Backpacking water filters aren’t all that expensive and work fine with most water sources. Wouldn’t produce enough to shower in but certainly enough that you could survive in a disaster.
I've got an assortment of backpacking/camping water filters, but don't live especially near a water source, so my days would revolve around walks to the nearest creek. (2 km away) A cargo bike would help a lot there.
If the municipal water is still functional but non-potable, a LifeStraw Max gets you effectively unlimited water on-demand for most sources of contamination.
You could collect rainwater, but realistically water outages are usually not "the taps are dry", but rather "the water treatment plant failed so we can't guarantee the water is safe to drink."
> You could collect rainwater, but realistically water outages are usually not "the taps are dry", but rather "the water treatment plant failed so we can't guarantee the water is safe to drink."
This happened literally last month in the region where I live, and yes "the taps are dry" is exactly what happened.
The water treatment plant staff detected high levels of toluene in the river which feeds the plant, so as a preventive measure, they shut down the whole thing. It took several days until they managed to get the toluene levels in the river low enough that adding activated charcoal to the water intake could get rid of the rest. In the meantime, there was no water being pumped into the system, and once your building's water tank ran dry (the size varies depending on the building), there was no water anymore (unless you hired a water truck to bring water from a nearby city).
And that's not even the first time this kind of thing happened around here. A couple of years ago, another water treatment plant in the same region (fed by a different river) had trouble due to high levels of geosmin in the river, and they also had to shut down for a while. The result was the same, taps running dry once the building water tanks get empty.
Not to mention that pumping water needs lots of electric power. Not only at the water treatment plant, but several other places in the system need to move water against gravity, or increase its pressure.
I do collect rainwater! (In the summer months, at least.) Have a system cobbled together based on bluebarrelsystems.com
Though disaster preparedness and water efficiency are a bit at odds. For the former I'd want to keep all my barrels mostly full, but for the latter I want to keep them empty enough that rainfall events aren't overflowing them and wasting water.
Sure, but even with my regular water usage, the LifeStraw Max filters would last me over a year, and it works via water pressure. There isn't really any disaster scenario where I'm remaining in my home and need to purify water via burning wood.
I wouldn't think backpacking water filters would help much in for getting water from rivers / ponds in an urban/suburban environment? They'd take care of particulate matter and microbes but I doubt they'd do much for chemical contaminants.
Also, most filters can filter bacteria and cysts, but can't filter out viruses. Many say viruses are not an issue in the backcountry (but I still use purifying tablets), but if you're taking water from a suburban stream during a disaster, I'd definitely want to make sure I'm not ingesting whatever viruses the guy upstream deposited when he used the stream as a toilet.
