Water

>>997132
If it's clear and flowing quickly and you can get water from the middle of the channel 9.99/10 times you're going to be goddamned fine

if it has fish in it, good chance its at least moderately clean

if it's brown it's probably just clay, so you'll just want to filthy that with a towel

what you mainly want to look for is stagnation, dark or oily spots of water, a total lack of life, awful smell, etc

would you eat out of a trash can? just use common sense

>>997141
filter that with a towel* not filthy lol


also those lifestraws are totally awful and worthless you'll strain your neck muscles looking like a faggot trying to get 3 ounces of water

Filters have been around for decades and have been used by tens of thousands of hikers all over the backcountry. I've drunk fucking green insect water through a Sawyer and was fine. Please don't act like water in the backcountry is some unsolved issue. Filters work and are what people normally use. The lifestraw isn't a very good one though.

How did LifeStraw convince people that they invented the first wilderness water filter?

>>997145
That sawyer mini filter for 20 bucks at walmart does the job just as good as any expensive filter and maybe even better

Although I only bring it along if im hiking in the south

The water out west is all crystal clear snow melt flowing at 30 mph soooo.... yeah. Cleaner than the shit I drink at my house.

well a long time ago the water wasn't all ruined.

>>997147
Muh save the poor africans

>>997148
I used to think that filtering was kind of silly out west in clear, flowing water too. Then one day I saw a moose taking a giant piss in a river, maybe 30 yards upstream from me as I was collecting some water. From then on, because I don't like the idea of drinking moose urine, even diluted, I've been happy to filter my water.

Is a filter always necessary? Of course not. But being confident that your water is clean is worth the effort (in my opinion).

if survival shows on the discovery channel have taught me anything, its that you WILL DIE from deadly micro organisms found in all natual water sources unless you crudely boil said water in a a makeshift container like snake skin, animal stomach or a hat and drink it while its still warm and mixed with soot and ash. Alternatively squeezing the moisture out of elephant shit or drinking your own urine are better options than drinking from water in a stream.

plebs and their filters, have fun dying shill

>>997132
Depend on the source. I know a guy who did the whole PCT without filtering his water, but that's all snowmelt. Florida swampwater is another story entirely.

>>997170
>implying moose piss makes you sick

Do you bring hand sanitzer for every time you touch dirt?

>>997210
700 miles of the pct are desert and the sources can be tepid stagnant dirty puddles with many miles between the next source. its not even about trying not to get sick its about not drinking fucking grit and mosquito larvae. after kennedy meadows you dont really need to filter anything though, i agree. even if you dont always use its, its nice to have something when all you can find are cesspools

>>997170
>because I don't like the idea of drinking moose urine, even diluted, I've been happy to filter my water

You are still drinking moose urine. Why can't you admit that

>>997217
You melt the snow in the desert dumbass. That's what my friend did.

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>>997245
>snow
>desert

idk if srsly or not

>>997255
desert means no plants, it however very well have snow. high mountain and arctic deserts for example.

>>997148
>>>997145
>That sawyer mini filter for 20 bucks at walmart does the job just as good as any expensive filter and maybe even better
>Although I only bring it along if im hiking in the south
>The water out west is all crystal clear snow melt flowing at 30 mph soooo.... yeah. Cleaner than the shit I drink at my house.


I'm another sawyer mini user, but since I read How to Shit in the Woods I've always filtered even in the western mountains. She talks about how backpackers have spread giardia up into the farthest extremes where critters have picked it up. Great read if you like that sort of thing and it's ten bux.

How to Shit in the Woods, 3rd Edition: An Environmentally Sound Approach to a Lost Art https://www.amazon.com/dp/1580083633/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_8Qp-ybNJYHV4M

/not an affiliate, can't be in my state.

>>997260
bruh have you ever even been to southern california? nice b8

>>997260
Most deserts have lots of water most people don't know that or maybe they changed the definition of desert again

>>997261
>Corporate environmentalism
>Buy my book to convince you to buy more stuff to save the planet

>>997303
pdf that shit illegally. who pays for analog books anymore

>>997132
>how did ancient people get their water
They drank from streams and rivers, and the average life expectancy was 25-30 years old.

I don't look at my filter as a necessity, I look at it as a nice bit of insurance.

I'm not against drinking straight from a source, especially if it's a nice swift moving stream or some fresh snowmelt. But if I have any doubts about it, I'll use a filter.

I'd rather be over cautious once in a while than shitting my guts out every half mile.

Sodium dichloroisocyanurate tabs. They should cost almost nothing, the chemical is massively produced and consumed by industry.

Drop a appropriate number of tablets into a flask, shake, keep it closed for 30 minutes to kill everything with chlorine, pour the water into an open bowl and wait for chlorine compounds to dissociate. If you don't want to wait, use a pinch of other suitable chemical to react with leftover hypochlorous acid (baking soda?), or use a charcoal filter.

>>997516
a couple drops of bleach from an eye dropper bottle is like 1000x less complicated and you probably already own bleach and an old eye dropper. use what u got and save the 8 bucks

>>997484
Ancient people were a bit smarter than that. Local population shared the experience about their habitat, and travelers used local guides who knew, among other things, drinking water conditions.

>>997520
> 8 bucks
Erm, more like 25-50 cents for 10 tablets.

>>997151
Animals have always shit and died in water. Doesn't matter the millennium.

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>>997132
So I caught flak for saying this shit on some bullshit thru hiker thread. Now everyone on this thread seems to primarily agree wit me. Anyways, here's my two cents.

I thru'd the AT a few years ago. I started w/ aqua mira- that got punctured a few days in, so I switched to iodine I found in a hiker box. I never felt super on board with treating water. As you said, humans have been drinking the shit straight from streams much longer than we've known about the existence of ionic compounds and micro-organisms.

Anyways, I slowly tapered off with the iodine. Nothing super empiric, but I'd put a little less every time. I would carry 2L and I always had my iodine on hand, but never used it for the 2nd half of the hike. I would only drink from sources close to the tops of mountains, I preferred ones where I could see it bubbling out of the ground. Never drank water that was downhill of roads or anywhere near cow pastures. Just use your common sense.

Now my gut is a fine tuned machine. I can eat a lot of things that'll make other people sick. I almost never have diarrhea. I think it's just a matter of populating the microbiome in your gut with the right things and teaching your gut to be stronger.

>>997484
Also, only about 25% of children survived to adulthood. The life expectancy of 25-30 is usually only counting humans who survived to age 10. Most humans died before that.

>>997549
threads get populated by different people and people will gravitate to certain threads, so dont be surprised that you read conflicting opinions. theres a pretty good spread between farmers, busch-craft fags, thru hikers and wannabes on /out/

My buddy got the shits so bad he had to quit the AT in penn for a couple weeks in 2015. He never filters or treats ever but to this day doesnt blame water at all for his sickness, he claims it was from signing hiker logs and stuff cause people dont wash their hands. I personally think he probably drank some sketch ass water knowing him

>>997554
And as a result, we're less likely to die from giardia than they were. I don't see the problem here, it's evolution, and standing in the way of the natural order only reintroduces weaknesses into the genepool; die for the future of humanity, you selfish prick.

>>997303

I'll have to track down my copy, but most of it was about the sitting, specifically in the grand Canyon since she was a guide there. Like
>>997397
Said you should find a pdf of it since it's been out close to 40 years.

>>997170
Because it's sterile, and I like the flavor

>>997556
I mean, it's entirely possible he drank from a shitty source. While I was in NJ entirely and large parts of NY and PA I only drank from man-made sources. Too close to civilization the entire time for me to feel ok drinking the water with or without treatment.

That said, there's a million reasons why he could've gotten intestinal issues. I was laid out for 4 days in a shelter in Massachusetts w/ what I in hindsight think was lyme's disease. That was crazy, didn't realize how long I'd been out til I caught my friends. Thought I was out only a night or something shorter.

>>997546
What a noob

>>997211
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giardiasis

>>997698
>he isnt immune to giardia

Hows it feel to grow up in the suburbs

>>997484
This and there wasn't as much people to pollute the planet, they also weren't drilling for oil, creating plastic products that pollute waterways, or pooping in water sources for fun.

What are the dangers if drinking out of a Midwest or Eastern river? It seems like lots of factories and power plants along the river dump shit in there. Also farm run off. I know filters or boiling won't get out chemicals

>>997954
It all depends. Indians drink out of the ganges river. Eygptians drink water with enough sand to kill people not from there.

Are you from the midwest and did you grow up playing around in the water? If not, you'll need to take more precautions than usual. Potentially even evaporating the water and drinking that. Use your judgement.

>>997132
>If so how did ancient people get their water.

They died younger.

>>997966
>ancient people only lived for 3 days

>>997132
personally i just add some chlorine and wait a bit rather than boiling it. that's too much time for me

>>997961
I can see how you would get used to the bacteria in it. I'm more concerned about the wastewater the plastics plant dumps in there.

>>998019
You won't avoid those without collecting evaporated water. It's the only method.

>>997132
I didn't once and I spent the next two days puking and shitting my guts out. 0/10 would not recommend and I got off lightly compared to my friends who also drunk the water.

>>997954
Don't drink out of a fucking river anon. Find a spring. Don't be an idiot.

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>2015+2
>not having unlimited MIOX at your disposal

>>997132
>If so how did ancient people get their water.

Ancient people rarely made it to 40 anon

>>997132
Ancient people had resistance against all the shit in the water, you don't.

Another thing. We really know almost nothing about how people lived, say in the time of Columbus. People used to be very scared of diseases of all kind and they very well knew bad water caused sickness and they probably knew about how boinling water makes water safe to drink. It's just not in the history books. History books also tell us Egyptians built the pyramids but they didn't know the wheel.

>>997132

Holy fuck I wish you shills would stop posting lifestraw pics with bait questions. Sawyer has the majority of market share because it's a better product. Shilling harder won't fucking help, just deal with it. Improve your product or gtfo

I drink from a mountain stream where I camp and I've never gotten sick though my uncle supposedly caught giardia from the same stream. I'm not too worried, I don't wanna get sick but if I do it'll probably be curable.

>>997144
That's why you put it in a nalgene and sip from it

>>999485
Dude that doesnt make it any easier

Maybe you have more practice sucking dick than me but right out of the box it required all of my sucking strength to filter tap water out of a cup in my kitchen

I was /out/ in southwest va yesterday with two buddies, and my chinese friend wouldn't stop drinking the water straight out of the stream. idk if he's just resilient, he almost never missed a day the nine years of grade school I attended with him

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>>997260
>Deserts mean no plants

Uh...

>>997549
The reason you didn't get sick is because those mountain springs are really clean. I used to fill my water bottles up in them when I was working in West Virginia. There are people out there who don't really even use tap water, they just go and get it from the source.

>>998019
something with a carbon filter or evaporating

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>>999496
This motherfucker knows whats up. Literally so shit i gave mine away to another /out/ anon. Getting a sawyer mini.

>>1000373
Get the squeeze instead of the mini. Flow rate on the mini sucks too and the squeeze isn't much heavier or more expensive.

if you want to become so ill you wish for death go ahead and drink untreated water.

if not bring water with you and no boiling it does not kill viruses

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>>1000385
>boiling it does not kill viruses
Yes it does. you just have to make sure you don't cross contaminate, which is wicked easy to do (the spout of the pot for example might have surviving viruses on it even if you've boiled the water). That's why they recommend you boil for several minutes, to make sure the entire vessel is hot enough and steamed enough to kill the little buggas.

>>1000385
>boiling it does not kill viruses
Let me guess, American public school?

>>1000478
aka the discovery channels survival shows

>>997698
Urine is not feces, you uneducated cretin.

>>997484
That's including child mortality, once hunter-gatherers live past the first few years they tend to make it to 60-70 years old.

Don't buy the civilisation meme lad.

>>997132
>how did ancient people get their water.
They apparently drank a lot of alcohol.

>>997132
I guess they just had to deal. Are the filters any good? I'm still pretty skeptical about them. Any good ones in particular? I don't know what it is, but drinking water that I know was brown less than five minutes ago makes me a little wary. Ive always just dealt with water bottles, but there's always the chance of running out of water, so I can't stay skeptical forever.

>>999496
>>1000373

> Hard to suck
> Giving away to /outanon
> not gifting to /out grill

Ishygddt

>>997132
Use a filter. When you are making fire, boil the fucking water. It should be a habit of yours. Refill your bladder and leave it. People have gotten sick even in the Tennessee mountains drinking off of the melting snow streams. Don't take any chances.