Wilderness Survival

[mattw]

This is kind of a stretch but i thought it would best fit in the hunting section.

Anyone have any experience with military desalter kits? I need one for a paper I am doing. Anyone know where I can get one?

This sort of pretains to hunting, if you got stuck in the woods and needed some water but all you could find was salt water, you would need a desalter kit.

 

[Adept]

This is kind of a stretch but i thought it would best fit in the hunting section.

Anyone have any experience with military desalter kits? I need one for a paper I am doing. Anyone know where I can get one?

This sort of pretains to hunting, if you got stuck in the woods and needed some water but all you could find was salt water, you would need a desalter kit.

Ah, you mean desalination!

Well, it depends. What sort of kit do you mean? Usually I'd just set up a crude still.

 

[mattw]

I'm sure a still would be best, but the military issues "desalter kits". they seem to be somewhat compact and are way more portable than a still. I found one at a surplus store online and ordered it, I would still like to hear if anyone has any first hand experience with these, though.

http://www.lifesupportintl.com/desalterKit.htm

 

[Ancient Mariner]

The question reminds me of a story about elk hunting in MT about 20 years ago. The rumor was that there was a good chance you could get Beaver Fever if you drank the water from streams that had beavers in them. Since most of the streams in western MT had beavers we decided we should get some purification tablets for the water. Checked at home and none were available so decided to wait till we got to MT to buy some. Went into a drug store in Anaconda and went to the pharmacy counter and a little gray haired as asked if she could help us. We explained what we wanted and why. She looked us right in the eye and said "Why don't you just drink beer?" We thought about that and went out and bought some more beer and took it back to the camp. Never got beaver fever either.

 

[TrapperReady]

We thought about that and went out and bought some more beer and took it back to the camp. Never got beaver fever either.

Must resist temptation to make sophomoric joke.

 

[Sunray]

"...a little gray haired...' Full of wisdom so they are. Knew a guy in the CF who had done time in Eygpt where you'd get worse than "beaver fever" if you drank the water. Beer was the subsitute. The guy told me they counted how many they drank in a day. 24. Not drunkeness due to sweating.
In any case, just desalinating doesn't necessarily clean the water.

 

[Art Eatman]

Desalination or "desalt" kits are commonplace in listings of backpacking equipment. I dunno about the military stuff; search on Google, I guess. And, some of the catalogs which advertise in Soldier of Fortune magazine show water purifier systems in backpack size.

Some systems are filters, stopping micron-sized materials from passing through. Others are evaporative, operating much like a small moonshine still, but using sunlight as the heat source; the military had these in WW II.

The trouble with beer is that alcohol, like caffeine, is a diuretic. 12 oz. of beer has 1 oz. of alcohol; drink a 12-ounce beer and lose 12 oz. of water--if not more. For relatively short terms I don't guess it matters all that much.

Giardia, or "beaver fever", SFAIK is a dysentery-type bug. Got nothing to do with beavers. Mostly caused by too many Sierra Clubbers hiking in the boonies and not knowing how to deal with wilderness sanitation. Rainfall runoff or snowmelt carries "bugs" into nearby streams...

Art

 

[atomchaser]

I would advise you not to depend on alcohol as your hydration source. In addition to not hydrating you properly, it will impair your judgement.

 

[atomchaser]

Do you have an NSN or nomenclature for the kit? I could probably help you, but I've never heard of it. Generally, we use ROWPU systems for desal in the military. I also believe Giardia is present in the feces of many species including beavers. I don't have the references but I belive this is the case if my memory serves me. If you get Giarida in a survival situation, you be in a world of hurt.