It depends on where you saw the last person pissing in it at.

 

Upstream from where the Boy scout troupe is washing their socks.

When I go hiking in the Red River George I look for where the water is coming out of the ground or flowing from the rocks. I usually don't take any water with me and use a steripen or Potable Aqua Iodine Tablets for back up. But even before I would drink water straight from the stream I would find an old tin can or coke can and heat the water in it. All you have to do is get it to the point where it starts to boil then set the can in the stream to cool it off and you are good to go.

 

Haha this is funny. When i was a kid growing up in crestline i drank from creeks all the time. I dont remember getting sick... I think the best rule of thumb is to drink from rough water. You can boil water in almost anything. Even a plastic bottle, just dont let the flame touch it directly.

 

You can go to a lot of countries around the world and drink the same water that everyone in the city uses and you will spend a week on the bowl until your system is used to it.

 

boil or add a few drops of bleach to the water and you should be ok...I have a Katadyn Water Filter which is awesome!!

 

I gave the Alabama answer to that in the Beaver Fever thread. It is agricultural around here, and what isn't agricultural is wooded, and wooded means beaver and other critters. I see no reason to risk it when I can filter and boil.

 

just saying if theres no filters n shit to be had, i grew up hill country texad drank from rivers and creeks with no problems

 

me too, just not there

You can go to a lot of countries around the world and drink the same water that everyone in the city uses and you will spend a week on the bowl until your system is used to it.

or even across the country!

I would rather drink from a creek than the city water here by Mexico.
just saying

 

When drinking from creeks, I suggest digging close to the bank as fresh "clean" water will seep through the soil and be free of most paginates, foul and other icky things to worry about lol. If youre worried about filtering it even further, you can use your shirt or some sort of screen to put over the mouth of your cup, bottle or what ever you have to put water in and it will filter out large grains of dirt, leaves or w/e. It may not taste the best, but its at least cleaner than what you have in the creek.
If you want to gather from the creek, use your bottle or cup and face the mouth of it in the direction the water is flowing, it does the same filter effect, minus the "foul" that could be in the water as well.

 

Even fast running creeks and rivers......
if contaminants are in the water....they are in the water.

Find a sandy bank area and dig down until water seeps
into the hole and dip it out.....
filter it thru your shirt tail.

No guarantee that the water will be free of junk, but
the natural filtration from the sand will give you the best odds.

 

I drank from creeks here in WV aswell.. I think you have to make the choice on drinking by the water conditions that are present.. We all ways drank from the swiftest part of the creek. There were a couple of natural springs too that we gathered water from with no problems.

 

You have to consider that today we have indoor plumbing that treats our waste. After SHTF - it will be a luxury where it still exists. So, where does all of that untreated detritus go? Down hill. Whats at the bottom of a hill? A creek usually. Eventually the creeks will be full of the nastiest nasties of human population.

Cryptosporidium - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is my biggest fear.

If I needed water and had no filter, boil, disinfect ability, I would look to collect rain water or get it from a plant before ever putting my lips on creek water. And pond water? Nay!

Look at the Salt River in Phoenix. Every summer the flow slows because its a freakin' desert and fed by snow melt waaay up stream. People like to tube the river and it seems like every other year we get some case of flesh eating bacteria out of the Salt River from a tuber that got a cut in the water. Too many people, too close, too little water and too many stagnate pools of festering disease. Expect this to be common after a large event.

 

I always assume groundwater is contaminated if it hasn't been filtered or boiled. There's no way in hell I would drink it unless I was a day without fluid and had no hope of finding clean water in the near future. It's not worth risking illness in a SHTF scenario.

If you have access to a container, sand and have a way to build a fire to create charcoal then you can fashion a water filter

Practical Primitive | Skill of the Month: Improvised Charcoal Water Filter

 

I carry coffee filters in my bob for coarse filtering.
Just remember, don't drink from the eddys or standing pools

 

We just ordered some "life straws" they are a personal water purifying system. Ordered from Eartheasy.com. They are a 1 by 7 inch plastic straw with a filter in them that you drink through. Saw them on the Outdoor channel used by hunters to SAFELY drink out of streams while hunting. In the ad I watched they were drinking out of mud puddles, creeks etc. Haven't used them yet so I can't give them a review, yet.

 

they are 12.00 at wal mart bought a couple tonight!

 

Ive been drinking from creeks all the time when ive been hiking.. only had a problem once and then i had to stay in bed with a skyhigh fever for two weeks.. but later i found out that there was a bunch of cabins that emptied their garbage in there..

 

... the swiftest part of the creeks here in Oregon, too ...

 

With out a doubt i have got "Beaver Fever" from drinking contaminated water, even in the remote wilderness of British Columbia Canada. Of coarse its not from garbage and pollutants, but from animal piss and shit. Feces and urine will float down rivers, waterfalls, and creeks. Always boil your water ( inless in certain cases like being really close to a glacier ) Filters and iodine tablets destroy the taste of the water which is the minerals in it.

-Anthony

 

I drank from ice cold rivers in the mountain of Colorado. Hard running streams. But you need to take everything in moderation. A quick sip or two, probably ok. But any long term intake should be boiled, or purified, cleaned if you have filtration.

 

My family and I became interested in prepping a few years ago and actually decided to become distributors for some emergency water filter products we believed in. It's great for me because my friends and I go camping several times a year and I get to use one of our products, this water filter bag, to filter water directly from the creek. It can filter up to 10 gallons an hour and the water tastes great. I fill it up with creek water, hang it from a tree branch, and we drink from it for the entire weekend.

 

fastest moving part of the water. and I always say - never drink water that has not been treated in some way. at least boil it.

 

I grew up on a farm, with that being said I spent alot of my spare time exploring ing the woods and such, one thing I learned from that is how to get a drink without a water faucet. Living in rolling hills country you will find wet spots on a hillside with bedrock exposed the water will seep out above it. Make youself a small indent in the soil and clean water wil seep into it. No treatment necesary in most cases..

 

I suggest that after u boil water since it may taste flat/stale. Just shake it up for a few second to re oxegynate it n it tastes a lot better.