Where to buy emergency kit items and water rations in Canada?

Dee Xtrovert's comment reminded me of this fellow's http://www.frugalsquirrels.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=1;t=044387. (via mefi, maybe). Very thought provoking and helpful. It's posted on a survivalists' forum, and the rest of the site is a little tedious.

Again most of the posters here seem to think you would be using these rations everyday as part of normal life. These are emergency supplies, so you do not have to worry about issues like the taste of over mineralised brands of water! If that is truly the worst issue you have at the time it isn't much of an emergency. For indefinite water storage, fill an adequate number of soda bottles (labeled PET) and store somewhere dark and preferably cool. Go to the store and buy the smallest container of pool chlorine crystals (it *must* be sodium hypochlorite - some brands in the US use an isocyanate compound). When the zombies come a tiny pinch of chlorine in a 2litre (half gallon) bottle shaken up then left to sit for half an hour will kill any pathogens. You could use 3 or 4 drops of unscented bleach instead, but the crystal chlorine lasts forever. Bleach is effectively a 5% solution of pool chlorine, so you could easily make up a container of fresh bleach. You can use the same strategy for collected water, but I would advocate storing some water.

Dee Xtrovert's comment about salt rings true: a good friend and co-worker lived through the Balkans war on rice (which he now loathes). Salt was the only thing that made it remotely palatable after several weeks. The story behind this nugget is worth telling: the friend (Tom) had started work at about a week before a poorly-planned staff BBQ. He'd volunteered to cook, and after 2 hours of grilling burgers and dogs, the owner of the company offered to take over. To which his new employee looked him up and down, gruffly said "No", and kept cooking. Thinking there'd been some misunderstanding, the boss again said "it's ok, Tom - this is great work, but why don't you grab a bite and let me finish up?" Tom stopped, put down the spatula, looked his new employer dead in the eyes, and said: "In my country, I lived like a dog. For 3 months, I ate nothing but rice, salt, and water. "I can wait." He got to finish cooking, he kept his job, and he instantly became a legend.

Yugoslavia didn't participate in the Marshall Plan, but some aid did come in nonetheless, and we got a lot of American aid products through porous borders, via Greece, especially. I never meant to imply that Yugoslavia was part of the Marshall Plan, just that the term "Truman Eggs" originated then.

I guess this is thoroughly off-topic now, but I didn't think that Yugoslavia participated in the Marshall plan.

The amount of water carried in a ship's liferaft is 0.5 litres per person for three days. For lifeboats it's 1 litre per person for three days. The water comes in little plastic sachets which can have a shelf life of up to five years. Therefore, if you wanted to find some really expensive water which would be certified fit for paying guests or somesuch, you could probably go to a large marine chandlery and ask about lifeboat water rations (http://www.safety-marine.co.uk/Life-Rafts-and-Accessories/Liferaft-Accessories/SOLAS-approved-500ml-Water-Rations.htm?P4716-S65-). As far as I know, most of the debate about shelf life of bottled water is to do with the potential for unwanted chemicals to leach into the water from the plastic over time. I suspect that if it was a case of drinking plasticky water or venturing out to risk being eaten by zombies, I would go with the plasticky water. I assume that perfectly ordinary bottled water can be obtained in any supermarket in Vancouver. You may wish to exercise some care as to which kind you buy, because some heavily mineralised waters taste utterly disgusting, although, again, if it was a choice between icky water or zombies, I would choose to avoid the zombies. I suspect the supermarket's own brand will be perfectly acceptable. Bought, sealed, bottled water is pretty much sterile. Empty coke bottles and tap water is not. If you're going to the expense of buying the rest of a survival kit, buy the water too. If you really care about dates, buy some more before it goes out of date and drink the other stuff.

Of course, if you expect to get some notice of the zombie apocalypse, it might be handy to have a few empty jerry cans (or coke bottles, whatever) kicking around, to be filled with tap water before everything shuts down. Use them up before starting on anything sealed. I've had to refill jerrycans of drinking water in an old ship's lifeboat. If you did go that route, I'd recommend sterilising them every time you changed the water, which should be every couple of months. This would get very annoying, very quickly, I'm sure. You could probably get away with just leaving the water in there and buying some chlorine tablets to stick in there if you ever had to use it. If you must do the 'tip a few drops of bleach in it' thing, check very carefully when buying the bleach that bleach is all the bottle contains; it seems like everything sold as bleach in this country contains detergents too, YMMV internationally. And of course, do not store your emergency bleach in anything other than its original container.

Thanks. I think I'll just buy bottled water instead of trying to save up bottles and sterilize them. I could also check out the chandler down at the marina. I am not worried about zombies, but about earthquakes in BC. However, I will see getting water purification stuff to have on hand -- I don't have a hot water tank and I am not sure if a toilet tank would withstand an earthquake.

the soft plastic that Milk cartons and some bottled water ship in degrades over time and can sprout pinhole leaks. That is why it is bad to use.