If a catastrophic event would hit us tomorrow, handling survival sanitation will become a nasty reality for some and sooner or later, they will have to deal with the S from the proverbial SHTF. In this article we will discuss about how one can deal with survival sanitation when bugging in or when bugging out.
For many of the unprepared, dealing with waste management will be the least of their problems, but for you, survival sanitation will become a constant drill in a post-apocalyptic world. When your bowels start to growl or when you have to deal with a truckload of trash, follow these suggestions and you will have one less thing to worry in the middle of chaos.
Survival sanitation when bugging in
For many of the preppers out there, bugging out is not an option and it’s no use debating once again about what is best for them. Everyone prepares as best as they can for the SHTF event they fear the most and for the environment they live in. When bugging-in in a doomed world waste will most probably pile up everywhere. Whether you like it or not, trash and human waste must be dealt with in order to keep your house clean and free of diseases. The sewage system at your home won’t be able to last for long and if you are on a municipal sewage, water will flow until the source breaks. The sewage will flow away until the facility fails, and then you have to think about other ways to deal with survival sanitation.If you live in a rural setting, water shouldn’t be a problem if it comes from an electricity powered pump in a well from your private land. You most probably have a septic system that is usually gravity operated. You should be covered for years to come, but even so, you should know how to deal with waste management when time comes.
Related article: How to bug in and survive
Urine
If the toilet is still working, many people will just use a bucket of water to continue using it. However, since water will become a valuable resource in a post-SHTF scenario, the best way would be to let the urine in the bowl through multiple uses. When someone goes number two, you will need to use a bucket of water to flush it all away.
If your toilet is not working, you need to improvise and you have to keep in mind that urine should be separated from solid human waste to make disposal an easier job. A bucket with a tight fitting lid will become your urinal of choice and it will work for both genders. After a few days, it will generate a strong odor and you know it will be time to dump it outdoors. If you need to keep a low profile and stay under the radar, you should dump it at nighttime. Make sure you dump it in a pit or gravel bed and not near your garden. The ammonia from the urine will kill grass, trees and anything else you have planted.
Feces
Like I said above, a working toilet flushed with buckets of water will spare you the headache of dealing with number two. If this isn’t an option, improvising a toilet from a bucket will be the way to go. You will need heavy duty plastic bags for this method to work. Throw in the bucket used toilet paper and feminine hygiene products as you don’t want these mixed with your trash. After each use, you will need to add some dry material in the bucket. You can use wood ashes, dried grass, shredded newspaper and even sawdust if you have any. The dry material will help mitigate the smell. To help even more with the smell, you can add a splash of chlorine bleach. When the bucket is full enough and you can no longer deal with the smell it’s time to discard it. Take the plastic bag outside and find a place to bury it. If you don’t have the luxury to do this operation and time will be of the essence, you can dump it in a place far away from your home. Just make sure you don’t use the same place every time, as it will create a pile and it will let others know that a human dwelling is nearby.
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