How to camp for a week with just one water bottle

An orange LifeSaver Liberty Bottle sitting on a large stone next to a waterfall and stream.
Credit: LifeSaver

Do you enjoy watching the survival, “Life of Pi” type of movies? It’s hard to imagine what you would do without food and water in the middle of the ocean. Yet, many of us find it fascinating to figure out how we would survive when stranded on an island.

It is also very easy to get lost during international adventures. Internationally, you don’t know a lot about local places and, therefore, you have to take location-finding seriously. You also probably don’t know how to identify contaminated water. But one thing we do know is that it’s dangerous to drink water from any unknown sources. You just never know what germs might be lurking.

This LifeSaver Liberty Bottle can aid in survival with ease in a desert oasis, a small creek in the mountains, and even a pond in your backyard. It’s the perfect fit if you don’t want to carry gallons of water on your journey. Every explorer knows that two extra pounds of weight can feel like twenty when hiking. Otherwise, you are forced to find and boil your water every time to avoid parasites. 

Luckily for me, I am not forced to boil anything when I have this bottle. I just fill it with any kind of water and drink it right away. You never have to wait for the water to sit for one hour.  This microbiological cartridge is so good that it proves to kill 99.999% of bacteria and viruses. 

Someone using the LifeSaver liberty bottle to pump water into it and purify the water from the stream.
Credit: LifeSaver

How does it do it? There is a whole chain of systems. This is a decent-sized bottle that results in letting you use only 14 oz (400 ml) of liquid. Because it’s stuffed with filtration and additional carbon filters to make you sure you can stay healthy. While carbon gets rid of chlorine, taste, and odor, the cartridge also has FailSafe technology. Once the filter membranes are no longer good to use, water doesn’t pass through them, assuring you that what comes out is safe. In total, you get up to 530 gallons (2,000 liters) of water before you need to change a cartridge and 130 gallons (500 liters) free of taste and odor.

How do you fill the bottle? The newer model, compared to the older, now lets you connect the 5ft scavenger hose to reach the most unreachable places. You just throw a hose to a water source and start using a pump. That lets you filter large volumes of water in one go. It allows you to fill more than just your bottle. The pump allows you to go through an impressive 1.2 liters in a minute. The closest competitor does with 1 liter per minute.

When you buy the bottle, read the instructions first. You never know what this bottle can do until you follow the directions. There is a lot to figure out before you get the sense of it. Yes, clean water comes at the expense of a step-by-step guide. A removable base, for example, lets you go into “Pump mode” and screw LifeSaver Liberty Bottle right into wide-mouth water containers, like Nalgene or Hydro Flask. It allows you to filtrate water straight into other containers. 

So why would you need something like that? According to the study, a human can live without water for three days. On day one, your body will exhaust you from having no energy. On day two, your body will fail to regulate your temperature. By day three, you will certainly wish you had a bottle like this.