Building up your water stockpile

At American Family Survival, you’ll hear us often talk about water to the point you’d think they weren’t making any more of it. Living in a first world country, it’s difficult to fully appreciate how difficult potable water is to come by – we’re talking clean, drinkable water here, not some random pathogen filled surface water. In fact, clean water is a major factor behind what makes the difference between first world countries – and the rest of the world.

Stockpiling water is an essential prepper task, so essential that we’ve decided to share it with you first. It may not be as sexy as long range shooting, starting fires, or making improvised splints out of paracord, but it’s one of the few things that , when absent, will absolutely spell the death of your family in three days or less. So pardon us in advance for beating you over the head with the water topic – we do it because it’s important.

If you’ve gone to that kitchen sink and seen clear water flowing as long as you can remember, you’re probably wondering what might cause the flow of water to stop in the first place. Here are a few things:

• Sewage leaks: Once in a great while, an environmental catastrophe occurs of epic proportions. Sewage has occasionally found its way inside the water supply over the past few decades. Some spills have been minor, while others have been like the monstrous spill in North Carolina in 1995, in which a hog sewage lagoon burst and spilled 25 million gallons worth of liquefied hog manure into a nearby river that was used as a water supply.
• Storms: Heavy downpours occasionally bring flash floods, which overwhelm sewers and sometimes cause a backup of contaminated water into the water supply, resulting in boil alerts.
• Terrorism: The nation’s water supply is poorly guarded (if guarded at all in some places), and is ripe for a terrorism event. Remember, the mere claim by some terrorist group that they have intentionally contaminated the water will result in mass water shutoffs, whether the water is actually contaminated or not.
• Weather and natural events: Earthquakes, tornadoes and hurricanes all wreak havoc upon the local water supply. Whether it’s individual holding tanks and equipment that gets destroyed, or whether it’s debris and detritus that gets blown into the reservoirs, the water system is highly susceptible to weather events.

Most people have no idea where their water comes from, or even where to get more should there be a crisis. Of course, trying to purchase water after a disaster will be downright impossible, since it’s one of the first commodities to disappear from shelves. So how do you develop a strategy to keep water on hand so that you can buy your family several days of clean water during a disaster? Read on.