3 day rations

[Caius Fabius]

Dear Gods don't try substituting wine or vinegar for boiling environmental water guys- consider that your stomach acid is quite strong (~pH 1) and yet nasty bacteria ingested in contaminated food and water survive it to cause you problems- vinegar has a pH of around 3 (pH is a logarithmic scale so the difference between 3 and 1 is 100x), so if the hydrochloric acid in your stomach can't kill them all, vinegar sure won't. And rembember, adding it to water to the point where the mixture is drinkable dilutes the vinegar a lot further reducing it's ability to kill anything. Alcohol kills bacteria for a different reason, but we use a solution of 70% isopropanol to clean surfaces in labs where we can't use bleach (a far more preferrable agent). There's a reason that the active agent in water 'purification' tablets is chlorine.

Both alcohol and vinegar will kill bacteria to be sure, but are in the 'better than nothing' category- IF boiling isn't possible. I'd never trust them personally.

Matt

Of course, in the Modern world, you don't really want to settle with just boiling the water, because that concentrates the salts, heavy metals, radioactivity and chemical contaminants to a higher degree, If you are faced with using water and have time, it is probably better to distill the actual water, by use of a solar still, or catching the steam from boiling water on a distilling plate. The Romans only had to worry about lead and such, not pesticides, and modern pollutants.

In "The Healing Hand" referenced above, the author finds an additional sterilization molecule in wine, which helps kill many bacteria, but suggests leaving the wine water mix for several hours, depending on the type of the wine, (listed in a chart) do get maximum effect. I have to say this book was a fortunate addition to my library.