A Sensitive Survival Topic: Hygiene

Any number of short to long-term disasters could leave you without power and/or running water. The result is a serious but difficult topic in prepping: hygiene. Without running water, using your toilet becomes problematic. And showering or bathing is no longer a daily routine that is taken for granted. Without power, you won’t have hot water from the water heater for washing pots, pans, dishes, glasses, or for washing hands.

The ideal solution is to have a home with its own well, its own septic system, and a solar and/or wind source of off-grid power. Then you will be all set. The next best solution is to move in with someone who has that type of home and resources. If these two solutions don’t work for you, read on.

Suppose that you no longer have a source of running water or power. What are your options?

Fortunately, the typical toilet plumbing does not require electricity. It works by the force of water and gravity. What you do need, to flush the toilet without running water, is plenty of water (a few gallons at least) for each flush. The water need not be drinkable (i.e. potable), but you need about 5 gallons per person per day for flushing (about 1 flush per person per day). Some more efficient toilets might flush with less water, but you are always better off with more water.

What this means is that, in addition to your stored drinking water and some water purification equipment, you also need a source of non-drinkable (non-potable) water. You might collect some rainwater, using the rain spouts on your house. Be advised that collecting rainwater is actually illegal in some localities. There are some commercial products that capture water from rain gutters and store it in a large barrel (about 50 gallons). One of these on each side of the house is 100 gallons, but only about 20 flushes.

You could use water from a swimming pool. Or you might want to have a couple of very large water storage container, very large, kept outdoors for just such an eventuality. But the amount of water needed, say for a month or two without running water, gives you an idea of the scope of the problem.

If this type of situation continues long term, you are going to need another approach, but I’m not sure what will work. You could set up an outhouse, or any type of outdoor latrine. There are few other options. Running water is difficult to replace as a part of modern comfortable living. If you are without food, you can grow your own food. If you are without drinking water, you can purify the gallon or so of water you need each day. But without running water, long-term, your options are all not very good.

Bathing is another problem when you lack running water. The amount of water needed to shower or fill a bathtub to a shallow extent is at least 5 to 10 gallons. Washing with less water than that is undesirable. You also need water for washing your hands. You can use alcohol-based hand cleanser to a limited extent, to kill bacteria. Eventually, you need to actually wash off dirt and grime. So again the situation requires a substantial amount of water on a monthly basis if some disaster deprives you of running water. An AquaPod Kit holds about 65 gallons of water in your bathtub (in a plastic bag, essentially). But then you tub is unavailable for use in bathing/showering.

Camping supply stores often have outdoor showering devices that use a limited amount of water, and which could conceivably be used indoors, when you lack running water. I’ll mention a couple of these devices, but I have not tested or evaluated any of them.

Zodi Battery-Powered Shower — battery power means that you are not relying only on gravity to deliver a stream of water.

Stearns Outdoor SunShower 6.0 — this type of shower is ‘heated’ by the sun striking the black bag of water, meaning that the water is at best warm, but not really hot. It takes 3 hours in the sun, at least, to warm the water.

I’m omitting the more expensive devices, such as propane-powered showers with point-of-use water heating built-in. I’m skeptical that this type of device is worth the expense.

Another issue raised by a lack of running water is cleaning dishes and cooking utensils.This type of hygiene problem can endanger your health. If food containers and utensils are not cleaned thoroughly, they can grow bacteria. Your next meal could give you food poisoning, not due to the food, but due to the bacteria on improperly-cleaned containers and utensils. And if you don’t have the power to provide cooking heat, then your food will not be sterilized by cooking, worsening the problem.

The conclusion that I would draw from the above considerations, is that you cannot survive, with good health and a decent minimum standard of living, without either running water or a reliable source of large quantities of water.

My estimate of per person per day water needs, at a bare minimum:

1 gallon for drinking and cooking
5 gallons for flushing
10 gallons for bathing
5 gallons for cleaning cooking containers and utensils

Over the course of one month, this adds up to over 600 gallons of water per person. There is just no good way to store enough water for a family of four in order to cope with a medium or long-term disaster. If you are without town/city water for an indefinite period of time, you are in dire straits.

And this is another reason why rural living is ultimately the best preparation for long-term disaster scenarios. If you have a well, a septic system, and enough off-grid power to run the well pump and a few appliances/lights, you have a resource that is essentially unavailable to most suburbs and all cities. If you live in an apartment in a city, and you have no running water, you cannot stay in that location long-term. So if there is a long-term disaster that affects a large region, people will soon be forced to move away from the cities. There is not enough land to grow enough food in a city. There is not enough water for drinking or hygiene. Maybe you could survive in a suburb, a somewhat rural suburb. But I think you are better off in a more rural area.

By Thoreau

What If Electricity Was Only For Rich People?

image – mendotadakota.com

What if electrical power in the home was only for rich people? What about heat? What about running water? What if that divide between the rich and the poor could be delineated by who had the ability to turn on light at the flick of a switch and who did not?

Congratulations if you are world-aware enough to have noticed that this was a trick question: The answer? Electricity, globally speaking, currently is only for rich people. Don’t be shocked. According to World Energy Outlook 2015, an astounding 1.2 billion people are without access to electricity and more than 2.7 billion people rely on the traditional use of biomass for cooking, which causes harmful indoor air pollution.

In the developed world, many people take electricity for granted. It’s simply there when you flick the switch – and so we have come to be highly dependent on it. We don’t think too often about the simple fact that an event like an unusually large solar flare could wipe out electrical power, casting us back about 200 years. We’d have no refrigeration, no transportation, no climate control and no lights. But in that situation, we’d all be in the same boat. No matter how wealthy you are, any unprotected electrical items would still be useless and we would be in utter chaos.

Across the world, the prices of electricity are rising dramatically. Customers have been warned that they will face increases. Smart meters have been installed nearly everywhere. Many places are instituting time-of-day pricing, making it only affordable to do your laundry in the middle of the night. The UK has announced that people can expect rolling blackouts beginning sometime next year and their power costs have risen 31% since 2010.

Part of the reason Americans will face higher prices is President Obama’s War on Coal. (In his own words he promised to bankrupt the coal industry.) If Obama can’t close down power producers through the front door, he does it through the back door, via the EPA, who are passing laws to reduce our “carbon footprint” and thus raise the prices on power. Obama has shut down 8 coal mines across 3 states, and he and his buddies at the EPA have plans to scale back production at over 200 coal-powered plants.

The United Nations carbon taxes have forced many areas across the globe into power monopolies. While small companies will go out of business struggling to meet the new regulations, General Electric has received a waiver, exempting them from meeting these new standards.

In providing the likes of GE with a waiver, the White House is greasing the skids for a giant consolidation of the energy industry, shutting down competition and creating artificial scarcity – thereby driving up costs for the American people.

The deliberate deindustrialization of America has nothing to do with protecting the environment. Whereas the competitiveness of America’s energy industry is being crippled by the EPA and the White House,China and Mexico are building dozens of new power plants every year which fall well short of the clean-burning technology standards adhered to in the United States.

This is about the implementation of theUN’s Agenda 21, which operates under the guise of “sustainable development” yet is clearly part of a stealth agenda to centralize control over energy, bankrupting America in the process as part of the move towards a crony system of one world governance.

We are facing dramatic global increases in the prices of food, water, and power. This will serve to widen the divide between the rich and the poor and effectively end the middle class.

In Jackson County, Alabama, for example, the price of water bills has quadrupled, making an average monthly water bill over $300. Lizzie Bennett writes that many residents no longer have running water in their homes because of these exorbitant bills.

“Many people have opted to buy drums of water from petrol stations rather than pay their ever increasing bills. They use these drums of water for drinking, washing and in their portable toilets which can be seen dotting backyards across the area, the modern version of the outhouse. They pay a fee to a sanitation company to remove the waste. It’s cheaper than letting the city take care of it.”

A popular culture comparison would be with the movie, The Hunger Games. In the movie, citizens of the Districts were relegated to cooking over open fires and lighting their rooms with candles. No one had transportation or power. They were not allowed to hunt to supplement their meager food allotments and in the heroine’s District, they were not allowed to use the coal the area was rich with. Uniformed “peacekeepers” patrolled the districts to ensure that the rules were strictly adhered to and that the excruciating poverty was the standard for all residents.

However, when the main characters went to the Capitol, a mere train ride away, it was another world, with advanced technology, power at the touch of a button and enough food at each meal to feed a family for a week. The Capitol glowed with industry, cleanliness, and light and the difference of living standards was like the difference between night and day.

The increased prices of modern day necessities can be used as leverage for many types of governmental control. Consider Agenda 21, right from the website of the UN Department for Sustainable Development.

Agenda 21 is a comprehensive plan of action to be taken globally, nationally and locally by organizations of the United Nations System, Governments, and Major Groups in every area in which human impacts on the environment.

To make sure that’s totally clear: A plan of action. Got it. To be taken globally…okay – everyone must participate. In every area in which human impacts on the environment….yep, that covers everyone and everything in the entire world. It’s a way to take over the world that sounds so warm and fuzzy that people will pay money to get in on it!

So in true Agenda 21 fashion, wiping out power to outlying regions rich with their own natural resources will be a great way to corral the hungry cold masses into the megacities that have been designed for us. According to alternative journalist Susanne Posel, “Humans are now being compared to invasive species that commandeer territory, disburse indigenous wildlife and destroy the planet in the process…The move out of rural areas and densification of urbanized centers is being pushed in the American mainstream media as the answer to the devastating effects of humans on the environment. The elimination of suburban areas as compact cities become inundated with more people, there is a need to reinvent these centers to accommodate these swelling numbers.”

Not only will the loss of affordable utilities help round people up geographically, it will perpetuate a massive die-off as people living in homes that were not designed to function without electrical power succumb to many different fates. People will freeze to death in their homes in the winter, burn to death or die of carbon monoxide poisoning as they try to keep warm in homes not designed with proper chimneys and ventilation, perish of food poisoning as they consume items that have been left unrefrigerated, die from being unable to keep life-saving medications at the proper temperature to prevent spoilage or contract diseases like typhus from improper sanitation when water no longer flows from the taps.

So, what can we do to maintain our independence as the powers that be try to return us to serfdom through limiting our access to affordable necessities?

First, you must learn to provide for many of your necessities alone. Grow food, join a co-op, raise chickens and rabbits. Even a small salad garden in a kitchen window can help you to offset high food prices.

Second, reduce your dependence on the power grid. Use rain barrels to collect water, direct the gray water from your washing machines to reservoirs, hang your clothes to dry, and use solar lighting whenever possible.

Find other ways to stay warm. This can be difficult if you rent but it can still be done. Consider making modifications to allow for the use of portable wood heaters, look into different types of camping heaters and make your plans and purchase your supplies well before you need them. Learn how to safely store fuel for these secondary devices. Invest in battery operated C02 monitors (and extra batteries). Get sleeping bags with a warmth rating for low temperatures, consider a small tent where you and family members can sleep in your living room to pool body heat, and stock up on cold weather clothing like hats, fingerless gloves, long underwear and heavy sweaters. Find ways to insulate and separate one main living area off from the rest of the house by closing doors, hanging curtains in doorways, etc.

Watch the prices of your utilities. As the prices begin to rise, more and more people will be unable to pay their bills and eventually their power will be shut off. Check your bill each month and as prices increase, use less power. Redefine necessities. You can hand wash your clothing, cook on a woodstove or outdoor grill and can foods to preserve them instead of relying on a large chest freezer. None of these are the way things are commonly done these days, but if you can manage to keep power on for the most basic necessities, like running the pump for your well, running a refrigerator, and maybe powering up a laptop, you’ll be living in luxury in comparison to the neighbors who now have no power, no heat, and no running water.

Prep, prep and then prep some more. The end of the American way of life is upon us. Stock up on beans, bullets and bandaids. If you’re new to the idea of prepping, check out some sites like Ready Nutrition (especially the 52 Weeks to Preparedness Series), Survival Blog, The Survival Mom, and SHTFplan. The clock is ticking.

Instead of a huge, life-changing calamity, consider that it may be the culmination of many small events, rising prices and lower incomes, and the deliberate erosion of our self-sufficiency by those who would control us that cause TEOTWAWKI. (The End Of The World As We Know It)

By Kimberly Paxton – www.dailysheeple.com