Doomsday Survival Series - City Living (Part Two)

(This is part two of three of  Doomsday Survival Series - City Living.)

Water

Clean drinking water is no laughing matter.  In a harsh environment, you're unlikely to survive more than a few days without it.  Clean water in an urban environment will be worth more than all the gold buried in your backyard.  While yes, you can take your neighbors' water (see suggestions about tribute in Part 1), if you take too much they'll die and therefore stop contributing to your food supply.  You can otherwise use a variety of methods to get clean drinking water.


Water purifiers - I have mixed feelings on water purifiers.  They aren't all rated to remove viruses and the tiniest of parasites - basic point here is to do your homework before buying one.  Also, some of the purifiers are more labor intensive than others.  If you're low on food, consider that you'll be burning precious calories to get your water clean while less laborious methods exist.

Note:  As a general rule, I don't recommend buying any survival gear if it means doing things like oh, getting a second mortgage or selling your children on the black market.  Live in the now, man.

Boiling - Our friends at the CDC recommend boiling water for at least one minute before declaring it safe to drink.    I also highly recommend building a makeshift filter to clean the larger particulate matter out of your water before boiling.  Worst case scenario - use a shirt.  Boiling isn't always practical, though, especially when fleeing zombies or roving gangs, so you'll need to consider backup methods.

Chemical treatment - I'm hesitant to mention using chemicals to purify your water supply, but only because you're not likely to find a re-supply after Doomsday.  Still, this basically comes down to having a supply of iodine or chlorine tablets.  Each tablet purifies a given amount of water - I think water purified with chlorine tablets tastes better, while using iodine theoretically is known to kill more diseases and such.  Some people may also have a reaction to water purified with iodine - recommend finding out now if you're one of them...unless you want to give up on apocalypse living early on in the game. (but if that's the case, why are you reading pseudo-survival strategies?)

Other methods of getting mostly clean water exist - these are among the more practical.  Still, you should also consider collecting rainwater and gathering water from condensation.  I highly recommend a secondary purification method for rainwater, and I should point out that water collected from plant condensation has a tendency to taste...well, like plants.  Also, your victims...err, neighbors might not take kindly to you collecting condensation from the plants in their gardens, and that might also impact your food supply.