Would You Drink Rain Water?

I heart you for quoting that.

 

Sure. Had some after mowing the lawn Saturday.

 

The guy on the right would.

 

I'd drink it if I didn't live in a city. I think I'd boil it first though.

I grew up on water from an underground river system. There's a spring down the road from the house where I lived, and to this day I have no problem drinking straight from it.

 

Drink surface water (lake, pond, puddle, river, stream, creek, rain barrel), without boiling? You can be lucky for years, but if you ever get the girardia parasite, you will regret it. As one of the afflicted once wrote "It's more than just a few unpleasant trips to the bathroom. Imagine feeling constantly that you need to go, but you can't posslibly have anything more inside you because you just went 5 minutes ago. It can feel like shards of glass turing around inside you, and you're weak and just want to lay down and sleep. But you won't sleep for long..." And the cure, which has to poison the parasite, gives you splitting headaches.

Be thirsty. Real thirsty.

 

The answer fella in Esquire addressed this very issue, though in which issue I can't remember. I read it the other night, though, and basically it said if you don't live near a nuclear power plant or a toxic waste dump, rain water is fine. Just make sure you collect it in a clean container. Once it lands on the ground, all bets are off.

TBF: FM21-20 has instructions for improvising a filter using your poncho, some sand and some rocks, which basically imitates nature's filtering system. I never tried, it, but it looked cool.

I've swallowed mouthfuls of lake water by accident, and it was nasty, but I don't recall getting sick from it. If you can't collect the rain water directly from the sky, a swift-moving source that is clear is your best bet.

 

Boiling it would probably be fine, as would running it through a Brita filter. Or, if you were Bear Grylls, just use a t-shirt as a filter for it.

 

There's a cool tool the size of half a pen with a light (UV I think) on the end of it sold at stores like REI. You swirl it around the glass for 30 seconds, as if you were mixing it, and it kills the bad stuff.

 

I once contracted giardia. It is, indeed, not a pleasant experience. I had the shits for about a month until someone at the CDC figured it out. To this day I have only one rule in my house: No cinnamon potpourri.

FM 3-05.7 is the Army's new survival manual. It does contain a water filtering system that uses t-shirts. Build a tripod from medium sticks and string triangles of t-shirt at different levels from top to bottom. Place dirt in each one to filter the water and place your water receptacle beneath it.

 

Wouldn't drink it from here... too many oil refineries spewing crap into the air. Sit me at the top of a mountain, and I'd drink it all day. I've drank plenty that washed down mountain creeks and streams, with no hesitation.