Off Grid
Because of my last post, I added a tag to this site for Off.Grid. I wrote a piece elsewhere about rabbit starvation after watching a video by a homesteader who was saying that rabbit is the cheapest way to get enough protein and I've seen stuff online that suggests to me that there are people living off grid who don't really understand water quality.
I'm a few classes short of a Bachelor's in Environmental Resource Management and I live with a serious medical condition. Germ control is my life.
I've spent years homeless and sleeping in a tent and peeing in the bushes and cleaning up afterwards with stuff like half sanitizer and peroxide. That's why I know a woman can pee standing up and how to describe the procedure.
I generally had regular access to public bathrooms but didn't have access to a shower for over a year. I cleaned up at the beach or at a sink.
I wasn't having to worry about making sure well water or collected rain water was safe to drink, but that was partly intentional. Because of my medical condition, I made choices to be where I had access to public bathrooms and city water fountains and regular meals.
I did research the possibility of living in the woods somewhere and sometimes camped in the woods while traveling from one place to another mostly on foot and catching rides, but I no longer drive and that option doesn't work too well without a vehicle, especially with germ control and diet being significant issues for me.
I got very UGLY replies when I tried to add scientific knowledge to the discussion on Reddit. Someone told me I was stupid and inexperienced and blah blah blah blah for saying that, to the best of my knowledge, we don't currently have any water filter systems adequate to off grid living. You would need to also find some means to kill microbes, ideally before filtering it to avoid creating treatment-resistant biofilm in your filtration system.
I'm fairly confident that a substantial amount of the information available online about things like water infrastructure for off grid living is not going to get you adequately clean, safe potable water.
I was subscribed to a magazine about solar power as a homemaker before I became an environmental studies major and I knew that half the answer to some class project about designing an off grid life that was supposed to involve substantial research was "Earth ship" as soon as I read the assignment. We're talking the big project they give you day one and expect you to turn in the last week based on what you learned in the course.
I'm well aware that people don't want to respect:
1. Women
2. Homeless people
3. Former homemakers who never had "a serious career" (because homemaking isn't viewed as serious work by a lot of people)
4. And probably several other descriptors that apply to me.
People who live off grid will want to claim my years living in a tent "don't count" because I was homeless not living off grid.
Cool. Whatever, dude.
Feel free to die of testosterone poisoning on top of whatever treatment-resistant super bugs you are probably actively breeding in your off grid water system.
As someone who should have died about 25 years ago and nearly did, I am pretty sure that "I still draw breath" is stronger evidence I know whereof I speak than most other credentials. And I also know it won't impress most people and won't ever pay my bills, which is a large part of why I desperately hope to stop writing stuff like this and go do something frivolous and trivial that has some hope of paying my bills, like a webcomic or clothing line.
FYI: I also have a Certificate in GIS (the equivalent of Master's level work) from the world's foremost GIS program and I worked for a Fortune 500 company for over five years. I quit that job to go sleep in a tent and tend to my health.