Water
The ability to carry and purify water is vital. You can live for about three weeks (max) without food, but people have died in less than one day without water, and three days is considered tops. The US Park Service, for example, started demanding every backpacker going into the lower Grand Canyon in summer carry at least one gallon of water per person in summer. They did this after several members of a church youth group died when their leader and several teenagers became deranged by thirst and walked off the side of a cliff. They had been walking in 100+ degree heat with no water for about half a day.
Don’t think that heat is the only time you really need water. Cold climates can drain you of water almost as fast. Remember seeing your breath condense on a cold day? That’s water from your body. Trust me on this one, dry cold can dry you out fast. Worse, people tend to not notice it’s happening so they end up more prone to dehydration, hypothermia, frostbite, and other unhappy situations. On top of that, you get a massive headache.
Another thing about cold climates, do not eat snow. It takes energy from the core of your body to warm it up, so at least melt it before you try to get it into your body. Melt it a little at a time, adding more snow as the last batch melts. If you pack a cup with snow, what tends to happen is the bottom inch or so melts, boils away without melting any more down, and you scorch your melting pan while wasting fuel.
The recommended minimum consumption for cold/mild weather is 2 quarts per person per day. Hot weather can be brutal, requiring 1 gallon / person /day. If you don’t have to piss but once a day, and/or your urine is dark yellow, you are getting dehydrated. Drink more water. Also, keep your water intake constant. If you get real dry and «slam» a large amount of water all at once, you can literally knock yourself unconscious.
One thing, you don’t know when or where things will start. One man told of needing his «bug-out bag» when his car gave out on a lonely road in upstate Michigan. He and his young daughter had to hike out, when he discovered an oversight — he had his bag, he had water purification, but he had no water and no source available for some time. Moral — the car gear gets 2 quarts of water, but remember to change the water periodically and DO NOT COMPLETELY FILL A CANTEEN IF YOU EXPECT FREEZING WEATHER DURING STORAGE. Remember, ice expands and a full canteen will be destroyed, so fill it about % full. If the canteen water is frozen, take 1 canteen and put it under your shell so your body heat can thaw it as you walk. NOTE: I inadvertently discovered a bit of trivia about Army canteens — they do survive freezing when full. If you look at one, one side is convex, the other concave. When a full canteen freezes, the concave side expands outward, preventing destruction.
Purification is the other issue. Biologically contaminated water is bad news. Acute Giardiasis or dysentery can kill you by dehydration, typhoid and cholera are no fun, and so on. The choice is filter or tablet. For the personal kits, the real choice is which tablet. Filters can go into car kits, but be aware that unless you are willing to carry some reasonably serious weight (7 pounds), none of the filters you find at the backpacking store will work on salt water, a consideration in coastal areas.
If you have to boil water for biological purification, the texts used to say ten minutes, then five minutes, now they just say get it to a rolling boil. Giardia cysts are destroyed long before that, but some viruses are more resistant. Also remember the boiling point of water drops as you gain altitude, so maybe 5 minutes at 5000 feet is not a bad idea.
Always get your water from the cleanest source possible.
One thing I’ve noticed about the purifiers, when they are in use there is no problem of keeping the inlet and outlet separated, but after you put them up, guess what — the inlet and at least some of its associated hose, which is still wet with contaminated water, can contaminate the outlet. Solution — carry a small ziploc bag. Before you consign the filter to its carry place, put the OUTLET into the bag and seal it as tight as you can.
Another thing about filters, pump them as dry as possible after you finish. Water left in there can start algae growing in some of them, and in all of them, if it’s cold enough, the water can freeze and crack the filter element. That means you get unfiltered water the next time you use it.
Water from a purifier tastes «bleah.» Real scientific description, I know, but it’s the only way I can describe it. There’s nothing wrong with it, it doesn’t have a lot of the things in it normally associated with public water supplies, and it also has no air in it. You can’t get the public water, but if you stop when the container is about half full, cap it and shake it vigorously, you can at least get oxygen into it. Me, I just cope.
If you have food but no water, do not eat. Metabolizing food requires water. Yes, I did repeat this.
Food
Always a subject near and dear to my heart. The standard advice is that survival food should be lightweight, low bulk, low fiber, and easily digestible. True, but even my car bag had a backpacker’s curry soup in it before I changed concepts (it’s now in the house kit.) Good food can brighten your outlook on even the most detestable situation. Just remember, any food you carry should take no more than 10 minutes to prepare. Longer than that and you risk using too much fuel in circumstances where it isn’t readily available.
If you are «on the road,» you are exerting yourself. The US Army has a base daily caloric intake of 2000 calories. Add 1000 calories if «engaged in heavy work» (such as wandering around for 8 or so hours with a pack on your back,) add 1000 calories for cold (not cool) weather, and yes, it’s cumulative. That’s 4000 calories for hiking in cold weather. That’s a lot. Some people report losing weight while consuming over 5,000 calories per day (then there are those who do well at 1500 calories a day.) On top of that, you have to keep enough vitamins in your diet, especially C, to avoid dietary deficiency diseases.
The base criteria for the food you pack initially for the road are low weight, low bulk, little packaging, lots of calories, and nutritional balance. This lets out most canned food — it weighs a bit, the packaging is bulky and not really light, and the «lite» stuff is about useless — you want calories. Face it, this isn’t an hour at the fitness center, it’s six to eight hours (or more) a day of serious exertion. Ramen noodles can be put into a ziploc if necessary and used as the base for a meal. Lipton noodle and rice dishes (in the bags) are terrific starting points. Get rid of useless packaging before you hit the trail — it’s weight and bulk you don’t need. It isn’t even good for starting fires in most cases. This is one case where the backpacking «Milkman» powdered milk is worth it — tastes like (and keeps like, after rehydrating, so use it fast) real 2% milk. No kidding. Very handy with the Lipton noodle dishes.
Oddly one of the things most touted as a survival food source is one of the worst in some ways — Army MRE’s. The entrees are nice, once you take them out of the cardboard box, but the full blown $6 (retail) package is bulky, heavy, and frankly mostly packaging. You get calories and nutrition, but the MRE was designed for long term storage, ease of manufacture, durability of packaging under field conditions, and resistance to contamination by CBR (Chemical, Biological, Radiological) agents. They aren’t so bad once you remove the heavy plastic cover and get rid of some of the other extra packaging (note the foil bag labeled «accessory packet A» or whatever is not extra, as you’ll discover when you open one,) but I’d rather have Mountain House than an MRE.
The food you start with won’t last forever. Comprehensive herbals are invaluable for the vitamin side of the situation, as they can tell you about the nutritional value. Snares, fishing, and/or hunting for deer and other medium to large game where feasible will be the order of the day, because long chases for small game are out — too much energy expenditure.
You do not need a lot of utensils and plates. I actually don’t carry a fork — a knife and spoon worked for literally thousands of years, a fork is a luxury item. I carry a plastic plate for the kid when he’s along, the wife eats out of the pot lid/frying pan, and I eat out of the pot. Saves a lot of cleanup. Freeze dried meals say you can reconstitute in the bag, saving even more cleanup, but the bags are prone to tip over, and it’s hard to mix everything well. There is a cheap plastic mug for soup or coffee that I marked half cup levels with a file, plus a sierra cup for those occasions I need two cups, like after you make a drink and want to measure water for the meal.
Cleanup after a meal is utterly different than it is at home. I «dry camp» a lot — that is, I establish camps where any available water is too far away to be used for washing. I can clean up after three people (myself included) with less that / pint of water, including rinse, and that may get less. In places with clean sand (a beach or desert,) you can just use sand to scour out the pots. I’m rarely this lucky (dirt just doesn’t seem to work, usually,) so I’ll use a small spatula to remove as much as I can, then pour maybe one inch of water into the pot, along with a little soap. That is all the water I use, or need, to adequately clean everything including utensils. It takes about as much to rinse. Go easy on the soap, you don’t need that much and soap is a laxative — bad news if you skip the rinse cycle. Don’t clean up near too camp, because the food you toss with the water will attract critters.
Speaking of attracting critters, raccoons, squirrels, chipmunks, and assorted other sundry similar critters have been known to knaw through a pack shell to get to the food, so either bring the pack into a tent with you or make an anti-critter container using a section of PVC pipe or something similar, being sure to cap both ends. They also sell bear-proof food containers, but they are somewhat small (600 cubic inches small, 900 c.i. large) and weigh a bit (3 pounds small, 5 pounds large.) They do, however, reportedly work. Also make great camp stools.
Many people expect to resupply themselves by going back into cities or towns to loot the local gro and market. You can try, but it could well be a dicey proposition. When food delivery stops, the food riots will hit everything that even looks like a store, with tremendous waste and destruction. Houses will be better, sorta, but be careful. Not everyone or everything will leave. Packs of wild dogs could be a particular hazard.
