Will you know what to do when the water is contaminated and rationed?

What will you do when the authorities tell us the water isn't safe to drink?

From NatureHacker blog

In 2014 half a million people in the US were without water for 3 days primarily in and around Toledo Ohio.

Toxins in the water.

In this age toxic water is and will become a huge problem. Experts warn that invasive species, Global warming, and excessive fertilizer use and runoff are causing algae blooms to become dangerous and threaten the water supply for all of us. Personally I believe huge factors are cyanogen (cyanide; neutralized by cobalt, B2, and nitrate) from comet ISON dust we passed through in late 2012. Hundreds of thousands of tons of this toxic dust entered our atmosphere. Also solar activity has been down since this same time period and therefore the earths magnetic shield has been weakened. This causes more space radiation to hit earth causing destabilization of ecosystems and microbial overgrowth.

In this case it was a giant algae bloom in Lake erie that tainted the water supply for these Ohio residents in 2014, however algae effects all water treatment and it is very deadly an very difficult to test for. Just 1 microgram! per liter is enough to pose a human health threat. This level is so low their is no way to tell water is contaminated and authorities don't test for it.

In this age of deteriorating infrastructure and increasing microbial overgrowth water is the most important thing you should concern yourself with (besides maybe air). When the authorities say you cannot drink the tap water and bottle water dries up, what is your plan? Well I know what my plan is. The same thing I do everyday. Purify the tap water.

Microcystins the likes of which condemned water in ohio is actually, like anything else, pretty easy to remove if you know what you are doing. You can slow sand filter the water, filter through food grade diatomaceous earth, treat the water with activated charcoal or filter the water through activated charcoal. However I don't think many of us will be able to make large percolation filters when SHTF... even I would struggle to pull that off. However we almost certainly will have access to containers, and that is really all that we will need. The easiest way to remove microcystins, fluoride, arsenic, you name it... is to add some food grade pickling lime (CaOH) to the water, shake it up or stir it, and let it settle for a few hours. This will bind up the toxins and the toxin-calcium sediment will fall the the bottom of the container with fresh pure water ready to be poured out. To make that process even better you can dissolve a little humic acid in the water before you add the CaOH and even more contaminants including chlorine will be removed. After that and you pour out the purified water into another container, add a little powdered activated charcoal and shake or stir that up and you will have a professionally purified water free from virtually all contaminants. No power hungry expensive distillation or expensive proprietary an slow filters required. You can even make the CaOH by "burning" dirt at high temperatures, and obviously you can make activated charcoal from burning wood. Humic acid is from compost. Add a drop or two of lugol's iodine or boil or uv sterilize to ensure that any living organisms are also killed.

In this age your top priorities should be
1. what would you drink in the case of societal collapse and
2. what you would eat. If you master this information about water you can mark a big check mark through the most pressing need we face.

Water purification kit

References:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5l7A9NhM4A

http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/dwq/chemicals/microcystin_sections.pdf

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microcystin

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/storyline/wp/2014/08/11/watching-toledos-toxic-water-troubles-with-a-wary-eye-and-few-regulations/