This actually WORKS! Primitive Water Filter Survival Hack!

I drank crystal clear water from a fast moving stream at 6,000 ft. Trinity Alps Ca. 3 days later had to go to ER. I had Giardia, never been so sick. My wife drank same water but boiled, she didn't get sick Crystal clear does not mean it's ok. I always boil now, learned the hard way man.

What you are showing today, my father taught me 60+ years ago. I am delighted to see basic living skills being passed along. Good job, my friend.

This method kept me alive when I was homeless for about a year. It's just a shallow well, doing the same thing as drilling for water just ALOT cheaper lol.

Hey Clay. In your video right around about 4:45 and a bit after I have a recommendation to consider or add to your self thought up design for the cedar bark line well filter you created there which I thought was a pretty brilliant idea by the way. Well done on it I liked it. So at the bottom, where you have the only bit of exposed mud that could make contact with the water and the need to try to not stir up the silt by agitating the water contaminating your water that you would drink... Here's my recommendation. When building and putting it all together, add a bottom layer of either small rocks and slightly larger rocks. Maybe a couple to several inch layer or more. Cleaning them off the best you can in running water of course. But adding that layer will give space for silt to fall through that rock. It will also, make it much harder to stir up any silt when dipping a cup or whatever container you are using to pull water out of the hole. Moving water just wont disturb the silt as it will be somewhat blocked by the layer of rock you add at the bottom. Hope that makes sense. I haven't finished watching the whole video, so if you already thought of this just disregard my recommendation. Thanks for the video.

As an engineer who worked in water treatment I can say that using about a foot of sand as a filter will remove most microorganisms from water. Once you filter the water leave it exposed to sunlight to kill any remaining bacteria.

Hi Clay, I am considered a water purification expert. I work with everything from drinking water to Ultra-Pure Semiconductor water and WFI for Pharmaceuticals. I am also an outdoor enthusiast. I found your video to be excellent for the straightforward, low-tech treatment of fair water sources. You did not make any unreasonable claims. You have a great deal of common sense and some scientific understanding. YOu are a bold man to drink the first batch from the well. When I hiked the AT, I drank water out of beaver dams from Georgia to Maine, and never got sick once. I DO NOT recommend that for others by the way. I trusted the high elevation of the beaver dams and a clean stomach (not much food) to be a natural barrier to a lot of perils. I also only filled my canteen from spring water if available. I have never used water treatment devices with me when I hike. I am more trusting than most when it comes to water quality. The real test would be to do some detailed microbiological assays, but that is a lot of work. Pathogens have a very hard time competing with the natural microbiome in the coyote well and in your healthy gut. That said, I would be scared to death to drink third-world water from almost any source due to ubiquitous human contamination. Think cholera. Thanks for the great video. I look forward to checking out your other stuff on line. Keep em coming Sir. And be careful.

I agree Clay, I've harvested a lot of firewood in the mountains here in Washington state. I've always drank the water from streams. I get it where it runs through moss. Never had a problem and I'm almost 70 years old and I have done this for many years.

As someone who got sick from drinking tap water I agree with you on the fact that tap water isn't always safe even if you run it through a filter. Our tap water in Houston got a fishy smell but the filter took that out and the water was still unsafe to drink. Absolutely no warnings went out from whatever body should issue such a warning. It was very hard to understand why I was getting sick until I smelled the water in my shower and realized it was bad. The local news did report on the issue eventually but I really feel for all the moms out there using tap water for their babies and having no idea why they were getting sick. At least I was able to figure it out.

I'm from a smaller town and moved to the city for work recently. It's nuts what people believe when it comes to food/water hygiene in ultra urban areas. There's definitely a lot of nasties out there that'll get you awfully sick, but you don't need to treat everything with chemicals and antibiotics to make it "safe".

Fantastic lesson. I would love to see the water from the creek under a microscope and compare it to the coyote well's water

When you were dipping out of the mountain stream I was reminded of a story. A friend knew a couple that was total eco nazi material. They had taken two weeks of vacation and had hiked for three days to reach 'the spot' they both knew nobody was around and they dipped right out of that stream. they were sick for a week. Once they had recovered enough they walked up stream and found where someone even left a little toilet paper on a rock in that stream. They had assumed it was safe. Had they walked the requisite two hundred feet and checked they'd have been fine and could have avoided that mistake. Great video by the way.

I am very glad I clicked on this video! Lining the bottom of the well with stones or gravel, would produce even cleaner water! Water is life. This video is life saving information! Great work my friend! 👏👏🔥

Thanks, Clay. If you put a piece of cloth (like a handkerchief or a piece of a shemagh) on the bottom of the well when recently made, you can get even cleaner water with less time and less bailing out. What has worked well for me is to cut the cloth slightly larger than the external diameter of the well, and then insert it into the bottom of the well using some blunt sticks or stones to it. Works great.

I'm from S.E. Louisiana and I was licensed and certified in Water Treatment, Water Production, Water Distribution, Wastewater Treatment and Wastewater Collection for years by the Louisiana Dept. of Health and Hospitals, the same that license Doctors and Nurses. I feel qualified to tell you there is absolutely no problem with what you are doing. Like you said, people have been doing this a long time, but society has become brainwashed deliberately. Bottled water for instance has more bad qualities than tap water. Do you think the name "Evian" is by accident? Spell it backwards and you have the word Naive, think about that for a while.

Greetings from Nayarit Mexico. My grandfather did this exact same thing with the additional when digging a well, he would then make a fire to char the bottom and sides for better filtration. Keep making great videos.

Glad you mentioned at the end to cover the hole to prevent mice feces contamination. Foxes also have a habit of pissing on everything including pans for water and food. I put some watermelon rinds out for opossums and watched on a trail cam a fox pissing all over them.

One of any the most comprehensive survival techniques I’ve seen. I’ve had military survival training and this was better presented and more pertinent than other presentations.

Most people don't realize how something so simple to make could be the most important valuable thing to know in a survival situation !

We use to carry a bucket when hiking/camping with the bottom cut out of it just for the purpose of a liner for a coyote well, same idea you had with the wood slats lining the sidewalls of the well. Worked really well the few times we every used it.

My grandfather had 2 wells. 1 for livestock the other for people. I loved that well with the large stones. The water was so cool and good. I don't know how he made it or how deep it was. I wish I knew all my parents and grandparents knew. They are all gone now. Now our city water has a notice of a small amount of chemical that if it was more we could be in really bad health.