The Prepper Broadcasting Network - THROWBACK THURSDAY: Comparing Water Filters for SHTF on Reality Check

Episode Date: April 2, 2026

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See it in action and get yours now at survivalstoveworks.com. That's survival stoveworks.com. You've just joined the Prepper Broadcasting Network, where we promote self-reliance and independence. The views and opinions expressed are strictly those of the host or their guests. visit us in the interactive chat room at Prepper Broadcasting.com. I hope everybody can hear me okay tonight and everything is going good. Audio is going to be a little weird because tonight we are coming at you live from the backwoods of beautiful North Carolina.

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So I'm going to kind of go fast. There's a lot of material to cover. If I say something and you miss it, I absolutely encourage people to go download the podcast afterwards or listen to it two or three times next week, just to make sure you got all the information. So, you know, it's not like your life depends on it or anything. You know, it's not like your life and health are going to depend on water filter.

or whatnot. So anyway. All right, let's get started. So we all know the rule of threes, right? You know, there's three minutes without air, three hours without warm, or way to get warm, three days without water, laity yada, yada. All right, and we all know that water is an absolute necessity for an ShtF scenario. Even in a minor scenario, you need to make sure that you've got a way to make clean water after your water storage is depleted or lost. Life and death. First, we all know that. We all know that. the one gallon per person per state motto. If you don't, then it's one gallon per person per day.

Or one second. And so I'm sure everybody listening has got at least 500 gallons of water that's treated in storage and it's ready to go for Doomsday. But if you don't and you don't have any water stored and you don't know what to do, then FYI, you need to have a way to filter the water. We all know that we need a way to filter water before we drink it. And everybody should be carrying a water filter or some kind of water purifier in your bugout

bag or your EDC bag. You know, but which one? Do we get the water filter? Do we get the water purifier? You know, if you go to your local sporting goods store, walk into, you know, any kind of sporting goods or outdoor store like REI or something like that, and you're going to see a myriad of water filters. There's Survival Spring, Vario, Kedadine, Alexa, Pures.

Steripin, MSR, Sawyer, Lifestraw, Brita, Pure, and Berkey, or British Berkfield, for those that were correcting for Y2K back at the 90s, maybe as the 9th British Berk. So which one do we choose? Well, do we choose a mechanical filter? Do we use bleach? Do we use iodine fields? Do we reverse on, remorse osmosis? Osmosis.

Do we use distillation? Do we choose a water filter that simply fill, physically strains out the protozoan system bacteria, but it misses all the viruses. Do we choose a water purifier that combat the viruses, but it's a little bit more expensive and bulky? What is the difference between 0.1, 0.01 microns? And the biggest question that I know y'all are asking is which one is better for camping, backpacking, or bugging out? And is there one that does everything? You know, is there one water filter that gives us the most bang for our buck? Well, you're in luck because I'm going to do that. So let's get started with pre-filtering.

Before you do any kind of water treatment, you need to remove as much sediment and turbidity from the water as possible. Turbidity, meaning mud, dirt, and the general cloudiness of water. So if you're stirring at the silt or cloudy or it's kind of, it looks milky or whatever, that's called turbidity. And the best way that I have found to get rid of that is having a dedicated pre-filter on my water filter, using a coffee filter or a clean cotton cloth. So if you're wearing a cotton t-shirt, you can use the cotton t-shirt as a pre-filter. If you've got a coffee filter, use that one. And a lot of times your water filter that you're using, especially if it's a mechanical one, my pump,

it'll have a pre-filter already own it. But anyway, the idea is to get as much of the large materials out of the water as possible. We're talking one, two micron, and greater. We're not talking about rocks and stuff We're talking about, you know, little things of mud that make the water cloudy. So it is absolutely required to pre-filter any cloudy water before actually filtering it.

The reason why is it reduces the maintenance and it prolongs the life and the flow rate of the actual water filter. So your water filter, you know, has to filter stuff through little really, really small cores in order to clean the water. And the way you prolong the life of those and the way you keep the flow rates up is you actually use the pre-filter. If you're going to be using a UV purifier like stereopin where you put the little thing in the water and press the button and it uses UV light, you absolutely have to have a pre-filter because if the water is not clear, the full effect of the UV is not going to be recognized. And in other words, if the water is a little cloudy, the UV ain't going to work.

For instance. All right. So we've pre-filtered our water. The next next thing, yes, a bandana would work. Bandana is a cotton cloth. A bandana would absolutely work. Even a... Let me see if I can pronounce this wrong.

Schmegma. Schmeagma. Schmiga. Something of what it is. Y'all know what I'm talking about. Yeah, Vatnub, I think, mentioned it earlier. EK's telling me that Batnaud mentioned it. It's that, you know, the thing that terrorists wear, not the turban,

but the one they put over their face, schmigger, smegger, something like that. Anyway, it's a cotton cloth, but yes, a bandana would do the same thing. After you pre-filter it, the next best thing to do is either boiling it or distilling the water. So boiling is kind of be one of the choice.

Boiling kills all the bad organisms, but it leaves the minerals and the metals in the water, which can be a good and a bad thing, and I'll get to that minute. Distilling the water, however, strips everything out. This is going to strip out all. It's going to kill all the organisms, which is great.

But distilling is also going to remove all of the salts, all of the metals, all of the minerals, everything. And the problem is that most experts no longer recommend drinking distilled water on a normal term basis. If you talk to Glenn Meeter, he'll disagree because he and his family

had been drinking distilled water for a very long time, and they don't have any ill effects. He doesn't say he's ever had ill effects. But The fact of the matter is, is that distilled water is stripped of minerals, and it is considered hypotonic. What hypotonic means is that the water will chemically pull minerals and metals out of the container that you put it in in order to balance itself. If you put it in metal, then the water is going to try to pull minerals and other metals out of the metal container in order to balance itself. if you put it in your body, then the water is going to be pulling beneficial minerals

and metals out of the lining of your stomach, out of your bloodstream, and out of the lymphatic system. And then in return, your blood and your lymphatic system are going to begin scavenging from minerals from the parts of the body, like your bones and your organs. And if this process repeats itself, you know, much times on a long-term basis, long-term, meaning several, several months or years, then you're going to be more prone to degenerative diseases like osteoporosis and whatnot. So if you decide to distill the water, be sure to replace the minerals that are in it before you commit to drinking it for a long time.

MI Gray in the chat room says the distilling can concentrate volatile. Yes, it can. So if there is something that, if there's a chemical in the water that boils before 212 degrees, then you're absolutely going to get that in your distilled water. You know, alcohol boils at 170. the whole distillation process for alcohol works, is that alcohol boils off 170 and water boils at 212. Well, if you've got methanol or some other kind of like mercury salts or something that are

the boiling point of them, and I don't know this, I'm just talking an example. If the boiling point in one of them is 210 degrees, then you're going to get those in your distilled water before you get the actual pure water. Both of them are great. Both of them have their risks. You need to make sure you understand boiling and your distilled. distilling before you commit to it. All right.

Next in line. Somewhere else to still water. Yeah, that nub says if you can get your minerals somewhere else, distilled water can be okay. And, you know, if you've got, if you could throw in like a pinch of bacon soda, a pinch of salt and maybe take a multivitamin or something like that, you'd be okay.

But anyway, just know that when you distill water, the water becomes hypotonic. Hypotonic water wants to rebate. itself by stripping minerals from wherever it can. So it's kind of the same process. I don't know if you'll know what a zinc anode like in your water water heater. The zinc degrades before it actually degrades the water heater. It's kind of the same process. All right, chemical treatments are up next. So the most common method that everybody knows is using sodium hypochlorite, aka fluorox bleach. Common bleach that we find on the shelves is

It's 5.3% fluorine, and it is added at a rate of two drops per quart. Here's the problem, though. Bleach will destroy most, but not all disease-positive organisms. And the other great thing is bleach has a shelf life. Believe it or not, chlorox will degrade over time, and in a griddown situation, that's not something you really want to chant. You're trying to survive. I'm talking.

I'm talking. I managed to pull a quote. from a Clorox Company representative. And so in the Prepper community, the Fluorax Company made a recommendation. They said, quote, We recommend storing our bleach at room temperatures. It can be stored for about to begin to degrade at a rate of 20% each year until totally degraded into salt and water.

Storing at temperatures higher than 70 degrees will cause the bleach loses effectiveness, degrade more rafety, blah, blah, blah. Basically, say, if you're going to say, if you require 6% sodium hyperchlorite, which is what you need to bleach water, then you should change your supply every three months. So in a nutshell, bleach is fine. Leach is a good way to do it, but bleach is not an end-all-b-all solution, because bleach will expire.

And if you buy a bottle of bleach and a year later it hits the fan and then you try to use that bottle on the bottom of the shelf to purify water, it ain't going to work. All right, another one that has recently gained a lot of attention is calcium hypochlorite. This is also called pool shock. So it's pool shock in the white granular form. A one-pound bag in granular form will treat up to 10,000 gallons of drinking water. I have not used these, but I have read that calcium type of fluoride is one of the best chemical disinfectants because it destroys a variety of bacteria,

yeast, fungus, spores, viruses, everything. To disinfect water using calcium hypochlorite, there's actually a three-set process. I'm going to go through this real quick. So to make a fluorine solution using calcium hyplacloric, here's what you do. The first one is you're making the bleach and you don't want to drink this.

But you want to dissolve one heaping teaspoon, which is about one quarter of a number of ounce, high test, which is like 78% of granular calcium hydroxide, into two gallons of water. So a solution. You then want to add this bleak solution at one to 100 parts to the water to be treated. So you've got the water that you got out of the river, and let's say it's 100 parts, whatever. You want to add only one part of your chlorine solution to that, and then you want to let the mixture sit for a half hour. So in a nutshell, one decent teaspoon of pool shock dissolved into two gallons of water.

This makes your bleach. Then put one part of your blimp solution into 100 parts of water. Doing the math, carry the two. That's roughly one ounce of bleat solution to 3.1 ports of water that you plan on drinking. So you need to be sure that you get in a full shot to be different story. Hey, I did not know that. So, Am I gray in the chat room is saying, E.K. was violently waving at me. In my gray in the chat room says, pool shock can be difficult to store.

It vaporizes and eats away most containers. I did not know that. Because in my research, everything that I was looking at was basically saying, hey, pool shock is the way to go because it's indefinite and you can store it. But apparently, Ami Gray knows better. This is why the chat room is awful. There's people here that know more about this than I do. I mean, I have just stayed at a holiday

and express last night. That's the only reason I could do that stuff. I haven't been able to do this. Good job, Enemygrave, something we did not know. So if you're going to store calcium hypochlorite, you need to make sure you store it correctly and know that it's probably going to eat away most containers and it can vaporized.

All right, so next up is iodine. iodine is actually light-scentive, and it must always be stored in a dark bottle. My Grace says just keep an eye on it. So yeah, check your stuff, rotate it off. Iodine has to be stored in a dark bottle. Now, iodine works best if the water is over 68 degrees Fahrenheit, and it's really shown to be more effective

than inactivating the yard end of chlorine. So for iodine, we're talking on 2% liquid solution. On this one, what you're going to do is you're going to add five drops of iodine per quart of clear pre-filtered water. That's that you're using the liquid iodine. Another option that you can do is the portable aqua. I know you've all seen these these little iodine tablets that you've dropped in.

The best way to use these is follow the manufacturer's instructions. The manufacturer's got the volumes and whatnot on the bottle. If you're going to use the portable aqua iodine tablets, just read the book and go from there. One thing, though, that I have done these, and if you've ever used the portable aqua, you know that sometimes it can leave a funky taste in the water. As a little life hack, if you add some vitamin C, it lacks to neutralize

the taste of an emergency. You know, that's really great at adding the orange flavor, the vitamin C thing, and it also happens to the immune system thing is a flood. A word of precaution, though, be aware that some people are allergic to iodine. So persons with thyroid problems, those taking lithium salts, women over 50, pregnant women, you all should at all consult your doctor before using iodine. Also, a lot of people that are allergic to shellfish are allergic to iodine. If you're allergic to shellfish, then you probably have an iodine allergy. So if y'all remember the iodine allergy, you remember that from my show on eating bugs and all.

Okay, last treatment, chemical treatment I got, I'm going to cut touch on a sporing dioxide. Before I get into that, let's take the quick break. Gee, ma'am, let's take a break. It shouldn't be all about outdoor survival. Think Prospering Outdoors. Prospering Outdoors is more than just getting by. Prospering Outdoors is about having the quality gear or supplies you want when you need it. From camping and hunting supplies to prepping and survival kits,

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and an immune booster herbal tea. Luma tea is a must for every prepper and household. See all our teas and what Luma tea can do for you. Visit us at Lumathe.com. All right, well, welcome back, everybody. the E.K. and J. Fergie are stirring up trouble in the chat room. So I have a question for you all. So the E.K., J. Fergie, and M.I. Gray, I have a question about the iodine thing. So if I have iodine tablets, and we all know that, you know, in a nuclear problem that they say, you know, you take potassium iodide,

but it fills the thyroid up with iodine. And there's the, you know, the K-I-4-U, the potassium iodide, the thyroid, the thyroid, all that kind of stuff. iostat, whatever, would drinking water purified with iodine still, would your body still take that iodine up? So if you dissolve iodine tablets, the portable aqua in water, or if you're using liquid iodine solution, would that help you in a nuclear problem because your thyroid is going to be absorbing that kind of iodine? I'll let y'all churn on that. Y'all can talk to some up yourself in the chat room. Anyway, so while they're thinking on that one about iodine and purified water helping fluorine dioxide, this is also known as Aquamira. So fluorine dioxide is significantly stronger than iodine.

It does not disclose the water, and it does not give the water an unpleasant taste. Plus, Aquamira has a four-year shelf life in the manual. manufacturing date. And in my opinion, this is the product to use for long-term treated storage water. So I don't have any experience with the little one-else bottles to treat ports of types. They actually aquamere makes a little one-ounce treatment that you put like drops of A and drops of B in a canteen and, you know, that's supposed to purify the water. I've never done that. I've only used the two-ounce treatment, and I use that for my 55-gallon storage barrels. So for those of you that are unfamiliar, there's a part A and a Part B bottle.

So there's two different chemicals, and they have to be combined together and react before you add it to your drinking water. So it is really, really important that you read the instructions if you're going to be using Aquamira. Because when Part A and Part B are mixed, they actually produce a poisonous gas, aquamira. I guess you're asking me how I spell Aquamira. I think that is. A-Q-U-A-M-I-R-A. Pretty sure that's it. Aquamira.

A-Q-U-A-M-I-R-A. That's the brand name of it. What actually is is chlorine dioxide. But, um, my gray, I answered my question earlier. Ami-Gray says, and you know what, I have heard Nurse Amy say this before. I have actually, I've read this in the doom and bloom book. I remember this. Nurse Amy said this, that if you don't have the iodine pills

or you don't have thyrosate, you can take, was it, betadine, or just plain old iodine solution, and you paint it on your skin. And MI Gray is saying, paint it on one square inch of your skin or dip the first knuckle of your little finger into the iodine and do this daily. And that, I've actually heard that, If you take an iodine solution and you put it on your skin, you know, a little bit every day,

your body will absorb enough iodine from that to fill up your thyroid. So there you go. I guess that's the way to do it. Anyway, back to the fluorine dioxide. So as I was saying, when you mix part A and part B, they produce a poisonous gas. This poisonous gas is actually fatal. So when you're mixing the two chemicals, whatever container you mix it in, it's going to turn it yellow, and if you're doing it in a closed space, you're going to have a fun night.

What I do is I actually take a plastic solo cup, and I mix the Part A and I mix the Part B in. I do it for the required time, and that after it's reacted, then I pour it into a barrel that I've already filled with water. So I take a barrel, I fill it up with the pre-filtered, filtered water or tap water, and then I pour in my aquamarine once it reacts. I use, I wear disposable gloves, I have eye protection, eye protection, and I make sure that I have the exhaust fan running or that I do it outside. But, you know, if you do it correctly and do it according to the label, it's completely safe. But if you mistreat it, it will kill absolutely.

It's good stuff. When you mix it properly, the water that you treat is going to have like a slight boring smell. and it's good for many, many years. All of my storage tanks, I treated it with Aquamere. So, anyway, enough of the chemicals. Let's move to some mechanical stuff. Aquamira has fluorine oxide tablets. I did not lose that.

I'm only ever used the liquid. Elps in the chat room is saying that Aquamara has a flooring dioxide tablet. Treating the large storage? Is that for, like, dropping in a canteen or, like, a port of water? Is that... Do they have the Aquamara tablets like the Aquacure? iodine or is that like you drop like six tablets in a gallon or a tank or something like that right that's a question for you out there else all right mechanical and gravity filters

there are a few definitions and some science that we need to cover first so there when we talk about water filters water purportration and stuff elk says one tablet for one liter of water so all right if you're using the aquamira tablet then you have one tablet for one liter of off the law. Okay, you're technically not going to die. I've got the snoot full of a tune. It burns like heck, but it's not going to kill you. I have to say it because that's the warning on the label,

and, you know, I have to be the responsible person and give you the worst-case scenario, scared the pee out of you. That's reality check, you know. In reality, it's not going to kill you unless you, you know, if you abused it, then, yeah, it's going to die. You're going to die, but it's really not that bad. If you're doing long-term storage water and you're treating long-term storage water,

then I recommend aqua pure. You just really need to follow the label. Yeah, there's words of caution. It's really big stuff. But anyway, you know, it's no different than the kids eating tied pots. I mean, it's kind of the same thing. Anyway, water filters, treatments. Let's see, classification.

The first classification is a water filter. So everybody says water filters. Well, to meet this standard, a water treatment device must remove at least 99.99% of pathogenic bacteria. This is known in the water industry as a log for reduction. So to be able to be called a water filter, it has to have at least log for reduction of pathogenic bacteria. The second classification is called a water purifier. And to meet this standard, a device must remove at least 99.999 of pathogenic bacteria, that's log 6. It must also reduce viruses by at least 99.99% which is long 5.

So in other words, what you do is just count the number of 9 and the higher of the batter. So log 6 is exponentially better than log 5. Log 5 is a thousand times better than log 4, etc. So a water filter has to remove log 4 pathogenic bacteria. A water purifier has to remove log 6 pathogenic bacteria, and it has to reduce viruses by log 5. I said we're going to get scientific. Water filters work, as I said, really, really early.

They have little pores, little small. holes. These work by physically straining out protozo and cysts, so you know, you're feridium, giardia, the bacteria such as like, you know, ecoli, salmonella. Those things are a certain size, and the way the water filter works is the four size is smaller than the virus, but big enough to allow a water molecule fruit. Water purifiers do the same thing, but they also combat viruses. When we're talking about viruses, we're talking about hepatitis A, rotavirus, nor. Norovirus.

So, you know, the next time you're on a carnival cruise ship, you may want to take a purifier just saying to have a norovirus problem or one. I love carnival. I sell carnival all the time. Every time I go to cruise, I'm not knocking the company at all. I'm just saying they got a norovirus problem. UK's telling me to shut up. Let's see.

Check the chat room. It's all your mini's. Water bottle filter every day. Two by the phone. Wow. I don't think I have those stats. So that nub posted in the chat room, the Sawyer.

0.02 purifier purifies one million gallons of water. It removes 99.997% of viruses. 99.99. Well, basically log sick of bacteria. Or excuse me, log. That's log 7. of bacteria.

And log 6 of prosoin cysts. You can do basically a million gallons, 10 people, 2 gallons a day. Basically, that water filter will last you 50,000 days for 137 years.

In my grace, says it takes everything out but the wetness. Yeah. One thing I did read, I didn't have this in my show notes, is that salt water. These things don't work on salt water. So you cannot filter ocean water through a solier water filter and have it come out. You actually have to distill sea water in order to get rid of salt.

So I did read that. I think either on Berkey or on a Sawyer that they don't filter the actual seawater part. So, long story short, you want a water purifier, if possible. Now, we were mentioning the Mycon ratings. I was mentioning the log stuff and, you know, 1, 0,0, what. So micron, believe it or not, there are two different ratings for the size of micron, and it depends on what system the manufacturer uses. So there's two ratings. There is nominal, absolute. An absolute micron rating is one that states the maximum four size expect within an element. The nominal micron rating is an average of the four sizes within the element. What this means is that if 90% of the fours are

0.02 microns and 10% are 2 micron, then that manufacturer claimed the nominal micron rating is 0.2. But in reality, they have 2 micron, which is 100 times bigger, two micron pores that would absolutely allow bacteria and parasite that pass through. So the nominal micron rating is very misleading because it's an average of pores, not the absolute size. So when you look at water filters and stuff, you want to make sure that you use the absolute

on rating, or you want to make sure that the manufacturer uses absolute. The U.S. standard is, let's see, this is an absolute. The U.S. standard is 99.9% absolute removal. The international standard is 99.99% absolute removal. So when you look at it, I'm going to restate that. When you look at a water filter, you want to make sure that the manufacturer uses the international absolute micron rating, because that gives you absolutely the maximum foresight. So if the international absolute rating is 0.02 micron, that's really good.

That pictures out pretty much every day. Let's see. As an example, so if you're talking protozoa, talking Giaarta and cryptocurrency, spritium. They are usually five microns and size are larger. Anything that's like 0.1 micron or lower is going to filter that out. Bacteria, we're talking cholera, ecoli, and salmonella. The general size of those things is 0.2 to 0.5 microns, so anything below 0.2, going to filter that out. The viruses, again, we're talking kate, rotavirus, and norovirus. Those things are 0.004 They're really, really small.

So your filter has got to have a very, very small micron time. And then another caveat is sometimes the microns don't matter. Sometimes it's the material your filter is made of that helps. I'm going to get to that just a second. Checking the Shepron. Yes, you do have to back splice sawyers. If you've got a sawyer or a live straw, you have to back wash it every once in a while. well, the lifestyle you're going to backwash every time.

Scringed. Sawyers freeze. You cannot let the Sawyers freeze. I did not know that. So that nub in the chat room is saying, and I'm going to guess this is going to be assumed for any chat room. Any water filter that if it's got water in it and it freezes, it's probably not going to do well.

And that's probably absolutely right because water freezes is his fans. And I bet you would destroy it. the membrane in filter if it freezes. Very important point, but if you've got a wet water filter in your mugout bag, you need to make sure that it's close to your back, that your body keeps in. That is an awesome point, that nub.

Kudos to you. All right, quick rundown of the pros and cons of hand pumps, gravity filters, UV, squeeze, and straw filters. So when I say hand pump, we're talking K-D-9 or MSR. Gravity filters, we're talking the Sawyer mini. UV, I'm talking the Steripan, squeeze filters. That can either be the Sawyer or I think the area does it. And then straw filters, I'm talking about Life Straw. So quick and dirty. Pump filters. With these, you drop an intake hose into your source water,

and then you drop an outlet hose into your water bottle. You then work the pump. Some of the models thread directly onto a bottle or reservoir. Pump mechanisms differ. Flow rates, your specs, All that quickly gets to froze, the amount of water you need. Water can be pulled from seats and shallow water sources. The internal element or cartridge is replacedable, and unfortunately on hand pumps, you do have to replace those cartridges. Some of the cons for pump filters are pumping can be a chore,

especially at the end of the element's lifespan, when I talked about flow rate. Field cleaning of the element is required, and the weight and the bulk are a little bit greater than other treatment methods. All right, gravity filters. But this one, what you do is you're going to fill a reservoir. You're going to find a suitable place to hang the reservoir.

It's going to go down through the filter, and it's going to pour water into wherever you're going to be drinking it out of. So if you imagine you have a five-gallon bucket up on a table, water filter, five-gallon bucket down to the ground. That's the kind of thing that's the same thing. Most models come with kind of a pair of reservoirs. Like if you're talking to the Sawyer, they've got a squeeze bag. They've also got straws, but it can be anything.

Some of the pros with gravity is, of course, gravity does work for you. You can process a large quantity of water for big groups, so it's kind of a set-it-for-get-it. And on some of them, not all of them, the element or carcourges replace them. One of the drawbacks is that it's slow. So treating with the gravity filter is a lot slower than with a hand pump. And deeps and shallows, that means like small creeps, can make it be challenging to fill the reservoir, and field cleaning of the element is replaced. fire. As Jeffrey mentioned, you do have to blow back on the Sawyer's in a while to keep it clean.

So that nub in the chat room, jump to shift here real quick. That done in the chat room says from Sawyer, so from the company Sawyer, while we have no proof that freezing will harm the filter, we do not have enough proof to say that it will not harm it. Therefore, we must say that if you suspect the filter has been frozen, replace it, it's especially true with a hard freeze. That is from Sawyer. They can't prove that it. They can't prove that it. It won't hurt it, but they can't prove that it is going to hurt it. So they have to err on the side of caution as I would do because, again, it's not like your life depends on your filter being worked.

So error on the side of caution and make sure you want to the first of the freaks. All right. Next up is the UV light. So we're talking to steering pins. These are like little pin style ones. I know you've seen these. You push a button. the UV light comes on, you stir the thing around, you give it a few seconds,

and supposedly it kills everything. It takes about a minute to go through. Pro's treatment is really easy. You turn the thing on, you stir it, you give it a minute or so, and then the water is drinking. Another pro is there is no element to be clean, there's nothing to be replaced. The cause, though, is it needs batteries, and it may be dead in the water if an EMP or CME is. So you take the pick there. As I mentioned earlier, you do have to pre-filter because if the water is silky or cloudy,

it's going to have to be effective. And then sometimes if you're processing large quantities of water, you have to treat several times. It's only going to do like 16 ounces at a pop. It's not going to treat five and ten gallons really easy. All right. Next up are bottle filters. So what these are, are these like a fill-in-cense? This is you fill up a bottle and then it's like a straw.

like drinking like a to-go cup. The suction that you provide is goes to a valve. Some of them work like a coffee press. Some of them can use UV-light. But anyway, the pros are for bottle filter is the treatment is easy. The water is quickly drinkable. The element or cartridge is replaceable. And on average, they're kind of lighter

and they cost less than for practice filters. However, water quantity is limited by the bottle side. So if you don't have that big a bottle, you can't process that much water. And field cleaning of the element is required. Next up are the squeeze filters. So this is kind of a very broad category of symbols or bottle filters, except that you're feeling, again, a small reservoir

and then squeezing the water through the element rather than sucking it. Some of the pros are, again, the water's treatment is easy, the water quickly drinkable, carcourge is replaceable. Some of them double as a gravity filter or straw filter. that means the and then you know they cost less than the gravity filters

some of the cause to squeeze filters are one of the quantities limited by a reservoir meaning to the bottle and field cleaning again is required so I haven't seen that

so in my brain in the chat room said anyone ever seen a hydropack for emergency it is a one liter pack you drop in dirty water the package is an osmosis membrane such as in cleaning water contains electrolytic salts like ATERAid and drink it like a juice pack one-time use.

That's pretty cool. That nub asks me a question. What if you live near the equator purifying your water by clean bottle late at the time? Yeah. Cover this, but you can do that. You can doble that. You can take water and put it in a, you can take clean, clear water. It has to be clear water, so you've got to purify it.

You can put it in a glass bottle or a really, really, clean, clear plastic bottle and put it in the sun for a few hours, and the UV light will kill it. That nub posted a link in the chat room, so for those of you that are in the chat room, you can check that out.

If you're not in the chat room and listening to us on the podcast later, it is Modern Survival Blog.com, or slash scalp, how to purify water with sunlight. So if you want to just Google how to purify water with sunlight, that's probably get you.

post the emergency water pack at H-T-I-Water.com. So if you're looking for the hydropack, it's from h-t-i-water.com. Links in the chat room,

but again, if you're listening to some podcasts, there you go. A little too far north. Yeah. Let's see. We've got through squeeze filters. I'm in at the bottom of

the stretch straw-style filters. These are like Sawyer and the life straw. So these provide water on demand. These cylinders have a built-in element that lets you slurt water directly from the soil. It is literally like a straw that you stick in the water and stuck out.

The pros are that the treatment is very easy and the water is quite drinkable. The water is lighter and toss less than the gravity. Now, on the downtime, the water is only available when you are at the water source. So when you're at the river, you can get your fill.

Jay Ferguson, EK, are you okay? You've been so quiet. I assume y'all heard E.K. laughing. So she is there. So I promise she's still alive. So the cons with the straw filter, meaning life straw, is that it's only available when you're at the water source. So, as I was saying, if you're at the river, you can get your fill.

But once you walk away from the river, then you're out of water. generally this is considered a one-person treatment option so you're not going to share a straw with other people maybe your spouse or friend but not certainly the stranger clean the element which means you have to blow back on the live straw every time you use it some of them have replaceable elements but not everything so all right

here is what y'all have all been waiting here is the water filter death patch you see let me grab a simple waterway Quick. Clear my throat. Again, I'm in the backwoods, so I don't have the reality check studios to bring me water and do all kinds of good stuff, so I'm kind of rough-end it tonight. That node says the hydration pouch will fill in about 10 hours.

First up is the Sawyer Mini. The Sawyer Mini weighs two ounces. It retails for around $25, and it provides 0.1 micron absolute filtration. It removes 99.99% of all bacteria, and it removes 99.99% percent of frozen. That is log 6 for both. That's really, really good. Some of the packages for the Sawyer include a drinking pouch, so it can be used as the squeeze.

Some of them include the straws. You can use it as a straw. Some of them have tubing, which you can do, you connect to hydration packs. Some of them have parts and stuff that fit onto standard disposable water bottles and soda bottles. So you can put the sol your mini up to a two-liter bottle and use the two-liter bottle as your source and then squeeze or suck the water through the end of your mouth as a squeeze for straw. Yeah, squeeze for straw. The mini is rated up to 100,000 gallons.

Cool thing is that the mini can be used to get into the minimum. a straw filter and a gravity filter. Occasionally not every time, but occasionally the mini has to be backwashed to be able to clean out the free screen. That's not each time. All right. Second up we have the life straw. This one also weighs two ounces. It retails for about $20. It provides up to .2 micron filtration, meaning it removes 99.99% of all bacteria that blocks six and 99.9.9% approach to zoa. That's only log three. So really good for bacteria, not so much for protozole. Good. It does its job. You're not going to get sick, but, you know, it is what it is.

The thing about the life straw, now there's kind of a big drawback. Read through the chat here. I thought I read on the lifestyle that you do backwash it, that you like get a mouthful of water and blow back through it or something. On their website, they say that you can backwash it. So the negative thing about the lobster, and I'm not knocking it. I got a very good friend of mine that has lobstrawls in his ADC bags, but the entire process is powered by such.

It is very much similar to using a conventional drinking straw, and it only filters up to 264 gallons of water before its end of life. So the parkridge lasts 264. That ain't much. The standard live straw, standard run of the mill, is ineffective at filtering viruses, chemicals, salt water, and heavy metal. As I said a minute ago, it needs to be cleaned or I guess try to be clean by pushing water back through it. The straw takes a while to get going. So when you find a river and you stick the straw down in the river, it's going to take a minute

to be able to get the straw working. So what you need to do, or here's the best way to do it, is take a bottle or take the straw and fully immerse it in a river or in your water source, and let it soak for a minute. So, EKA is showing me on Live Straw's website, so how do I clean my Life Straw? This is according to LifeStraw.com. After every use, backflush your live straw by blowing a breath of air

in the mouthpiece to purge all remaining water trapped in the filter. If you have access to clean water, suck some water into the filter, and back flush it again. Give it a few shakes. Leave both ends uncapped to air dry at room temperature. That's really great until you're trying to bug out during an emergency. So there you go.

You can't find that on the Laxtrault's website. So back some sucking things, because LaGstra does suck. See what I did there? Really and truly, the thing works. It works great, but you've got to stick it down in a jar for a few minutes. to let it basically pull up some water. Or you've got to stick it down in the river for two minutes, let's think pull up some water.

So it worked really good, and you can pull a lot of water out of it if there's water already in it or if it's got a few, two times ago. If it's really dry, then it takes about five strong sucks to get the waterful. So, you know, pull on it, give it about five good swallows, and then it should start filling in the water. Let's see.

The third in line is the K-to-9 Hiker Pro. I know we've all heard of K-to-9 water filters. I was just looking at the Hiker Pro. This one weighs 11 ounces. It retails for $85, and it provides 0.2 micron filtration. It is a hand-put model, hand-pump model, and approximately 48 strokes per minute will provide around 1 liter of clean water.

So it comes with two hoses, one for input, one for output. and it needs to have a field maintenance kit because with the K-2-9 Pro, there is a separate field maintenance kit that you need to get that will prolong the life of the cartridge. Another hand pump that y'all have heard of is MSR. In this case, I looked at the MSR MiniWorks EX purifier system, $100, and it provides up to 0.2 micron filtration. 99.999 or log 6.

Bacteria, 99.9.9. Prozua, that's log 3. Parker's life is about 2,000 liters. Yeah, if you're traveling from third-third country, you might want to use one of the so I guess if you are going to one of those kind of

countries, you might want to try the MSR Guardian Purifier. This one weighs 17 ounces, retails for $350, provide up to .02 micron four size, filters the long-sixth of bacteria, long three of protozoa, but the carpage life is over 10,000 hours. All right, so those are the hand pump models. We're moving here real quickly.

We're in the home stretch. So second and last are the U-Pureifiers. And so when I took the Steripin, I found three of them. There's the classic three, the ultra, the adventurer, the stereopin. These were all all way about three ounces without the batteries. They retail for between $70 and $100, and they will kill 99.99% of protozoa bacteria and virus. So a log four of protozoa bacteria and virus. That's pretty good.

They use UVC-type light, water in about one minute, and 32 ounces of water in about 90s. second. A set of batteries for the steer pins are going to last about 8,000 uses. That equates to around 150 liters of water. But on the downside, they do require batteries, which as I said earlier, if the EMP or CME hits, URS at well. I'm fixing to get to that there, Jay Fergie. The last one, this is the big, and it is the big Berkey. Burkey, or British Berkville, is considered a water purifier. Yeah, you always do that. You know, Jay Fergie is she is on top of the game, She's always jumping next on the subject. She always gets the next thing.

Great minds think alike, but then the instance of people like the things. She was what it is. Hard water effect water pure causes. Yeah, I'm sure you would get caught in. All right. So the burkees. The burqee is considered a water purifier

as it removes more than 99.99% of bacteria that spires. It also removes 99.9. 6.8% of trihalo-methene, expector for, and broochore. It removes 99.8% of inorganic materials like chlorine, most heavy metals, like mercury, cadmene, and lead, 99.9% of pharmaceutical drugs, as well as a very large list of pesticides and volatile organic compounds. In other words, it removes a lot of stuff. It removes all of the organisms that make you sick, as well as chemicals and metals

dissolved in the water mixed too. Now, Ron, rating, on their website, I kind of found that it generally agreed upon to be about 0.2 or 0.9, depending on you read. But they use something, they use a proprietary filter

called the Black Earthy Purification Company. These are ceramic elements. They are tested. They were actually tested to remove 99.99.99.99. A whole bunch of nines. Things like log 9, pathogenic bacteria. The organisms that are filtered out using the black murky are 0.024. That means that black burkeys ain't really really good filter. So, to summarize everything and satisfy J. Fergie, boiling and distillation are the very best way to kill organisms, but they both have drawbacks.

Sawyer Mini is rated at 0.1 micron and removes log 6 of all bacteria. of protozoa, but not viruses. It is good for 100,000 liters, I believe, instead. It can be used as a squeeze filter, straw filter, gravity filter. The live straw is rated at 0.2 micron and removes long six of bacteria, but only long three of protozoa, and it does not remove viruses. The live straw is good for up to 264 gallons. It can be hard to draw if it is not completely submerged for a few minutes. Peta 9 and MSR are hand pumps. They do 1.2 microns.

UV light removes log 4 prior to sore, and the black burqie removes pretty much everything down to 1.4. So, in my opinion, what I have and what I use are the Sawyer Mini and I bug out in my EDC bag, what I carry when I'm hiking. I have a big birthday from my home when I'm long-term camping, and for the money and the portability, I say carry the Sawyer Mini. It's very versatile. It's very cheap.

But if you can invest in it, do the Burkey. That is tonight. I got the one-minute warning. Don't forget to join us tomorrow night. 8 p.m. Eastern with Dave, and he talked about how to conduct a prepper exercise. I always say if you have any questions, rant or raves, hit me up in the chat room, hit me up on email or Facebook.

I always welcome for constructive criticism. Thanks, everyone. Have a great evening. I'm fixing to go like a catfire. I'm going to disconnect the Internet connection before the feds find me, and I am going camping. Have a great evening, everyone. Have a great weekend.

I'll see y'all. Today's broadcast has come to you through the courtesy of the Prepper Broadcasting Network. See our hosts, show schedules, archived programs, and more at Prepper Broadcasting.com. Thanks for listening.