this case the microscopic bugs remain in the water but are rendered inert by either heat or chemicals. You harmlessly drink up their little miniature deceased corpses at the end of the process. However, before you think this unduly objectionable, just ask somebody in the know what you are ingesting along with that yummy pork sausage you enjoyed for breakfast. Sometimes ignorance is indeed bliss.
Cut the bottom out of a water bottle and stuff it full with clean white socks. Run your raw water through this improvised filter to get as much of the particulate matter out as possible before you get started. Obviously the less foreign material you have at the outset the better.
Boiling water to sterilize it requires nothing more than a proper container and a heat source. Bring your water to a vigorous boil for a few minutes and then let it cool. Boiled water never tastes very good; let it sit for a bit then shake it up to introduce a little air and the taste improves.
Clear water can be treated with fresh unscented bleach at the rate of 8 drops per gallon to render it safe for drinking.
Bleach is a dilute solution of sodium hypochlorite, about 6 percent by volume as you get it from the store, and is an indispensable and inexpensive survival staple. Treated water should be left out in the sun for a half hour or so before use and should smell very faintly of bleach. The resulting treated water will sometimes make you feel a bit queasy but should be safe to drink.
Bleach has a shelf life and should be stored in a dark cool place. More concentrated solutions can be used for camp tasks such as dish washing. While dilute treatments do indeed produce safe drinking water, straight bleach is terribly poisonous if ingested. Military water purification tablets are also effective and I have used them before, but the resulting taste can be sub-optimal.
Distillation
Distillation produces the absolute safest drinking water. In this case the liquid water is evaporated and then subsequently condensed away from the original source. This process actually physically removes the water from the impurities so it can be used safely. While this mechanism produces the cleanest water, it can also be time-consuming or expensive.
A factory distillation machine runs off of electricity and produces a steady supply of drinkable water from literally any source, to include seawater. These marvelous devices work like a champ but can set you back a thousand dollars or more. The same process can be improvised with nothing more than a sheet of plastic and some sunshine, but the yield is very low.
Dig a hole in wet ground and place a pot or cup in the center of the hole. Then cover the hole with a sheet of plastic anchored and sealed around its edges. Drop a rock in the center such that the plastic forms a cone leading down into the pot. In bright sunshine water will evaporate out of the ground and condense on the plastic before running down into the pot. The water you collect by this process is perfectly pure, but even under ideal conditions this method is a full-time job to make enough water to keep yourself alive.
It can take a while for the untreated water to make its way through your improvised filter. Be patient and the resulting product is a good starting point for subsequent purification techniques.
Filtration
Water filters represent the most convenient method of harvesting drinking water from an austere environment. Filters come in a broad array of sizes, capacities and prices. They are both simple to use and effective. I have lived for weeks on filtered water taken from a variety of sources to include silt-filled glacial melt while suffering no ill effects.
Water filters work by excluding contaminants while allowing pure water to pass. Most filter units are ceramic and are silver-impregnated or include activated charcoal.
The simplest sort is likely the Lifestraw. The Lifestraw is usually around $20 and is but a click away on Amazon. This remarkable little device rides around your neck on a string. Just dip the end into most any conceivable bilge and give it a slurp. Clear, pure water comes through the good end with trivial effort. For individual use it really could not be simpler.
Larger filters usually incorporate a small hand pump and are sufficient to produce plenty of water for individual use and cooking needs at a trivial weight and space penalty. These devices will usually set you back $50 to $100. Good ones will last for extended periods though operational life is a function of how funky your starting material might be.
Large family-sized water filters are also readily available but they can be expensive. These devices look like institutional coffee urns and are gravity-driven. Just pour the untreated water in the top and potable water comes out a spigot at the bottom. These units are sufficient to produce enough drinking and cooking water to keep a decent-sized family going but can set you back $400 or more. There is, however, a very cost-effective alternative.
Several companies offer kits that convert a pair of standard utility buckets from Lowes or Home Depot into an institutional water filter suitable to supply a family in a crisis. Mine cost me $39 from Amazon. The buckets were $3 each from our local home store. In this case you drill a pair of holes in the buckets per the instructions and install the included fittings. I found standard spade bits were the best tools to bore the holes.
Once the filter assembly is installed and the buckets are stacked you simply fill the top bucket with untreated water and gravity does the work. Be careful, the ceramic filter is fairly fragile and should not be handled roughly. The resulting device will produce a prodigious quantity of sparkling drinking water for less than the cost of a meal out with your family.
The hole for the spigot is located 2″ from the bottom of the collection bucket. This allows clearance for the tap. A standard spade bit bores the hole painlessly.
The filter is secured with washers and a screw fitting between the bottom of the top bucket and the lid of the bottom bucket, resulting in a single watertight assembly.
Once the filter is in place the rest of the device just snaps together. Ceramic filters are brittle and should be handled carefully.
Filtration
Water filters represent the most convenient method of harvesting drinking water from an austere environment. Filters come in a broad array of sizes, capacities and prices. They are both simple to use and effective. I have lived for weeks on filtered water taken from a variety of sources to include silt-filled glacial melt while suffering no ill effects.
Water filters work by excluding contaminants while allowing pure water to pass. Most filter units are ceramic and are silver-impregnated or include activated charcoal.
The simplest sort is likely the Lifestraw. The Lifestraw is usually around $20 and is but a click away on Amazon. This remarkable little device rides around your neck on a string. Just dip the end into most any conceivable bilge and give it a slurp. Clear, pure water comes through the good end with trivial effort. For individual use it really could not be simpler.
Larger filters usually incorporate a small hand pump and are sufficient to produce plenty of water for individual use and cooking needs at a trivial weight and space penalty. These devices will usually set you back $50 to $100. Good ones will last for extended periods though operational life is a function of how funky your starting material might be.
Large family-sized water filters are also readily available but they can be expensive. These devices look like institutional coffee urns and are gravity-driven. Just pour the untreated water in the top and potable water comes out a spigot at the bottom. These units are sufficient to produce enough drinking and cooking water to keep a decent-sized family going but can set you back $400 or more. There is, however, a very cost-effective alternative.
Several companies offer kits that convert a pair of standard utility buckets from Lowes or Home Depot into an institutional water filter suitable to supply a family in a crisis. Mine cost me $39 from Amazon. The buckets were $3 each from our local home store. In this case you drill a pair of holes in the buckets per the instructions and install the included fittings. I found standard spade bits were the best tools to bore the holes.
Once the filter assembly is installed and the buckets are stacked you simply fill the top bucket with untreated water and gravity does the work. Be careful, the ceramic filter is fairly fragile and should not be handled roughly. The resulting device will produce a prodigious quantity of sparkling drinking water for less than the cost of a meal out with your family.
It can be illuminating to peek into a drop of untreated lake water with a microscope. Water from
raw sources is usually teeming with microscopic life, most of which can make you sick.
Commercial water filters are lightweight, portable and reasonably priced. Such devices will ride in a rucksack or bugout bag and are sufficient to keep one person hydrated.
Preparation Is Key
There is a great deal of uncertainty in the world. The more our society evolves the more dependent we become upon technology and infrastructure. As a result we become all the more fragile as a species. Whether the precipitating insult is a hurricane, societal unrest, currency collapse, terrorist attack or something on the order of zombies or aliens, we are never more than one headline away from a fairly feral lifestyle.
Where once preparing for such stuff was the obsession of the lunatic fringe, nowadays survival prepping is both mainstream and big business. Capitalism being what it is, the market now allows us to do a bit of sensible prepping at reasonable cost. In the case of water, the most critical of all commodities, the means to secure an adequate supply of the stuff is now portable, reliable and inexpensive.
A little shelf-stable food, a proper firearm, and an inexpensive DIY water filter can transform a crisis of terrifying proportions into a fun family adventure. As is typically the case, the key to success rests in a little forethought and planning.
If you can hit it in the right spot, then you will get a strong maybe from me! Grumpy
Sadly and probably to the relief of both of these states, I don’t !! Grumpy
A History of the M1 Garand
During World War I, the United States Army experimented with a number of different machine gun designs, and the news reports of the tests got a young inventor thinking about, and eventually designing, a machine gun of his own.
His initial attempt was a primer-actuated light machine gun he submitted to the National Bureau of Standards, which had instructed him to make a model of it. That design became the basis for what would, eventually, become the M1 rifle—commonly called the “Garand” after its inventor, John Cantius Garand.
Garand, who became a Springfield Armory employee in 1919, had an extensive background in design and production. Once at Springfield, he was tasked with designing a semi-automatic shoulder rifle based upon his earlier machine gun. He worked on and improved the design for the next 17 years. The now-familiar M1 was finally adopted on January 9, 1936, the rifle was adopted as the “U.S. Rifle, Cal. .30, M1.”
Early production rifles used a “gas trap” instead of the later “gas port” design and initially did not perform as well as expected, but once the “bugs” were worked out, the rifle was favorably received. It was fed by an eight-round en-bloc clip that was ejected along with the last spent casing, locking the bolt back and leaving the receiver open for a fresh clip to be inserted. User-friendly, accurate and chambered for the powerful .30-’06 Sprg. cartridge, the M1 gained a reputation as a hardy and well-made service rifle.
World War II was the rifle’s baptism of fire, and it performed admirably. To a man, the G.I.s put their faith in their M1 rifles and took them from North Africa to Okinawa. Along the way, Garand made more improvements to the rifle based upon field experience and soldiers’ comments.
Although late to adopt the rifle, the Marines liked it, too, and found it well-suited for jungle fighting. America was the only country to equip its fighting men with a semi-automatic rifle as a standard shoulder arm. The venerability of the rifle was further established in the Korean War.
The M1 rifle is not without faults. At just under 10 lbs. it is heavy and the en-bloc clip does not allow for easy “topping off.” Because of those drawbacks, America sought a high-capacity, fully automatic rifle for individual soldiers. Reliability and accuracy were paramount, however, and the M1 was the measuring stick. What later became the M14 was based upon the M1.
Combined, Springfield Armory and Winchester Repeating Arms manufactured more than 4 million M1s during World War II. International Harvester and Harrington & Richardson manufactured them as well, and, during the Korean War, more than 500,000 were made.
The rifle is considered one of the finest ever produced by American armories. Its popularity is evidenced by its representation on the firing line at Camp Perry and other highpower rifle matches to this day. It is accurate, robust and its service record speaks for itself.
Disassembly
Disassembly of the unloaded M1 rifle begins by pulling the bolt rearward until it locks back. Visually inspect the chamber to ensure it is not loaded, then press down on the slide and follower while holding the operating rod and ease the bolt forward. Do this carefully or you will end up with a case of “M1 thumb”—a highly unpleasant condition!
Fig. 1
Once this is done, disassembly can begin. Pull rearward on the trigger guard (53) and then out and away from the stock. The entire trigger housing (54) and assembly will separate from the rifle (Fig. 1). Lift the receiver (44) and assembly away from the stock.
Disengage the follower rod (22) from the follower arm (20) by moving the rod toward the muzzle. Remove the rod and operating rod spring (40). Next, push out the follower arm pin (21) from the receiver’s left side. Then lift away the bullet guide (5),
follower arm and operating rod catch (39) (Fig. 2). Reach down into the receiver and lift out the slide and follower (46).
Fig. 2
Continue disassembly by pulling the operating rod (38) rearward until the rear surface of the handle is directly under the forward edge of the windage knob on the rear sight. Disengage the guide lug on the operating rod through the dismount notch on the receiver with upward and outward pressure on the handle of the operating rod (Fig. 3). The rod should now come free from the receiver. Remove the bolt (4) by grasping it and sliding it forward while lifting upward and outward with a rotating motion (Fig. 4).
Fig. 3
With a large, blunt screwdriver, unscrew and remove the gas cylinder lock screw (30). Unscrew and remove the gas cylinder lock (29). Next, remove the gas cylinder (28) by sliding it forward and off the barrel. If the gas cylinder is tightly attached, rap on the bayonet stud with a nylon hammer or piece of soft wood to loosen it. Do not burr or damage the internal splines. The front handguard (23) may then be moved forward and off the barrel.
This is all that is needed for basic cleaning. All other bolt and trigger housing disassembly and parts replacement should be done by a competent gunsmith. Reassembly of the M1 is in the reverse order.
A few precautions: The operating rod for the M1 has a bend that is intentional, and it should never be hammered on or straightened out. The crown of the operating rod should also be kept bright by using a solvent and nylon brush. Do not scrub with a metal brush or other harsh abrasive. The tolerances within the gas operating system are quite close and nothing should be used that can affect the system.
All operating parts should have a light coat of lubrication except the inside of the gas cylinder. This should be free of carbon deposits and other fouling, but should be kept dry.