Tips and Tricks: Water Filtering

At some point in time, you may find yourself needing to filter your own water. Whether it’s because you’re lost in the middle of nowhere or whatever. Hopefully you won’t ever have to come into this situation, but you never know. My characters are in the situation where they constantly have to filter their own water. It’s not like it is today. So in my research to figure out some ways, I came a cross a few methods:

1st method using a colander and milk jug:

-Plastic colander
-Saw
-1/2 gallon milk jug
-Caulking gun
-Caulk
-Real charcoal
-Pocket knife

This method is assuming you have these items. Not everyone will have a saw or caulking gun/caulk, etc. If you do happen to, what you do is cut the bottom and top off the milk jug. Measure out sections on the colander that fit the top and bottom of the cut milk jug. You’ll be placing the colander section in the bottom of the milk jug and use the caulk to glue it in place. It’ll seal the edges and fasten it to the bottom.Once this is done, you’ll then fill the jug with small chunks of charcoal, then place a colander section on top of the milk jug and caulk that into place. When this is dry, you can then start filtering the water.

2nd method using the 3-step water filter:

-A tripod made out of wood
-4 buckets
-Grass
-Sand
-Charcoal

Once you have a tripod built, however which way, you’ll need to puncture holes at the bottom of three of the buckets then string them all together. Once you’ve hung these from the tripod, you can start filling the buckets. (Note that if you don’t have buckets, you can use plastic jugs or soda bottles. You’ll need to somehow tie a piece of porous cloth at the bottom of these however.) If your buckets are stackeable, you may not have to hang them from a tripod.

From the top, in the first bucket, you’d fill it with grass (although be careful with this because the grass may not be as clean as it should. There may be eggs from insects, for instance. You could, instead, fill it with gravel). In the second bucket, fill this with sand, and in the last, charcoal.

In the last bucket, you’ll collect the water that will be draining through the 3 filters. To ensure the filters didn’t miss anything, you can boil the water you capture.

What other ways do you know of to filter water when you have limited supplies?

Tips and Tricks: Natural Band-Aids

Image of Giant Puffball (Calvatia gigantea) by Anemoneprojectors

What would you do if you were wounded and lost in the middle of no where without a medical kit? How would you treat it? Use cobwebs! I learned this tip earlier this week from Tamara Morgan and had to Google to learn more about it. Apparently, you place cobwebs over the wound, then sprinkle some hot water on it so that it can mold, and set it to the affected area. When you’ve done this, find a puff ball spore (some kind of non-poisonous mushroom) and sprinkle it over the cobweb.

This will act as a natural band-aid and it works because you’re lacing the cobwebs with fungus-grown penicillin. Kind of cool!

Tips and Tricks: Natural Pain Relieving Medicines

My characters are often getting hurt, but in Not Quite Dead, there isn’t any kind of the painkillers we have now available to them. They don’t exactly have any Tylenol on hand. Because of that, I had to look elsewhere to a more natural means (other than making aspirin out of willow bark). Other kinds of natural pain medicines:

1. When dealing with body pain, ginger can be an beneficial. It’s believed that the ginger’s oils and phenol compounds are responsible for relieving pain.

2.  In ancient Egyptian times, garlic was routinely given to asthmatics and those suffering from bronchial-pulmonary problems.

3. I often have joint pain in my hip and headaches. I didn’t know this but apparently, a bowl of cherries can help arthritic pain and chronic headaches. Research reveals that anthocyanins, a compound in cherries that give them their red colour, are anti-infllammatories 10x stronger than ibuprofen and aspirin.

4. Stomach issues? If you suffer from irritable bowel syndrome, 18 ounces of fish (like salmon, sardines, tuna, mackerel, trout, and herring) weekly can help ease it. Onions can also help with digestive problems. Or, cook with coriander, a spice said to have a cooling effect. You could also make a tea with coriander for stomach and urinary problems.

5. Relax painful muscles with peppermint. Soak in a bath with peppermint drops in the water and soak for three times a week. The warm water will relax your muscles and the peppermint oil will soothe nerves.

Do you have other natural pain relieving tips? Do you find them as effective as over the counter drugs?

Tricks and Tips: The Tampon Survival Tool

I saw this awhile ago and admit I’d never thought about using tampons as a survival tool before. It’s not something that most people would probably think to use one for, but, if you’re lost in the middle of nowhere, it might come in handy. Now, my characters won’t be using a tampon at all for survival, but I thought it was cool that anyone could use.

Uses:

1. Medical-Since tampons are designed to be ultra-absorbent, they can make a good bandage. All that you need to do is open the tampon up and tape it over the wound as dressing.

2. Filter Water- I’m not quite sure about this one but apparently, you can use a tampon as a crude water filter (although it won’t filter out biological, chemical or heavy metals). But, what you can do is shove the tampon into the neck of a bottle and filter water through and THEN boil the water. To see a set of picture instructions on how to do this, visit Art of Manliness.

3. Fire Starter- Now this is what I would expect more than the other uses. Cotton makes a great tinder and when you pull the cotton fibers of a tampon apart, you can easily start a fire with it. If you’re careful, you can use one tampon to create 3 or 4 fire-starting tinder bundles.

4. Make a Wick- Again, at the Art of Manliness (there’s great pictures!), use the string on a tampon as a wick. He used rendered animal fat in a mussel shell he found. It burns for about 20 mins. According to the author, pine sap can also work.

5. Something I really thought the author from the article mentioned that I wouldn’t have thought of, is using the applicator part of the tampon to create a container to retain water. He used a stump or piece of a log and then blew through the applicator to intensify the hot coals to burn a cavity. It took him about 30 minutes to create a cavity large enough to hold 2 cups of water.

6.Waterproof case- Tampons come in a waterproof package/sleeve. This makes a good resource for keeping items you want dry in (i.e. matches, tinder). Just make sure to tie the open end closed.

What other things can you create with a tampon? It’s an interesting article. The author talks about using the tampon as a straw, blow dart, cordage, and fishing bobber.