MacGyvering 101 (Part 1 of 3)
After an apocalyptic breakdown, many social services will no longer be functioning. Police and other peace keeping forces will be gone, there will be no one to maintain water treatment or electrical systems, and it will fall to you, the survivor, to provide these things for yourself. You will have to re-invent ways to provide. Learn to think like MacGyver, and you might just be able to ride out the Apocalypse in style and comfort.
Before you need anything else, you’ll need water. Water is the most basic need for survival. Without it, you won’t last more than 3 days. Learning how to filter and treat water on a large scale will be necessary for you, and any other survivors. Think about drinking unpurified water. You’ll have the squirts or worse, and that could incapacitate you, leaving you as easy pickings for any zombie, or marauding survivors that came along.
Water filtration and purification is one of the easiest things to take care of, all you’ll need are a few easy to find materials and items.
Materials and Items needed:
30 gallon trash can
Window screening
Cheese cloth or Muslin cloth (Really almost any cloth will work, it will just slow the filtering time if its thicker)
Ceramic dishes
About 50lbs of sand
2 or 3 large bags of charcoal.
A large vessel to put purified water into.
Construction:
Take your 30 gallon trash can (preferably clean) and flip it bottom side up. Next, at the very center, begin to make small holes in the bottom. If you dont have a drill (assuming the power is still on for the moment) a small punch, or a medium diameter phillips head screwdriver will work. Just use a hammer to assist in the hole punching. Make the holes in an orderly fashion, and not too close together. You don’t want to compromise the structural integrity of the bottom of the can, its going to have to hold some weight.
Then, after turning over the can, place your window screening in the bottom, followed by your Cheese cloth. Now you get to do a little bit of destruction. Break up the ceramic dishes into shards about the size of a half dollar coin, and place them flat on top of your Cheese cloth. Now add another layer of window screening and Cheese cloth. Break out the charcoal, and using a blunt instrument, smash it up until its nearly powder. The best way to do this is to wrap it up in a shirt, bedsheet, towel, ect. and wail on it. Check the consistancy of the charcoal constantly, it should be in chunks no larger than a nickel in diameter. After you have a large amount of charcoal broken up, place it in the can, making a layer about 4 inches deep. Now you’ll want to pour a layer of sand about 4 inches deep as well. Repeat the charcoal/sand layering 2 more times and you’re done. You’ll have room at the top to pour in about 10 gallons of water at a time and it will filter pretty quickly, just pour in the water slowly to avoid disturbing the layers. Seems like a lot of work eh? Well, it will filter heavy metals, and other chemicals out of the water that could quite possibly kill you. You’ll still have to boil the water to kill off any bacteria that could make you sick. This filter will last about 3 months based on the amount of toxins in your water source. Your filter will last longer if your were getting your water from a spring as opposed to the L.A. River or other similarly polluted body of water.
Comments (9)
Dfarrey on 21 May 2010 at 2:11 pm #
All good stuff, but you spelled “MacGyver” wrong.
Angryvikingman on 21 May 2010 at 2:12 pm #
I realized that and must have edited it while you were posting.
Ronin666 on 21 May 2010 at 8:33 pm #
Nice one Angry, Something people often forget is that most battery powered tools have an optional car charger (the better quality one do anyway). That same charger will run off most small solar chargers as well. No need to have to do things the hard way in z-poc, you can buy a battery version of most power tools, go 18Volt. I’ve had really good service and quality from DeWalt. I have hammer drill, jig saw, circular saw,sawzall,sander and vacuum cleaner, all run on 18v lithium . With a good set of tools you can McGuyver your way out of anything.
Semper Cogitant on 21 May 2010 at 8:59 pm #
That’s not a bad set up for a semi-permanent water facility, say at you stronghold. It would be much easier to make a simple still over a fire, or even a solar still. Those can be built from things you can find almost anywhere. In a pinch you can even make a simple solar still to distill water from your urine.
There are unlimited MacGyverish ways of improvising things. All of us should endeavor to become amateur engineers. Being MacGyver takes three things, a wide knowledge base, an engineers approach to problem solving, and the ability to think under stress.
Angryvikingman on 22 May 2010 at 1:05 am #
Well, I used this because you don’t really need fire to use it. You can have it in a place that isn’t ventilated well, just about anywhere you have room, or places you cant build a fire. And a still doesn’t really get rid of all of the harmful chemicals that can vaporize and re-condensate in a still as a result of unregulated heat, whereas the set up described above will. (If you’ve ever made moonshine, you know that different liquids boil at different temps, and you have to regulate the tempurature to keep boiling off the right liquid.)Then you can use water treatment tablets to kill the bacteria. Almost no work necessary for upkeep except repeating the process once every few months. Stills also require copper pipe for a condensing coil, as well as an accumulation vessel. You can find a trashcan and charcoil at almost any store you come across, sand is naturally obtainable, and dirt can be used if you’re really in a pinch. Most people have some sort of ceramics in their house, so you can literally find that anywhere. I’m not knocking your idea Semper, I was just trying to present the simplest set up with the most easily obtainable materials.
sean on 22 May 2010 at 11:44 pm #
also it’s better to filter your water prior to boiling or distilling it
because any chemical polutants in your water source my just increase in concentration if you don’t run your water through a filter such as this one..
Amy on 23 May 2010 at 5:15 pm #
Great post! All of these things can be found at almost any local store or can be improvised with things that can be readily found in most homes.
I too live in the Pacific Northwest, Semper, and while rainwater will be plentiful, it all depends on the situation. If the government happens to respond to the Zed threat with nuclear weapons, or certain kinds of chemical weapons, then the rain itself could be a bigger threat than the zombies ever were. I plan on living by a little acronym that I learned from Bear Grylls, haha.
Please
Remember
What’s
First
Protection (meaning shelter from the zeds, hostile survivors, the elements, and finding anything that could be used for my defense.)
Rescue (if the outbreak is small and containable, getting to safety. If not, getting myself and anyone I can bring with me to an area that is much safer than, say, a city full of the undead.)
Water (you’d be amazed at what people can eat and get sustenance out of, but without clean water, humans won’t last more than a week. A permanent source of clean water is an absolute must.)
Food (Once you have your shelter and a source of water, then you can focus on finding an adequate source of food.)