Yeah, we’re diving into water! There has to be a joke in there somewhere…

Water is ridiculously important in a survival situation. Your body can survive up to 3 weeks (give or take) without food, but only 3 days (give or take) without water. Not to knock all those Clif bars I’m constantly eating and refreshing in my bug-out bags, but without water, you’re pretty much screwed.

Easy answer, right? Just carry a bunch of water in your bug-out bag! No. That is not the answer. Water is unfortunately quite heavy, so even if you have a good source of it, it’s a hassle to carry around.

The key is to carry items that help you purify water. And I’ve got some ideas.

You might recall that I love redundancy in bug-out bags, so of course I like to have multiple ways of purifying water. I used to have some Life Straws, which are a great option, but then I learned about these little water purifiers from Sawyer that take up even less room and don’t need to be replaced as often.

The way it works is, you have two roll-up plastic bags: one for holding dirty water, and the other for holding clean water. You put dirty water in the ‘dirty’ bag, and then squeeze it through the filter into the ‘clean’ bag. And voila! Clean water!

I put one filter and two roll-up bags in each of my bug-out bags, and they barely take up any room. I also included the attachments that come with the filter, which take up a little more room, but there’s a little tool to backflush the filter and clean it that seems important. (Let me know in the comments if you think I could skip the attachments.)

If you’ve read my other posts, you know I like redundancy. (I also like redundancy.) So in each of my bags, there’s a little bottle of water purification tablets. Make sure to read the label carefully and know exactly what the tablets can (and can’t) eliminate from your water supply.

And when in doubt…boil! Boiling water kills viruses, bacteria, and parasites. The CDC put together a cute handout explaining the differences among the three methods (boiling, disinfecting, and filtering), so you can check that out too.

For carrying water, in addition to the roll-up bags, I also have a 40oz single-walled metal water bottle in each bag that I attach to the outside so it doesn’t take up too much room. I got single-walled so that I can boil water directly in the bottle if needed (I also have a couple little 20oz pots for that, pictured in the Food deep dive).

That’s what I have for water!