Thought of this in the shower after commenting on a post about securing boot partitions.
I’m not knocking on any of these things, only noting their similarity. When taken to the extreme, all of them seem to evoke a weird mix of paranoia and eager anticipation.
Initially, you just need to survive. I can imagine that next you’ll start building small communities and fulfilling their needs.
If you can’t get water purification running, the small village won’t grow to a town. If you can’t make your own tools and shelters, it’s going to stay in the tribal stage.
Water purification is a big problem, however water does not need to be treated to fulfill the standards for normal drinking water here, boiling collected rain water should be plenty good enough at the start.
Further up in the mountain we have soo many freshwater springs that most hikers don’t pack water as it is just dead weight.
Down here by the coast, fresh water springs does exist, but are way fewer.