Improvised boiling water?

C

Call_to_Arms

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Apr 13, 2011
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Does anyone have any ideas about emergency water boiling in the wild? I tried searching for ideas and have had no luck. Here are the criteria, you have a knife and maybe a small SAS type survival kit, but you cant use the tin. You are in North America so wild bamboo is out, you cannot rely on scavenging old pots'n'pans or glass bottles. What does that leave? Im stumped, anyone got any ideas?
 
find a rock with depression in it or carve out a dish of some sort in some log. fill with water. build fire
heat rocks, drop in water to boil sounds easy enough :rolleyes:
 
If you have some type of container to hold the water, you can heat small rocks and drop them into your water carefully. The heat transfer should get the water plenty hot to destroy most parasites.

Yeah, what Wildcat said, but a click later!!
 
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Many-many options. You can construct a filter out of natural materials to filter your water, you can pasteurize the water using a plastic bottle assuming you can scrounge one up, or you can go primitive and make a wooden vessel and boil the water with hot rocks. The finding a natual depression has already been suggested. Or just search until you find the origin of a natural spring and enjoy the water - you can even build a drinking fountain out of the spring using flat rocks. Lots of options.

I might suggest, although I usually get some push back from members when I suggest this; is you seek out someone or an organization who teaches wilderness survival. Find a friend or acquaintance, (if you must go cheap) or a professional individual/organization who not only teaches you the mindset, skills, techniques, and tactics of wilderness survival but teaches you how to solve problems - which is huge in the wild.

Myself, if I were you I'd walk, no run, as fast as I could and attend a Mors Korchanski course. Mors isn't going to teach forever and he just happens to live in your neck of the woods. I consider you one of the luckiest individuals because you live so closely to Mors. Myself, I have to plunk down considerably more money in travel expenses to train with him...but it is worth every dime.
 
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You can boil water in a plastic water bottle over a fire and it won't melt as long as you keep the bottle full. Theirs videos on you tube instead of me trying to explain. I've done it before but never drank the water because boiling in plastic probably isn't the healthiest thing but in a pinch it will boil and clean your water for an emergency.

Unfortunately in the reality of today's world chances are you can find a empty water bottle just about anywhere even deep in the woods.


one of many videos
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NI-ItTGKHuE
 
VTguy17 said:
Unfortunately in the reality of today's world chances are you can find a empty water bottle just about anywhere even deep in the woods.
Click to expand...
Very true. I'm also of the opinion that sometimes you just have to drink it straight if that's the cards your dealt. Water born illness takes a while to happen and if you've done everything right before the trip chances are you'll be rescued by the time you have...issues. :D
 
Shotgun said:
Very true. I'm also of the opinion that sometimes you just have to drink it straight if that's the cards your dealt. Water born illness takes a while to happen and if you've done everything right before the trip chances are you'll be rescued by the time you have...issues. :D
Click to expand...

By "issues" are we talking about water in - lava out? :D

I was watching a two part show called iCaveman that I recorded on the science channel. It had 10 average joe's tossed into a caveman (cro-magnum) setting with clothes, tools, and the same water issues. They used an animal hide filled with water and tossed in the hot rocks to boil the water. Of course no one liked the taste and the floaties so one of the female members constructed a filter out of wood, charcoal, and grass.
 
Thank you all for your very informative posts, the information on other forms of water purification is very helpful although not what I asked for. I agree there are many creative and more efficient ways to make water safe to drink than boiling it, what I was more interested in was boiling water for the purpose of making food sources that may contain parasites safe to eat. Most of northern Ontario hasn't seen civilization since ww2 or the railroad pulled out, well before water bottles were common, hence it could be useful, but cannot be relied upon. Heating water with heated stones was all I could come up with aswell, it is very inefficient and inconvenient but in dire times it could save your life. I was trying to picture what Native Americans would have done hundreds of years ago... probably barbecue their food:). wooden carved bowls are possible, or birch-bark containers? or an animal skin sack suspended over a fire? Im picturing all the critters you could find in the bottom of a creek, crayfish, mussels and the like. Thanks again for all your posts.
 
Boiling water in a hat? I've never heard of that but it sounds better than boiling water in a plastic cup or water bottle. It should work well too assuming you soak the hat first and keep it filled with water, and some how suspended. And a vented hot weather hat would be out of the question. I wouldn't boil water in my wool winter tilly hat, but I could see how a cotton hat would be ideal. I have several hats but they're either vented or somehow unsuitable for boiling water. I believe the Native Americans would have likely used an animal skin sack hung over a fire if anything. In the winter, a hot rock dropped into a bowl filled with snow.
 
Call_to_Arms said:
...what I was more interested in was boiling water for the purpose of making food sources that may contain parasites safe to eat.
Click to expand...
Two thoughts:

1. If that's actually your situation, you probably don't need to waste precious water for cooking. Thinly slice your food and either use skewers to direct cook it over flame, or smoke it. Learn either (preferably both) techniques. Save your water for drinking, not boiling food.

2. If you're in such dire straits that you only have a knife and a tin you can't use, shelter and water will be your primary concern--days before you need to start thinking about food. Cooking food is energy and resource intensive, and is in many people's minds a much later priority.
 
I believe that using a stomach as a cooking pot was more common. The animal hide experiment would have gone a bit better if the experimenter had used green hides and soaked them first, then used them wet.
 
Also, clay pots are not hard to make. I've made and used them. A bit of research and experimentation is required, but making a usable pot isn't hard.
 
Here's a video I made a while back for a series of challenges on BCUSA

[youtube]yP2Ug0VzF5g[/youtube]

Here's the pictures that go along with the video


A Glad plastic bag that stands up right on its own.

DSC00998.jpg


Also used a piece of "found" plastic, acting as if it was trash that had been in the area. Dug a small hole and lined it with the plastic.

DSC00999.jpg


The pebbles in the container are to keep the hot rocks from coming into contact with the plastic and prevent melting form happening.

The stones were gathered from a high spot and insured they had not been immersed in water for quite sometime, to help avoid any unwanted explosions. I also use quartz type rocks as them seem to fair better to the repeated rapid heating and cooling. At least they are easy to find in my area.

You want to avoid flint like stones, as think what happens to cold glass when you pour hot water on it. Same holds true the other way! And Granite seems to just fall apart, kind of like soft concrete.

You need something to move the stones with, I made a set of tongs by splitting a branch down and putting a wedge in and binding it alltogether. They work very well. But, you can just simply use two sticks, but it doesn't work near as well as the tongs.

Another Method is to use a forked stick as a scoop and another stick to push and hold the stone in the fork. This works very well for larger rocks.

DSC01001.jpg


Sometimes I like to clean the rocks of ash and dirt before moving from the fire to the container. A field made brush works well for this, or a second container to quickly dip the rocks in, but that takes alot of the heat out the rock.

DSC01002.jpg


DSC01000.jpg


Sorry to those of you that can not watch video, but taking pictures while playing with really hot rocks just wasn't going to happen!

By no means am I an expert on boiling with rocks
 
Dig a hole, Line it with newspaper, or a t-shirt, or whatever you can find. Fill it with water, and have a fire near by heating rocks.
It is best to find wetter areas to make the hole, as it won't suck up the water as much
For the fire, build a log cabin, or tic-tac-to type fire with all the rocks in the middle of the square with good pieces of wood here and there. If you are digging near the water, don't use rocks that were wet or near the wetness as they go boom.
 
My Katadyn Hiker Pro filter died a few days into the John Muir Trail. I bummed filtered water off a couple of girls, and then drank unfiltered water straight for the rest of the almost two weeks. Met several other hikers doing the same thing. We were choosey where we got water, is all.

We were all fine.

In cattle country, you bettah use hot rocks to boil your water.
 
Thanks you all for posting repeated instruction on the "hot rocks" method, they are good back-ups if someone misses the identical post directly above them. In the part of Ontario you would be hard pressed to walk for an hour and not find a stream or creek, the land slopes to the south into Lake Ontario and all water more-or-less flows south, so if you walk east-west you will find something. But once again, my request was not for purifying water, it was for cooking food, which I have now pretty much abandoned for barbecuing. Thanks for your attention. And Skab, very thorough how-to, bravo.
 
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