How to Not Die When the Taps Go Dry - Or What They Did Wrong and How You Could Do Better

Not sure if I mentioned it, or not, but I was hired as a part-time libary assistant back in October 2021, and I've spent the last few months in what has turned out to be my actual dream job (second only to blogging, which has, thus far, been an unpaid gig).    One of the coolest things about working at a library is the ever-present opportunity to explore books.  

A few weeks ago, I was straightening books in the Young Adult section, and I found a book that looked interesting.  The title is Dry.  It's co-written by the father-son duo Neal and Jarrod Shusterman and depicts a water emergency in southern California.  

Southern California imports 67% of its water, much of it from the Colorado River Aqueduct.  In the story, Nevada and Arizona, concerned about their own water resources, cut off the water to Southern California.  With two-thirds of their water supply cut off, the government in Southern California shuts off the taps and reroutes all available water to emergency use only.  So, places like hospitals and prisons still have water, but the average household is dry.  

The thing is, what they describe, is not outside of the realm of possibility.  Everyone who lives in Southern California knows that their water is an incredibly precious and LIMITED resource.

A few years ago, I stumbled on an article about a southern California town that had already run out of water, and when I was reading that book, I kept thinking about that article.  When I started looking for articles about that town - thinking I would find something that was a few years old - I had so many hits for "California town without water," that I just grabbed the most recent ones.  This article entitlted, "An entire California town is without water - In a heat wave" is dated June 28, 2021 - less than a year ago.  

The California town is small - about 700 people - which doesn't make it better. In the above mentioned book, the water runs out in Los Angeles, which would be a lot worse and affect a significantly larger population - like that of Cape Town in South Africa.  In 2018, they ran out of water, and MILLIONS of people were affected.  

Of course, Cape Town had a significant heads up.  They've known since the 1990s that running out of water was a likelihood - not just a possibility, but YES, it's going to happen.  And so they took measures ... kind of like what's happening right now in southern California, where there is a years long (maybe decades long) drought STILL.  

I've always said I wouldn't live in a drought-prone area, where the likelihood of running out of water looms like a turkey vulture over the carcass of a roadkill squirrel.  

But, lest we get too comfortable and, dare I say, apathetic.  It can happen here, too.  

In the novel, Dry, the taps just shut off.  There is no advance warning (except, of course, the YEARS of water restrictions, etc.).  But in the book, one day there's water flowing from the taps, and the next day ... not.  

And then, the whole place goes bezerk.  

There were a lot of things that tweaked me about the novel, the first and foremost being, if one has CHOSEN to live in a drought prone area where the likelihood of water shortages is very high, why would one not have a stockpile of water - always?  Doesn't FEMA tell us to have a three day supply of X, Y, and Z always on hand?  It doesn't have to be a big stockpile, but enough for three days, at least, which is one gallon of water per person per day - so for a family of four, there should be a stockpile of 12 gallons of water somewhere in the house.  

In the book, the water shortage lasted for a week.  One can live without water for three days.  If everyone had had a three-day supply of water (the recommended on gallon per person per day), and then, rationed that water to the minimum to survive (which is 32 ounces in a temperate climate if the person is not doing any strenuous activity), one could stretch one's water supply to almost two weeks without risking death.  One gallon of water could last one person four days with really strict rationing.  

If every family in the book had had 12 gallons of water stockpiled, there wouldn't have been a story.  Just sayin'. 

What bothers me is that authors depicted most of the characters as being wholly and completely unprepared to live a few days without water from the tap, especially considering that the authors are FROM southern California.  And my question is: really?  Is the average person living in So. Cal. so arrogant and entitled with such an egregious lack of self-preservation that they don't have ANY water on hand?  Or anything else to drink in their house?  Certainly, water is the best, but soda, juice, or even milk would keep one from dying from dehydration.  

I don't know anyone from California, but what they described would be pretty much akin to living in Maine without a heat source.  There are plenty of examples of people dying, in their homes, when the heat goes out - mostly from not being prepared to not have their usual heat source.  When the characters in the book (who live in a drought prone area) lose their single water source, they don't have a back-up.  That's foolhardy.

Not having an emergency supply of water was the biggest and worst mistake that the characters made, but it wasn't the only.  

As I was reading the story, I identified half a dozen different things that one or more of the characters did wrong from a survival standpoint, and here I will offer suggestions of things they could have done that would have made things a lot easier for them.

1.  Shopping for the Wrong Stuff

The story opens with the taps running dry.  Obviously, this is a regular occurence, as the characters don't really get worried until they are several hours into the drought before they think, "Hey, maybe I should head over to the Costco and buy some bottled water." 

Problem is, that by the time they decide to make a run to the store, everyone else has thought the same thing, and the store is a madhouse.  I'm not sure what they expected.  Or maybe everyone just doesn't think like me.  If everyone is running toward something, I tend to move in the opposite direction, because whatever's happening over there is probably not good.  

That said, since they were woefully unprepared, there was little they could do, and they really did need to go and get some supplies.  Problem is that they didn't think beyond what they believed they needed.  The main character runs into the store and heads straight to the bottled water aisle - where everyone else is.  **See above.  If everyone is heading in that direction, find a new path.

In a stroke of genius, she grabs bagged ice instead.  At that point, I had high hopes for the characters' survival potential, but it wouldn't last long.  

Because some guy at the store, quickly realizing what a great idea she has with the ice, tries to steal her cart (but don't get me started on ranting about how quickly things always degenerate in these books.  They aren't even half a day into this emergency and all hell is already breaking lose, which seems unrealistic from what I've seen in real-life emergency situations).

The ice was a good idea, but there are about half a dozen other things she could have bought that not. one. single. water-crazed person would have taken a second glance at.  

When I mentioned the issue to my daughter asking her what else they could have purchased, her immediate response was "Watermelon."  

Yes!  There are dozens of different foods that are rich in water content, and if the characters had taken just a few minutes to think about what they like to eat when they are really hot (and thirsty), they probably would have headed straight to the produce aisle.  

Watermelon, cucumbers, tomatoes, peaches, apples, pineapple, coconut - all good food sources for helping to keep one hydrated.  

This article lists nineteen water-rich foods, several of which were a surprise.  I don't, personally, like diary when I'm really thirsty, but according to the article yogurt and skim milk are good options, and I guess they would be better than dying from lack of water.  

There are other aisles in the store where they could have found very useful liquids.  The baking aisle has coconut milk and canned condensed milk.  They could have headed to the canned food aisle.  Broths (also mentioned in the above linked article) and canned fruit (preferably in a light syrup) could also be useful.  The baby aisle has pedialyte.  

Even the alcohol aisle has some good choices.  While we should probably stay away from the alcohol, which is dehydrating, some drink mixers and the club soda would have been useful.    

Water is the best choice, of course, but in this sort of scenario, even sugary sodas would be a better option than nothing at all - which is how the story plays out.

2.  Shopping at the Wrong Store

So, they went to the Costco and bought ice, and then, went home.  That was it.  They went home, and they stayed home, and they didn't look anywhere else to purchase supplies.  

I like to play a little thought exercise, where I put myself into the story, and I imagine where I could go to get those supplies that doesn't involve the grocery store.  

Wait.  Who am I kidding?  I do this in real-life, too.  

I don't really enjoy shopping, in general, and I really hate when I just need one or two quick things, but I have to walk through the entire 47,000 sq ft store just to get some half-and-half for my coffee.  Just for reference, an acre is 40,000 sq ft and is the amount of land one man and a mule can plow in a day - just some food for thought, the next time you're in the grocery store.  If I'm at the grocery store, not only am I at risk for purchasing half a dozen other things I don't REALLY need, but it also takes a lot longer to get those one or two little things than it needs to, because it's such a long walk.

So, I've thought about other places I can go to get those small things.  Water when the taps go dry isn't a "small" thing, BUT the chances are that most people are going to head to Hannaford or Sam's Club for water, rather than go to those smaller stores I would head to if all I need is half-and-half. 

Case in point:  when the shelves at the big Hannaford store down the road were emptied of anything in a can, I visited my local Mom&Pop store.  They had plenty of everything, albeit fewer brand choices.  So, I can get tomato sauce, but maybe not the "organic" brand of strained tomatoes I might usually purchase.   

Of course, that Mom&Pop is getting more popular these days, and during the summer, it's the main store for the tourists who invade my town, but there are still other choices that would be less populated, at least at the very beginning of the emergency.

Within a six mile radius of my house, there are five boutique grocery stores, two fish markets, two Mom&Pop stores, two dollar stores, and more convenience stores than I can even remember right now.  In fact, in less than those six miles, I could drive a loop and hit the Mom&Pop, a Walgreens, the Family Dollar and the Dollar General (which are right across from each other - don't know who thought that was a good use of land space), and seven convenience stores.  

And I could stop for coffee and pick-up a pizza on the way back to my house. 

If I ran into each establishment, and bought just a gallon of water, it would take less than an hour, and I would have eleven gallons of water - just about enough to do my family for three days, without rationing, and without having to fight other shoppers.

And I would have coffee and pizza.  

When the characters went to Costco, and it was a bust (except the ice), and then, they didn't even try to find water any place else, I was more than a little disappointed.  

3.  Improperly Storing the Supplies

When the main character gets to the Costco and discovers that there are no beverages at all in any aisle, the ice idea was pure genius.  I have to give it to the authors for coming up with that idea.  Kudos!  Because I don't think I would have thought of that.  In my above loop, at all of those small groceries and convenience stores, I could also grab a bag of ice and be home before the ice melted.  

Unfortunately, the genius of that particular character began and ended with that one stroke, because next thing we know, she's home with her many bags of ice, and instead of putting that ice - that is going to be their sole water supply for no one knows how long - in a secure, clean vessel where it won't get contaminated, they decide to empty the bags into the bathtub.  Okay, I will give them a bit of a break, because it was hot and the ice was melting, but seriously?  They took the time to clean the tub and seal up the drain so it wouldn't leak (thanks to advice and supplies from their prepper neighbors - more on those guys in a minute).  

I guess, living in a house with dogs and cats that like to get into the tub, I would think twice about storing the water I intended to drink in my tub.  Instead, I would look for containers where I could store the water more safely.  

The fact is that they do have a dog, and while the dog does not contaiminate the water, it does get contaminated, and then, they are back to square one with trying to find water to drink. 

So, instead of the tub, they could have found a better place to store the water.  In the kitchen, there are probably dozens and dozens of storage options.  I, personally, have canning jars, storage containers, bowls with lids, and pots and pans galore.  And water bottles!  Most of which have a neck opening big enough to fit ice cubes.  Nearly everyone in suburbia has a cooler, and for those who don't, there were probably lots of coolers at the Costco that they could have purchased.  I have two.  Deus Ex Machina and I both have a camelback for hiking.   

My guess is that the average household has a lot of storage capacity and some place much safer to store their emergency water supply than their bathtub.

4.  Believing in the Deus Ex Machina (and here, I do not mean my "Deus Ex Machina - I mean the dramatic God in the Machine that will come down and save them all)

There's a very common narrative, these days, maybe all days, that someone else needs to be responsible for making our lives better.  

The government should take care of us.  They should give us a free education.  They should pay our medical bills (FREE health care for ALL!! is an inalienable right, or so I hear).  They should pay our car payment, and mortgage, and phone bill when we lose our jobs.  They should give us free food, and heat, and clothes, and in general, keep us safe and take care of us, like a benevolent parent.  

The problem is that the government can often be pinpointed as the one who caused the problem, or, at very least, the government's unwillingness to take appropriate action caused the issue.

True story: In the late 1970s a group of scientists, economists, and government officials had a conference, during which they discussed climate change.  That is, in the 1970s, BEFORE what is happening today with these super storms, massive wildfires, and decades of drought, these people knew what was going to happen, because they had data that predicted it, and before any of it started, they had the opportunity to come up with a plan to mitigate the worst of what we are currently seeing.  Maybe they couldn't completely reverse the trend, but they could have done something and chose to do nothing, because doing something, back then, would have put the world into economic turmoil.  They figured they had 50 years before they had to worry about it.  My lifetime, and here we are.  Nothing was done.  And here we are.

So, the idea that the government, or anyone else, will come along and make it better, and waiting for that to happen, is foolhardy.  

Many of the characters ultimately adopt a self-help attitude, realizing that they are kind of on their own, but initially, they sit around waiting for help, which ends up being a fatal action for too many.  

When my power goes out, I don't sit around waiting for someone to come to my house and fix anything.  I go about my day, much as I do when I have electricity - with some modifications.  We use candles, oil lamps, or our solar lanterns instead of the overhead lights.  We're more careful when we open the fridge and freezer to keep things inside cold.  We cook on the woodstove rather than relying on the electric stove and cooktop.

If I sat around waiting for help, firstly, I would be very disappointed, and secondly, I would get hungry and cold.  Worstcase, waiting around for someone to help could mean that I wait too long to help myself, which ends up being the case for some of the characters in the story.

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The story was written as if the characters seemed sure that they were making wise decisions, but the lack of common sense was bothersome.  Still, I might give a pass to the average suburbanite for being oblivious.  There is a general concensus that those of us in the suburbs are kind of entitled and self-centric, believing that someone will fix it for us, but there was one family in the novel who were preppers, and some of the biggest mistakes in the story were made by that family.  I'm not sure if the authors were poking fun at preppers in general, or just making their own brand of preppers seem a little Abbott and Costello, but they weren't painted in a very positive light.  They were described, from the beginning, as being "weird" or "odd."  

The problem is that the preppers were not very prepared for what was actually going to happen, which is silly, since they live in southern California, and having no water SHOULD be THE thing they are preparing for (like here in Maine, THE thing I prepare for is losing electricity during a winter storm).  They thought they were prepared, because they had all of these supplies, and water, and a solar array for back-up power, and even a bug-out location, but the fact is that they had isolated themselves so completely from the rest of the community that everyone knew they were up to something, and when it came down to it, the prepper family ended up being a target rather than a member of the community.

And it didn't have to be that way.

It could have ended so much differently for them.  While all of the characters made some really stupid decisions, in my opinion, the ones who should have been most prepared made the worst of them.  

The next few items are things everyone should avoid, but are definitely mistakes the prepper family made. 

5.  Isolating Oneself from One's Neighbors

Most of us are never going to go through the full-societal breakdown described in the book Dry.  It could happen, but it's not likely.  

If it did, though, I fully expect that my neighbors and I would be collaborating.  I don't know what, if anything, my neighbors might have that could help me in a worstcase scenario, and I don't know what they believe I might have, but by sharing our resources, it's possible that all of us could survive.

A few years ago, we had a massive ice storm that knocked out power to most of Maine.  There were communities that didn't get their power restored for weeks.  

Here at Chez Brown, we had a propane water heater with a pilot light, which means we still had hot water.  We also have a woodstove.  So, we could take hot showers.  Our house was warm, and we could heat water for coffee and tea and cook dinner on the woodstove. 

I let my neighbors know that we had these resources.  I let them know they could come over and take a hot shower (in a dark bathroom, but still a hot shower).  I let them know we had hot coffee and tea, and I even opened a standing dinner invitation.  I let my local family members know.  

My friend stopped by for a few hours with her kids on one of the days, and we baked bread on the woodstove in my Dutch oven and our kids played together.  

It's possible that she might have, eventually, felt entitled to what I had, but it's very unlikely that she would have tried to take my home, with the woodstove, by force.  Worstcase might have been that she would have tried to move in with us, but that's unlikely, too.  More likely, things would shift, and a few weeks into the emergency, there would be an opportunity for her to purchase her own woodstove, or a generator to run her own heating system.  

If the preppers had allowed themselves to share, even just a little more than they did, they might not have ended up in as tragic a situation as they did. 

7.  Broadcasting Your Preps

Like many prepper novels, the emergency has a cascading effect.  It's like those old-timey strings of Christmas lights.  One light goes out, they all go out!  First one system goes down, and then, they all go down.   In this novel, first the water stops, and then the electricity goes out.  

The prepper family, who has water and food and a solar array, are sitting in their comfortable, air conditioned home with the lights blazing, watching some very loud television show, when the rest of the neighborhood goes dark, and quiet.  

It's like being the only house in the neighborhood with a noisy generator during a massive power outage.  Lights blazing in a blackout is a sure way to draw attention to the fact that you're different, and maybe there's something inside that fortress that everyone else might want ... need?

If we're trying to keep a low profile as preppers, then, being as similar to the other houses in the neighborhood as possible would be prudent, unless they are always using their solar array, and everyone in the neighborhood KNOWS that they have the solar array.  

In which case, like I did with my friends and neighbors by extending an invitation into my warm, wood-heated home during the power outage, they should have been prepared to at least, invite the neighbors inside to enjoy the cool air.  No water AND sweating it out is a really bad formula for creating desparation.  If the neighbors could have gotten a reprieve from the heat, maybe they would have been less quick to mob the house for the water they assumed was inside. 

I was appalled when the prepper family was sitting in their air-conditioned living room watching television, oblivious to the fact that no one else had lights.  As a literary device it could be considered foreshadowing, if it hadn't been so smack-you-in-the-face obvious that the prepper family was already a target.

And as paranoid as they were depicted before the SHTF, one would think they would have known better than to broadcast.

7.  Focusing on Supplies Instead of Skills.

My prepper question  "... and then what?"  

Deus Ex Machina's old friend from high school is a curriculum coordinator for our local Adult Ed program, and she contacted him a while back about the possibility of having us propose a class.  He and I started discussing what we might teach, and the one that stuck was a preparedness/survival course, similar to one I taught for our homeschooling co-op.  One of the class days would focus on securing drinkable water.  

In the class I did with my homeschoolers, we built a simple water filter.  For this class, I wanted to do something different, especially after reading this book, and so Deus Ex Machina and I started talking about ways to make water or ways to make undrinkable water safe to drink.  By undrinkable, I'm not talking about pond water.  As hikers, we have several Life Straws and other hiking-centric filter options.  For here at home, I'd have a Berkey filter, which would do the job just as well as any filter I could build.

But what one can not do is filter saltwater and make it drinkable. 

In the novel, a couple of days into the water emergency, word gets out that the local authorities have set-up water desalination equipment on the beach.  

The result is predictable.  Tens of thousands of people head down to the beach to get water.  Only sucking water straight from the ocean and desalinating it is not how the machines were designed to work.  The water should have been filtered.  Seaweed clogs the machines.  Thirsty people get angry when they can't get water.  Blah.  Blah.  Violence. 

What bothered me is that there is SO MUCH information available on very simple ways that the average Joe can distill water.  This article describes a couple of ways to get water that are super simple.  It won't give much water, but enough so that one won't die.  

To be fair, the prepper does show his neighbor how to get water from the drought-hardy plants the neighbor has replaced his lawn with, but that's the extent of his knowledge on how to procure water, which was very disappointing, to me.  As someone who lives in a drought-prone area, I would think that he would know how to get water for a variety of sources, including making a solar still (as described in the link above). 

Like the characters in this novel, I live in a seaside community, and so while there are a lot of options for getting fresh water, what I wanted to teach my class was how to distill water from saltwater.  I mean, the reality is that I've wanted to learn to play with making a home distiller, anyway, and being able to make a saltwater distiller would be a great way to experiment with it.

I posed the question to Deus Ex Machina, my engineer, and as aways, he came through. 

Using a regular sauce pan with a tight-fitting lid with a stream vavle on top and three metal straws, we made fresh drinkable water from saltwater.  It was only a couple of sips each, but it worked!  Using only materials that we had around the house, we were able to make a distiller.  

This video has the same idea.  Using just two glass bottles and sand, the videographer distills water. 

Of course, my ultimate dream would be to make a distiller using my pressure cooker.  This video illustrates one way to turn a pressure cooker into a still. 

My goal would not be to turn my pressure canner/cooker into a still, but rather to USE my pressure canner/cooker as a still, and the only thing I need to make it happen is copper tubing.  We measured the size of the steam valve on my pressure canner/cooker and with a very cursory search found 10' of 1/2" copper tubing at my local Ace Hardware.  

Which also happens to be within that 4 mile radius loop of stores I could visit to get water (that I mention above). 

As a prepper, the best thing I can do is learn to DO stuff with what I have, or stock the supplies that help me make what I need.  So, yes, store some water, but ALSO have the tools one needs to make whatever water supply is available into drinkable water, and have the skills to make it happen.

As a note: Amazon sells a water distiller for around $120.  I'm disappointed that the preppers in the story, who were of the "buy shit" variety of preppers, didn't have a water distiller from Amazon.com. 

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The novel Dry is a well written, engaging piece of young adult fiction, and I did enjoy reading it.  

I also recommend others read it, as entertainment (for those who like doomer fiction), but also as a really good 'how-NOT-to' guide for getting through an emergency.  

That is how NOT to die in a worstcase scenario, and we can start by having, at least, the minimum recommended emergency stash. 

Have you read Dry?  What did you think?