Emergency Sanitation Essentials: The Scoop on Poop (and Other Critical Topics)

hi i'm jonathan and Kylian jones we are the product Preppers and today we are talking about the taboo subject of Sanitation we're going to review some great ideas on ways that you can be prepared to deal with water system and sanitation system failures so all on to your hats and let's go for many years we have taught classes and published articles on emergency preparedness topics including sanitation keiki well we are so just enjoy it we're to sit back enjoy now you get to listen to our class today for free so stay with us and at the end of this video we'll provide you with a link to a written action plan a template so that it'll be really easy for you to go down and bam-bam-bam develop a written action plan for sanitation for you and your family here we go today we are talking about sanitation when infrastructure fails something that we probably don't like to think about much especially when you look at this picture but something that we really need to think about from the standpoint of preparedness think about the Haiti earthquake and how many were left homeless millions were left homeless there were 7,000 people killed and 531 thousand people that were sickened with cholera all because they didn't have sufficient water or sanitation processes in place inadequate sanitation poor hygiene practice and contaminated and insufficient water supplies are the leading cause of illness and death and disasters and I think if you look at history this is true there are certain a number of people that are killed and injured in the initial disaster and then substantially more than that generally who suffer illness and death because of these kinds of things that that just aren't in place and and don't help keep the people healthy so we are really gonna understand what we can do so disasters don't stink right because they're the owners and nasty stuff and disasters are horrible but depending on what we to do to prepare and how we choose to conduct ourselves we can make a lot of changes so that they're not as that now disasters really do stink and people stink these are our boys and yeah they stink and it's not even a disaster we want to be prepared to deal with the offensive odors which means that we do need to have masks we do need to have chemicals and things in place so that we can prevent the odors from occurring are you saying I need deodorant you're okay right now but there have been time all right we want to be clean as clean as the situation allows this is our little guy and in this picture he was two and quite frankly sometimes that was as clean as his little situation could allow but that being said really we need to be we want to practice exceptionally good hand washing techniques this is a hand washing station in our kitchen sink that we will that we set up when we're practicing that we would use in in a real scenario and the thing about it the water is in the container there's a spigot to control the flow and then all the water is captured in that orange bucket underneath when water is limited we want to make sure it becomes very valuable right and we want to make sure that we use it as carefully as we can so this water well let's cut in it is a mild soap and some dirt from our hands and it will be used to flush the toilet if we have the ability to do that or to have the first stage of laundry when at the first wash in the laundry or to water plants or something like that we want to make sure that you brush your teeth wash your face shower or bathe wear clean clothing and change bedding this all might seem a little bit elementary but even when really bad things happen we need to maintain that structure and be clean low water showers is another way that we can keep ourselves in our environment clean we can take sponge baths we can use baby wipes the gravity solar shower there is an excellent tool you can fill that with water and put it out in the Sun and in a couple of hours it's at least reasonably warm and I love hot showers oh I love so yeah absolutely the outlet on it is not particularly strong it doesn't have a lot of pressure but it at least creates the shower situation so that you can rinse and get clean so like in for instance for me I have long hair which means that this solar shower will not wash all of the shampoo and conditioner out of my hair so I have to make sure that I understand that and that I have a backup for that but as far as cleaning your body it does a fabulous job as does the pressure tank washer there you could paint that black as well and stick it in the Sun absorb that warmth and at least have a reasonably warm shower it's not like your shower at home but it would certainly be better than nothing yeah and they have commercially available pressure tank showers that are much better than this little thing that we picked up at the the hardware store so you might want to look into those these are our cute little ladies and we want to talk a little bit about sanitation sanitation for the little ones so go to the Provident prepper emergency sanitation for our little loved ones and we have a post there that has a lot of specific recommendations for preparing for sanitation needs of these little guys but lots and lots and lots of baby wipes like I said you can purchase them at Costco or Sam's Club buy the case and they will store for a really long time and they're good for adults to bathe with as well as all these needs at the children have disposable diapers always stock at least one size ahead to make sure that you don't get caught without them we store cloth diapers the pins and the plastic pants because although we don't have small children in our home anymore we do have grandchildren and we have neighbors and we have lots of little friends who we want to make sure are well taken care of so baby safe soaps and shampoos is the other thing on our list that you need to have okay obviously first aid is very very important we have to be able to care for those who are sick or injured this includes having appropriate supplies on hand for most kinds of injuries water and mild soap is generally the best we do obviously want to make sure that we clean those wounds well and that we sanitize them to prevent any infection and so we will want to have things like alcohol and betadine and hydrogen peroxide the antiseptic sprays and then a huge variety of band-aids and bandages these are critically important then we have to have more than you ever think you might need so have a good well-stocked first-aid kit clean environment we talked about this a little bit but we want to reduce the spread of disease by keeping which means that although you may not want to be a maid all the time this is the time when you really need to get a little bit persnickety about cleanliness we want to disinfect make sure that you have the products that you need to disinfect surfaces dishes and utensils clothing and bedding calcium hypochlorite is something that we highly recommend every household has for a variety of use of reasons Google the Provident prepper disinfecting water using calcium hypochlorite to learn a little bit more and have some detailed instructions but for our purposes today you can take this one-pound bag of calcium hypochlorite and it will disinfect up to 10,000 gallons of water and it costs less than $10 for this bag what you do is you take it and you make a stock solution which is similar to the chlorine bleach the Clorox that you buy at the market the problem with the Clorox is that it has a six month shelf life and so as time passes the chlorine gets weaker and weaker and weaker and doesn't do the job to kill the bad bugs and especially at this point we want to make sure that what it's doing is its intended purpose which is to kill the bugs so you just make a fine stock solution this is that the table that we use you take one teaspoon of kit dry calcium hypochlorite and you put it in a cup half of water and you mix it up it doesn't dissolve really quickly so it takes a little while but then you can use that stock solution to disinfect surfaces to disinfect water just the way that you would with a chlorine bleach so you would take a little bit of it and dilute it and put it in a spray bottle to spray surfaces or a little bit in some water to sanitize your dishes things like that another important part of sanitation is separating waste and we'll talk about that a little later when we talk about human waste but in this case we're talking about the garbage that we generate every day and if you look at your neighbor's garbage can we won't mention our own but our neighbor's garbage cans are always so full of stuff it's amazing how much can build up in a week and you can imagine in some kind of a disaster there will be an abundance of garbage everywhere and so an important part of dealing with that is to separate it separate it into things that would be reusable maybe cans and and glass things that we could reuse for other purposes think about the burnable aspects that could be used for a fire to cook food or just to get rid of the bulk of the garbage wet garbage a lot of it is just contaminated with bad stuff that we just need to bury or compost so there's some options there reduce the bulk as much as you can obviously flatten cans that you're not going to use boxes just do what you can do to minimize the bulk associated with all this trash composting is a very good thing to do if you have kitchen scraps garden scraps yard waste those things they can be used to create a soil amendment to help you grow a garden which you may already do or or may need to do to sustain your food supply this is something you probably want to put as far away as you from your house as you can because it will attract some pests and rodents but a very good thing to do the vertical trash we don't actually recommend you burn in a in a grocery cart not at all ever don't do it but some of it you'll just need to burn cereal boxes paper paper plates cardboard those kinds of things can be burned now if you've got a whole community that's burning things you're gonna have some air quality problems and you don't want to be burning anything like plastics or paints or anything that's going to put off volatile organics or other just noxious chemicals these do cause serious problems for our environment and for the human environment especially for those who have problems with with their lungs and such conditions so just use great caution one of the things that we do in our food storage instead of storing styrofoam plates we store paper plates the real paper plates because they are burnable and so we understand that we're preparing if we need to use those in a disaster scenario then we also have a fuel source instead of just a wasted source and something that piles up making a problem a very good point human wastes important things you should know this is the part where our video gets a little bit censored so if you're a little bit squeamish or shy here here's some trouble because you know so this is a picture of an outhouse that is in a campground where we love to go every year we have a family reunion and it is just a fabulous place but it stinks to high heaven and I hate using that outhouse so one of the things that we want to do is we want to plan remember how disaster stink we want to plan so that you don't have to deal with that smell all the time so plan ahead know that each person will produce five gallons of waste per week that's a five gallon bucket of stinky stuff that you will need to somehow manage and it's super important that you never throw human waste on the open ground because that just causes it's it's toxic and it spreads disease and we want to make sure that we don't do anything to contribute spread a disease we need to make sure we have basic sanitation supplies which includes toilet paper feminine products soap and disinfectants plastic buckets a whole bunch of different plastic buckets right they have such good uses make sure that you have lids for some of them in case you need to store some of the waste but there's they're great for hauling and all kinds of stuff garbage bags quality garbage bags don't skimp here and you need a whole variety of size from the little kitchen bags to the to the big long size bags and gloves we want lots of different oh yeah talk about your gloves I'm Bob sir I mean there's a whole variety of gloves that you want in here you want everything from heavy working gloves to first aid gloves you know the vinyl or the nitrile gloves but a variety of gloves to help protect your hands from wearing from work and to keep things anodized both for ourselves and those who we may be assisting good point and duct tape we always recommend duct tape for a whole variety of reasons just remember that duct tape does go bad after a while especially if it's in a heated situation it gets gooey and gummy and yucky so just rotate it make sure you have good fresh duct tape because it is a very good tool and a shovel is very very important to be able to especially to be able to to bury waste and things just have some good tools on hand this isn't a complete list by any means but it's certainly a place to get started ah stuff we want to separate our poo from Rp talk about that little earlier separating becomes a critical content component of Sanitation so the reason why is because remember when urine leaves the body for all intensive purposes it is sterile and it won't make you sick however when feces leaves the body it is a toxic substance which is contaminated and construed disease so if you mix the two of them then all of it is can terminated with your urine it is possible you could go free-range in the yard and although we don't recommend it everything for social reasons every it would be just fine right but you cannot do the same thing with feces it's very important that you handle that appropriately toilet paper what would we do without toilet paper we actually did an article once on alternatives to toilet paper and it motivated us and others to just go get enough toilet paper toilet paper the other options are not real fun this represents a year supply for the average person I don't know what you call the average person I use very little my wife I use - a lot more than he does but and you know your own needs and if you don't know your own each you should mark on your package when you open it and see how long it takes you to use that package that's an engineer thing to do but you know that's how you determine how much you're really using because sometimes we don't even think about it we just use it and and so know how much you need and store that much for each member of your family and maybe a little bit to share we have some crappy or in that paper I call it her happy that turned out not to be real good and so that's in reserve for those who may come begging but my wife will have the nice soft stuff Oh such a smart man that's right give that neighbors the bad stuff so this is something that um Jonathan created this is actually in our master bathroom we have a little toilet closet so it's just got the toilet in it and nothing else um and this is hidden away so what he did is right over this doorway he put a 12 inch shelf and on top of the shelf we have stored enough toilet paper for four people for one year along with feminine products so the it's strategically placed right it's very handy when you need it in the event of an earthquake or something like that it's not gonna hurt you when it when it falls down because it's very lightweight and it's up on a high shelf you want to be careful with the high shelves never to put anything heavy well we of course live in earthquake country so always a little bit concerned about that but this is a fantastic way to be able to find a place to store that toilet paper which is big and bulky and yet nobody can see this nobody who comes to our home knows that it's their reusable toilet paper now I know that sounds really gross right it yeah but think about it your regular toilet paper runs out and what are you going to do well the corn cobs and the pebbles and all the other stuff that was in that article we wrote is not anything that I am excited to try so what we've done is we've created a whole bunch of reusable toilet paper so it we like to use the hundred percent flannel and because it's just for our bums we're not gonna go out and spend a lot of money on it so whenever the pajamas are worn out or the flannel sheets are worn out any of that gets cut into eight inch squares and then these wash up there are people who do a great job of finishing the edges and all kinds of things like that for me I have decided that that's not the best use of my time but this could be very valuable they fit fairly well into the square ice cream buckets so that's a good way for us to store them the other way that we store them is in gallon ziplock bags this is of the day this is actually our bathroom that we were talking about our master bath and our son travels a lot and he has fallen in love with the bidet and for Jonathan's birthday he purchased a bidet for our toilet and they installed it it didn't take very long to install it Helen has a probably 15 minutes yeah so they're not very expensive didn't take very long to install and then it just sat there because um you know but days are something that people in Europe use and not usually us but we've learned to really appreciate it so our little 12 year old son he was really excited that he wanted to see what it was like and how it works and so I held up a little rag in front of it and turned it on so he could see the water squirt and I said are you sure you want to try this yeah I want to try it so I left the bath through him and let him in there so that he could have a little bit of privacy and all of a sudden I hear this Oh Marvin a 12 year boy and it really is a good thing I didn't use it it was on our toilet for a good year and I still hadn't used it until I got sick and I had a really sore bum and I didn't want to use toilet paper and so I tried it and I have actually really come to greatly appreciate it it significantly reduces the amount of toilet paper that we use because all you're doing is patting dry and it increases the cleanliness but if you look to the right-hand side of the toilet there on that little rack we have a place for our spare toilet paper rolls but those white things in there those are actually reusable toilet paper and the basket below is where the dirty ones go so this is just a picture of how the bidet sprays because I know you're all wondering that these are portable bidets or cleansing bottles so a really good thing for your evacuation kits your survival kits because this bottle can just be put in there and filled with water and then you can use it to cleanse yourself now one of the things that we wanted to talk about is flushing the toilet so when there's some type of an emergency you might not um your sewer might still work but you might not have water to flush your toilet that's when that water that we were capturing for the in the hand-washing station could come in really handy because you can flush a toilet simply by pouring water into it and it will just flush itself but that's assuming that your sewer system is still intact and then that what you're putting down it is gonna go far away to the nice place where it needs to go okay don't want to make sure that we mentioned that this is a permanent port-a-potty so everybody prefers their own toilet right if you have a choice you're always gonna pick your own toilet over somebody else's and the same thing when you have a disaster or an emergency you want some familiar options because everything's kind of all mixed up and you just want some comforts so it's very possible to turn your toilet into a permanent port-a-potty and well we do is we turn off the water supply the toilet right and you get rid of all the water that's in the toilet you just plunge it down and then you lift up the seat and you put a bag over the the toilet and then you tape that bag with using duct tape so that nothing accidentally spills in there that needs to be cleaned up or whatever and then you just use the toilet like this every time it's used you can add a little bit of whatever you choose to dirt is for me it seems like really heavy but sawdust kitty litter there are things like poo powder and bio gel you could use a wag bag in here or you could add disinfectant every time you you never know what you're gonna have in an emergency situation so you're just got to make the best of what you can but then in this next slide see how we've we've taken that back once it has the nasties in it we're gonna tie the talk when we're gonna put it directly into a bucket by doing that we make sure that we're not gonna have any accidental spills as we remove it from the house that's a really really good point you don't want that stuff dropped in your home or that bag to break on the way outside what a mess when you're already dealing with enough ya struggle at the at that point time anyway so okay this is a luggable loo not my favourite by any means but it certainly has you know maybe some positive options with it it is portable and you can stick your supplies in there your garbage bags and your toilet paper and all that can sit right in there and and be taken portably with you a couple of the downsides I really don't like looking at somebody else's business that just doesn't appeal to me and also these can be somewhat unstable especially for larger people and that is not an accident that I would want to have to deal with is that thing tipping over and spilling that the contents so not my favorite but an option and thing about that is that if it's not really stable and you happen to be on it and tip over that's just not a good thing not a good thing this actually one of the expose that we were speaking at recently I saw this and I had to snap a picture to share with you but this lady is really creative so she's taken the luggable loo and she's cut the seat out of a camping chair and the luggable loo is inside of that and what that's done is it's given you arms so that it makes it stable and then she's got a little table there that has other supplies that you might need but check out the way she has the toilet paper this was a really clever she cut the bottom off of the 2-liter bottle and then put the toilet paper in it and then put taped a ziplock bag on there outside so she could actually hang it up like that and then you just pull on the toilet paper which means that it controls the amount that's coming out and it keeps that roll clean and gives a nice place where you can hang it so I was I was really impressed she did a really good job chemical toilets are a good option I think probably much preferred to me to the luggable loo for that for that reason that when you do your business and you flush it it goes down in the holding tank below and it's not visible and the smells are contained so I think that that's a real positive for the chemical toilets they require very little water and they do keep the spread of disease to a minimum so chemical toilet I think is a really good option that the chemicals do have a shelf life so you do need to watch that but overall a good option and the only downside is when you do have to empty that bottom holding tank it is a little bit extreme I guess but that's just for a few seconds so if you've got a hit pair of nose plugs you're good this is all a little bit extreme yes okay the bedside commode think about this usually we think about this as a medical device but it would be a fantastic alternative toilet a couple of the reasons why see how can fold away and just kind of tuck away until you need it and it is designed to be extremely stable because a lot of the people who are using it are at full risk and so they're very stable they're portable that bucket that's there that goes underneath it has special bags designed for it that could be used three or four times before they have to be changed but they contain some kind of bio gel poop out or something that actually minimizes the odor and the germs and all that that's in it so this might be a really good idea the other thing is you might be able to find these that make perhaps garage sales or secondhand stores which might really help to stretch your preparedness budget composting toilets these are not real common in the world that we live but there are communities and places where they actually do encourage these and offer rebates on these because it means that they don't have to expand their sewer system if people are finding alternate means to take care of their human waste the the concept is very simple you do your business in there there's usually a fan and a stack that pulls the moisture out of it and once you pull the moisture out there's really not very much left and that compost into a fertilizer now you don't want to use that on your vegetable garden but you can use it on your flower garden and it it's just an alternate way to take care of our human waste and and do so in a way that allows it to be used for some kind of fertilizer not garden but not your garden only on your flowers yeah most of these do require a little bit of a power supply which you can usually supply with a solar module just that just runs the fan that helps pull all the moisture out some of them do have a little wooden wind turbine on top that will do the same thing outhouse so we hope it never happens but if the disaster lasts for a really long time and we need to find long-term solutions an outhouse might just be a good solution for you we want to make sure that you located away from your home and away from water sources if you have a high water table you've got to be super careful so know and understand where it is that you're you're digging this you can add dirt ashes or lying to help control the odor and minimize the Flies laundry okay I don't know what I'm gonna do when I don't have my washing machine that's gonna make me really sad but we want to come up with some solutions for cleaning clothes without power and traditionally people have done it without our washers forever right in I know our son spent a couple years in Argentina and they did all their laundry in a bathtub and that's just how how they did it so it's totally possible for us to accomplish this the goal is to remove the dirt the sweat and the germs we're not looking at making sure that everything is perfectly white we're just trying to be clean enough to be safe we want to make sure we store plenty of laundry soap and apply some water saving techniques because if we don't have that wonderful water running from our faucet it can make it a little bit more difficult there's a couple options that we have up here the first one it's similar to a salad spinner and so you put the clothes in it and it you spin it around and around and round um it I don't think you could do what pair of jeans in it things that are very heavy but it would definitely be fantastic for underwear and more delicate clothes the pressure washer that's right next to it is a really good thing that a lot of people actually use everyday and then in the bottom that's just a bucket that has a plunger that will agitate the clothes well kind of experiment with this and see what works for you but then when it comes to drying the clothes think ahead and make sure you have the supplies that you need because there's you can do all kinds of different alternative things when we go camping we always just have a clothes lying and we put it between a couple trees in our home right now we have a really nice permanent one because it's something that I use very frequently so make sure that you have the supplies that you need and understand how to do it now most of the time leaving clothes on the line for a long time is bad because it will bleach your clothes but make sure that you remember that in a disaster scenario it might be really important to disinfect and the UV of the Sun is fantastic at disinfecting so if you are using those reusable toilet paper the flannel squares leave them out on the line for a good long time to make sure that they get very well disinfected if you go to the Provident prepper crisis laundry management you'll find a post where we have really spelled it out and there's lots of really good ideas there for you hey pest control very very important disasters are breeding grounds for pests and certainly we are already dealing with a bad situation and then if you have lots of pests in a variety of forms it just makes the situation worse health-wise and comfort wise insect control you want to keep your area free from garbage if there's a time to keep things clean and tidy this is it you want to store fly swatters and traps and bug killers and insect repellents those kinds of things a lot of those I don't typically like to use a lot while I love the flyswatter but having these things handy will really help in managing the situation and don't allow standing water in your yard or in your area because that just becomes a breeding ground for mosquitos which carry disease and again could make things even worse rodent control none of us like to have these rodents running around so make it make the area not suitable for their for their growth and propagation make sure your to package your food in a way that they can't get to it again store and poisons I'm not again a big fan of poisons but I am a big fan of our cats they stay outside and they do a really good job of policing the mice however you do it you just need to make sure those rodents are under control because this would be a time when they would breathe and multiply and a time when we absolutely do not want them so when it comes to packaging your food storage to prevent infestation google the provident prepper 8 food storage enemies and how to slay them in this post we talk about all the different things that can affect your food storage and how to be able to actually make it last for a really really long time so food storage is really important and it would be really bad if you went to find it and found all kinds of droppings and bugs multiplying and all kinds of stuff in it just one quick note on that there are the mylar bags that some people store food in they are not immune from having my seat through them so you want to make sure that you store them your foods in something a little heavier than the mylar bag or with the mylar bag so we have some in mylar bags and that's how we know the mice eat through them but if you put them mylar bags into a bucket into a plastic bucket and seal it then you're pretty much covered then you're good ok let's take just a moment and talk about sanitation action plan if you go to the Provident prepper prepping for basic emergency sanitation there's some really good information for you there you can also go to the Provident Preppers sanitation action plan now if we have all this knowledge and we talk about all these things and we get motivated but we don't have a plan it's probably going to be pretty much wasted life is busy and and life and time goes on and if we don't have an action plan we're probably not going to get there so we encourage you to create your action plan and set some goals make them reasonable goals but goals just the same so get some help on this you can use our action plan templates and or you can create your own but one way or another create a plan and set some goals get busy get to work we would love for you to help us spread the word because we really believe if our community is not prepared that we're not prepared so follow us on Facebook share with your friends visit the prophet improvident prepper org and learn more about how to get prepared as kindly mentioned we are not prepared if our community isn't prepared and sometimes we like to think that we can isolate ourselves and and just survive on our own but that's not really the healthy way to do it and our neighbors in our community need to be prepared as well so that we can all manage this together and we are not going to withhold our our substance from others that's just not who we are we seriously encourage everyone to help out in this process of getting prepared and to share with your neighbors great John you stay with us to the end and now it's time to work on that action plan for your emergency sanitation for your family look below in the show notes and you will find a link to our website the Provident prepper org and a template for an emergency sanitation plan because knowledge is power and it truly is if you will follow through with this you will have a peace of mind that comes with that if you liked our presentation we'd really appreciate if you'd share with your friends because unless we're all prepared none of us are prepared excellent point and now for the question of the day and now for the question of the day what is the biggest obstacle you see in preparing and following through with your plan and do you have any big tips and sanitation things that you've learned along the way that you'd like to share with our audience comment below absolutely thank you thanks for being part of the solution

Channel: The Provident Prepper

Views: 94,001

Rating: 4.9075146 out of 5

Keywords: Emergency Preparedness, Emergency Sanitation, Emergency Toilet Options, Low Water Laundry Options, Disinfection Techniques in Disasters, shtf, prepper, long term grid down

Id: JpJXN-j-fWc

Length: 38min 19sec (2299 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 17 2018