Today instead of talking about what might happen and how I would prep for it, I thought I would talk about what kind of preps I would do for a certain capability. By this I mean I am going to be talking about how I would save or produce a steady amount of water for myself, my family, or the group that I am with. There are really only 3 ways that I would attempt to save or produce water, those being catching and storing rain water, decontaminating water from a pond or stream, or having a well on your property that is able to produce a steady stream of water.
I will first be talking about catching rain water. This method is better used in some places rather than others, if you live in a desert I would not recommend this way because it will not rain much there. It is really a pretty easy concept. You have to have something to catch large amounts of the water and flow it into a container. What I use is my house and gutter system, the surface of the roof catches a lot of water and the gutter system funnels it into my containment system which is a system of 10 55 gallon barrels. Now I know what you are thinking, you are thinking that the water from my roof is gross and and will have leafs and sticks in it. You are right however I have a filtration system tied into it before it reaches the barrels which takes out all the leaves and sticks. Rain water is a great source because it is clean and there is nothing that you need to do to purify it. It is completely healthy to drink rain water, and for that matter it tastes better then the water that I get out of my faucet. This was a fairly cheep prep, you can buy barrels for about 40 bucks, you already have a roof and gutters, and you can make a filter out of an old t-shirt, that you washed of course. For a total of 550 gallons saved, I think this is a great amount of water for the price I spent on it.
The next way is to find a stream or pond and just disinfect the water that you find. There are many ways to disinfect water, including boiling, iodine tablets, chlorine tablets, or certain filters that you are able to buy. This can be either extremely cheap or you can spend hundreds of dollars on tablets and filters. The easiest way and the cheapest way is to just boil the water, which you can do on a stove or just a normal wood fire. Once you bring the water up to a boil more the 99% of germs are killed and it is safe to drink. This is always a good think to know if you are trying to survive while on the road or other unforeseen circumstance happened and you do not have another way of saving water. So this is a great technique to keep in your back pocket. 
The last way that I will be talking about today is having a well on your property. This one is pretty simple and won't take much explaining. You can have a well dug on your property for very little. This will provide water for you and your family. However the biggest downfall to this is you either have to manually pump the water, which can be pretty simple if you just add a hand pump, or if you have power still you can use a water pump so all you have to do is press a button and you have a steady flow of water. This is my last resort because I believe that it is the least reliable, it is the most expensive out of my three choices, and depending on where you live you may have to dig a lot deeper which will cost more and could cause problems in a post apocalyptic world.
Water is essential to survival, you can only survive 3 days without water, and after about 2 you will practically be unable to function. Water also helps with morale because without water you will not have sanitation, water to cook, or water to shower with. I believe morale is almost as important as water is in general because if everyone thinks that there is no reason to try and survive then they will do the bare minimum which will put you and your family in danger of not being able to survive.
If you have any questions about these preps, or you have any more suggestions on collecting water please feel free to comment on it below with the reasoning or tweet it to me or direct message me on twitter at https://twitter.com/preppersgear
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