Wich do you think is more important a container for water or tablets for purifing water?

In my opinion that depends. If your useing a metal container then it dosn't really matter as long as you have the means to light a fire. But if your useing something such as a condom then I would say that they are both just as important.

You have to have a container first, but because the container and purification tablets can take up less room than a deck of cards, I figure that there's no reason not to have both.

Respectfully, Mick, I disagree. Giardia or cryptosporidia won't kill you - thirst/dehydration will. Without a container of some sort, you have no way to use your purification tablets (or your desalination kit, either); without purification tablets, you still have a way to carry water.<br><br>I'm probably being pedantic, but I don't see any argument that purification tablets are more important than a water container. Some of our ancestors lived relatively long lives drinking unpurified water. Granted, others subsisted mostly on cheap wine, and yeah, there was a lot less pollution in those days; but in general, they had a lot more sense than the people you occasionally read about who die of thirst because they refuse to drink muddy water.

Well puriffication tablets come in handy if you run across water at a lake or river but if you are going somewhere where there is no river or lake take lots of water with you<br>Hope this helps

Ostrich eggs, animal intestines, gourds, bamboo stalks are just a few traditional water containers. Water can be filtered through fine sand,charcoal and vegetable matter and of course boiled. Our forebears didn't think of prioritizing one or the other, nor do we need to. Having a container and tablets allready saves time to enjoy the sunset ;O)

I now always carry both, but in my younger days we often went fishing in remote areas and we would run out of water long before we ran out of fishing. LOL. I often just drank river water ala naturelle....LOL, and I was never the worse for it. Even then we would always have a container which we used to fill up. I reckon my stomach has more things than river water. :-)