Using water purification tablets.

[BlueSodaPop]

Can i ask about water purification tablets and life straws. Does this mean you can draw water from a near by well or stream in an emergency and put a tablet in to make it drinkable and safe?
Are lifestraws the same but no need to wait for the tablets to work or do they have other benefits.
Im short on storage and really can only store a day or 2 water for everyone.

You would still need to boil and filter any lake/river/rain off the roof water as well as using tablets or a drop of plain bleach to be absolutely sure.
A lifestraw or other similar filter means you don’t have to do any of that.
You can buy water bladder bags that sit in the bath and hold a lot of water. I have a 120 litre version

So you could just drink straight from a stream with the lifestraw?
Sounds less of a faff than the tablets

Tablets are good for large quantities. Needs to sit for a while to sterilise and to release the smell.

Life straw for smaller quantities.

Multiple redundancies is best. If one thing fails then you are stuffed.

Life straws (and most similar filters such as ceramic filter tanks, etc) remove bacteria and some other pathogens, but not viruses (they're small enough to fit through the gaps in a life straw filter), so in most of the UK you'd still need to boil/sterilize the water. There are a few filters that do remove viruses, but they are a lot more expensive than life straw type filters.

Water sterilizing tablets or boiling will make water safe to drink, but it's best to pass the water through something like a cotton filter to remove visible debris before sterilizing/boiling to make it safer and more palatable.