Water

 Once you have enough flashlights around you the next item on the list of items for any emergency is water.  First thing is you should keep several gallons of water around the house for immediate use when the power is out or a dooky station goes down and taints all the clean water in the system.  I keep like five gallon jugs of water full in the house just for these type of situations.  Then when you are out and about a water bottle, not bottled water needs to be in your vehicle and near you for most of the day.  I take my water bottle with me almost everywhere and fill it up as I go.  Remember drinking half your body weight in ounces every day will cure your diabetes, no I am kidding it will hydrate your cells properly which leads to weight loss, steady BG's, and other neat stuff.  The bottle above is a picture I took of something they sell at stores now that have a filter in them to remove simple items like chlorine taste and other simple things.  Do not consider something that makes water taste good as a true water filter.

 This item here is another selling gimmick.  This is a water filter straw that does not remove dooky or contaminants from water but simple things like chlorine and other items that "taste" bad.  These are good if you can only drink bottled water because you are allergic to tap or something.  They do help in promoting good water.  Have you ever been camping and had safe food but came down with a bit of runny butt?  Sometimes rust and stuff gets into old pipes and a filter like this will help keep that stuff from giving you the butt of runny.  Just remember they do not remove bacteria or other organisms out of the water just "things."

 Besides having fresh water in your house, car, and personal self the next step to being prepared for a disaster is having iodine water tablets.  Yes the same iodine that a doctor will be using to clean you before he does his quadruple heart bypass because you have chicken nuggets in your blood stream also cleans and kills anything in your water.  People don't like the taste of iodine so now alot of these things come with a taste remover but the iodine has never bothered me and so just throw away the second bottle if you can handle the taste.  So with having the water in your house that gives you a 72 hour window of something to keep you alive, then the iodine tablets clean water you will need after you run out of the 5 or so gallons of water you drank.  These things run like five bucks and have a shelf half life of around forever so buy them once, put them in your post 72 hour survival bag and be ready for anything.

These chlorine dioxide tablets work just like the iodine but instead use another chemical for those people that are allergic to iodine.  I personally like the iodine tablets best but these are great to have as well.  You can always use both if you feel like the dooky in the water is too strong just for one and always use a ratio that is stronger chemical than water when mixing these things.  I once had iodine water that was not processed water and came down with a month of post deer water runny butt and I simply wanted to just die.  I would eat or drink anything and five minutes later it came out the back end.  You don't want this to happen to you, and the doctor gives you this stick and a card board piece of paper and says you have to smear 25 samples on the card so they know who's pee you drank.

Then there are also water filters and pumps and centrifugal things but lets just assume you are not going out and camping for a week anywhere in the next year or so.  That is why I have left those of the list and they also are temperamental and anything that is mechanical is made to break so if you don't use them they don't work.  Stick to chemical processes to keep yourself safe.

Recap this stuff, first keep about two gallons of water in your house for every person living there.  Don't do like a 55 gallon drum and look like an idiot, you don't need that much fresh water in your house.  Next keep fresh water in your vehicle and also always keep a water bottle on you.  I have two gallon jugs in the bed of my truck and always keep my water bottle on me filled up with nice fresh tap.  Then you need to have some iodine water tablets or chlorine tablets in your house for when you empty the fresh water in the house you can then fill the jugs back up and clean the dirty water and live to see another day.