welcome to part three of what to do in a nuclear crisis in this section we are going to go over water ways to remove radiation from water purification filtering and ways to find water focusing on what to do during the midst of a crisis rather than preparedness so much um one thing that i will say to begin with is that the author is not an emergent not a physician psychiatrist or emergency management specialist this is just private research this information is basically on this website ibooglio.org rcipnuclear.html in terms of radiation removal the main ways to remove radiation from water are reverse osmosis activated carbon and ion exchange lime softening distillation and filtration through carbon and soil forbes does have a good overview article about the different ways to remove radiation from water if you search for the title how to remove radioactive iodine 131 from drinking water from the forbs.com website it has some good overview information for the layperson about reverse osmosis activated carbon ion exchange and the fact that most of the filters that you can buy are going to be a triple threat and many of them will have five different filters in one and so that would give you some definitions for all these processes so first of all we're going to go through filtering reverse osmosis treatment through gore-tex fabric is most often mentioned the most often mentioned way to keep radioactive plutonium and strontium out of drinking water you probably do need special equipment to accomplish this because the fabric is designed not to let water through it so there has to be a lot of pressure to get the water through the fabric which is very fine and would actually strain all all but about 15 of the water would actually be excluded so you can buy economy-grade systems from several companies online for between you know 200 to 1500. if uh you're planning ahead of the fact so the what we're going to focus on right now is what you can do at home or wherever you happen to be when the emergency should strike and the most often mentioned way is distillation so distillation may remove some radiation from water according to the department of energy it's probably the most efficient way to remove radiation from water without using special equipment you do need a pot in a bowl and fire basically you get a large pot and put a small rack inside on the bottom you put a bowl on top of the rack you fill the bottom of the pot with water you put the pot lid on upside down with the knob in the middle so that any condensation drips into the middle of the bowl you put ice cubes on top of the upside down lid to create a hot cold barrier and then you boil the water and wait for the condensation to accumulate make sure it's cooled before handling or before drinking obviously there are many youtube videos on this topic that can give you some more details on that some ways to distill water would be stove heat campfire obviously atmospheric water generators and this website does have a way to do it yourself make one do it yourself if you should have the equipment i would assume that you wouldn't but this website here it's on instructables.com called diy atmospheric drinking water generator there's a way to make one out of plastic bottles and a solar still which is more of what you would do per se camping and it's basically a hole in the ground with water on the top instead of the pot lid excuse me with plastic on the top instead of the pot lid you have a plastic tarp that's collecting the condensation and dripping it down into the hole and there's a cup in the middle of the hole that catches it so in that case you're just kind of relying on nature instead of fire so um i should also mention that chapter 8 of the nuclear war survival skills book which is a pdf document you can buy it or you can the people who originally published it uh very nicely put it into website format so that it's uh a little bit easier to read for some people perhaps and this website has a lot of detail about uh those sorts of processes so in terms of distillation i tried to do as much research as i could on this because all of the survival websites i saw said this is the way this is 100 sure you know this is how to remove radiation from water but then when i went on to the library databases i found that many of the experts and scientists said this might be something you could do but it's not surefire so what i did is i found this website from the department of energy office of science and you can see the the url up here and so it's a q a and so the question is radioactive water if you have radioactive water and distill it if the water was not radioactive but had a radioactive mineral dissolved in it will the distilled water minus that radioactive element be radioactive or is there a chance the distilled water will be radiation free is there any surefire way for removing all radiation from water and the reply is it depends on what the radioactive contaminant is and it depends on how the distillation is carried out it also depends on your standards for radiation free part of the problem is that radioactive waste usually contains many different radioactive elements each with unique chemical properties most of the really bad ones like cobalt plutonium cesium strontium do not form compounds with high volatility they will not go into the vapor phase and will be left behind in the pot in a distillation in practice however distillation involves boiling which produces aerosols some of these may be carried into the collector different ways of running the distillation can increase or decrease the extent to which this happens so what they're saying is that sometimes when you are distilling some of that mace aerosol into the air and go into the pure water cup that or the bowl of pure water and so it's not 100 guaranteed in many cases major proportions of the radioactive contaminants can be removed through iron exchange or reverse osmosis as i mentioned earlier but what fraction of residue is low enough some contaminants such as radon and iodine will not necessarily be removed by simple distillation more complex distillations can do better but exactly what is best to do depends on the specific situation basically distillation will probably remove a lot of the radioactive contamination from water so that's kind of the bottom line distillation will probably remove the radiation from the water and that might be the best that you can do in your current circumstances whether or not the distilled water is safe to drink will depend on how much radioactivity is left and what your standards of safety are so we're all exposed to ionizing radiation from natural and man-made sources your distilled water may not be quote-unquote radiation free but then again water from a mountain stream is not radiation free either and it wouldn't have been even before humans discovered radioactivity and that was richard e barron's junior phd uh masters of education department of physics and astronomy and the second answer kind of reiterates that's from vince calder and essentially he kind of discusses things a little bit outside of distillation and that it kind of depends on which chemical element you're dealing with um it has a very he just basically says it's kind of a complex answer even if it works out on paper that distillation on the large scale would not necessarily work because of the energy it requires to go through that process so that covers distillation i just kind of wanted to get to the bottom of it and figure out why am i reading these conflicting things and conflicting information you can get additional information on water purification not related directly to radiation from fema water management from fema.gov plan prepare slash water manage and also um brady.gov managing dash water also female library has some infra online library have some information on the subject and as i mentioned before nuclear war survival skills has a lot of information what we'll go to next is going to be um what i've covered in it already in the first two films was filtering and essentially since most people are not going to have equipment this is an alternative way that you might be able to accomplish in your home so filtering through dense clay earth or natural filter is what it's called and essentially it's the same structure as a terrarium where you have a layer of from the top layer downwards you'd have the you'd have maybe a container like a plastic file hanging file container something like that bucket what have you so the top of it is water then porous fabric six to seven inches of clay soil another layer of fabric an inch and a half of pebbles and sticks to prop the container up and a pan to catch the filtered water settling it would be essentially clay particles to carry the suspended fallout particles to the bottom and then you dip the water out of the top of the bucket of water so you'd fill a bucket three quarters full of water you dig up clay from four or more inches under the ground and mix it in the water one inch for every four inch one inch of clay for every four inches of water you let that settle for six hours and then siphon or dip the water out um that i did try to research that a little bit i didn't find anything that said that actually removes radiation in terms of research it is called soil aquifer treatment s.a.t and that's an official system where in communities that do not have access to clean water this system is used to remove things such as fecal coliform and so forth from water so it is a system that's used to purify water if you want to do some research on your own and there's a article called soil aquifer treatment sat system a case study and that's from the let's see indian journal of environmental health from 2002 july 2002 so if you wanted to do some research on that to see if that's what you want to do then feel free to do that or i would encourage you to do that um and also i wanted to kind of review the nuclear war survival skills is where i got a lot of that information from that is again chapter eight it has a lot of information on carrying water kind of more of the details you can tell that he actually went through this and and made these projects and you know lived in shelters for periods of time and tested them out so for storing water how to store your water best how to if you have a plastic bag full of water you don't want to be handling it and trying to pour it out you put a siphon tube inside the plastic bag and then you siphon it out when you need water um i know it's going to be an issue for people who are collecting water and so here's where you know the disinfecting water is on page 71 of the book and that's where you can see here's a picture of the soil filtering if you're looking at the film version of this if you are sight impaired i do apologize and you can kind of see a visual if possible of that and so if you want more information about that that's where to look so also i wanted to mention that you want to pay attention to other impurities in the soil because you if you've used a miracle grow or something like that then that's then going to end up in the water that you have strained through the soil so pay attention to things like that um with that in mind you always after you filter you want to purify so here are some ways to purify water in general not specific to radiation so this would be after you've purified after you've filtered the radiation out to your best of your ability you boil the water for three to five minutes collecting any water that evaporates let it cool before drinking if you pour it back and forth between two containers it will add oxygen and taste better but you want to be careful that you're not exposing it to radioactive dust and and recombining that boiling will not remove radiation there is a journal on article on that from the disaster in japan you can also add four drops of household bleach that contains 5.25 sodium hypochlorite per quart of water do not use bleaches that are scented or color safe mix and let stand for 30 minutes may have a slight bleach odor and then of course there's also distillation so last but not least i'll go over collecting water from indoor water sources do not drink water from open water sources some researchers actually most of the researchers i ran across do you feel that water coming from a pipe underground during the first few hours after a nuclear event may be safe if the pipes had not yet been contaminated it should be collected and stored in clean containers possible sources of water inside of a shelter would be melted ice cubes liquids from canned goods water heater being sure that the electricity or gas is off and you've opened the drain at the bottom of the tank you want to definitely get expert direction or instructions on doing that you can burn yourself pretty badly if you're not careful pipes covered tanks there's a debate over whether water from toilet tanks not the bulb but the tank the back part it's considered either a last resort or by most government resources not safe for use or consumption most survival websites will encourage the use of that water however so it's a judgment call you may you might want to you know do something other than drink that water perhaps water from all sources should be purified before use consult an expert for instructions on how to access your water heater if you choose to this is if you're watching this this is a website that i found on how to you can search for how and why to clean your water your hot water heater and that's different than a radiator and it does give instructions on how to do that like how to turn everything off and and drain the water and so forth um and that website was get getreadygear.com so and uh let's see both fema and ready.gov claim that water from tanks toilet tanks radiators hot water boilers or home heating systems water beds swimming pools and spas are not safe water sources again there's a distinct distinction between a water heater and a hot water boiler which is essentially a state of louisiana website does cite the toilet tank as being a viable last resort so from that was radiation um indoor water sources safe indoor water sources and terms of out-of-door water sources water from deep wells and from water tanks and covered reservoirs into which no fallout particles or fallout contaminated water has been introduced water from covered seepage pits or shallow hand dug wells if the earth is not too sandy gravel or to porous filtration through earth is very effective the sas survival handbook lists underground wells and springs water and pipes and containers and fast flowing rivers so you can see here is an example of a filter that you can purchase this is a reverse osmosis five stage water filtration system 50 gallons a day this one's 220 and you can see the others there are various prices up to 1600 and so on and so forth of course if you're if something has already happened those prices might go up pretty suddenly and that's just an example of what you can purchase of course this information does not supersede any statements by the by the press media or the government in regards to what you should be doing in the situation you can get updates from the radio the television state troopers you can also cover call one eight hundred be ready one eight hundred two three seven three two three nine that should be a pre-recorded message for the public as to what to do and once again the author of this film and website is not an expert a physician or a psychiatrist and so the materials and other information are for educational communication information purposes only not intended to replace or constitute medical advice or treatments of course i intend that the information contained to be accurate but errors do occur and the author just claims any warranty of any kind whether it's express or implied as to any matter relating to the service or information the rest of that disclaimer can be found at the website where you can find this information is a non-profit website nobody profits from people visiting the site it's ibiblio.org rcip nuclear dot html and that website contains information about what to do in a nuclear crisis nuclear radiation emergency information supplies water food first aid burns wounds homeopathy sanitation shelter communication counseling and coping skills and research as well as some key survival guides i would again encourage you to download a copy of nuclear war survival skills by creston carney chapters 5 shelter 8 water 9 food 13 first aid and there are a number of other survival guides on that website as well thank you very much have a good day you