I've been reconsidering what to put in my bug out bags lately and was thinking about water. I'd like to store water in a few good lexan water bottles like Nalgene bottles for years and years until it is needed.

So my question is. Can water be canned? If it can be canned, can it be canned in Nalgene bottles? How many times can I get the word 'can' into a sentence <img src="images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> ?

From what I understand of canning, the item to be canned must be boiled for quite a while. Can Nalgene bottles handle being boiled for this amount of time?


Anyone know if there is a way to drink water from a wide mouthed Nalgene bottle without contaminating the rest of the water in the bottle with backwash? I ask this because I don't think all the water in a bottle will be consumed in one sitting. That means there may be times when that water may go for some time without being finished. In that time bacteria from your backwash may have grown and made the water undrinkable. So it would be wise to find a way to drink from a bottle without contaminating the bottle.

I can only think of a few ways of doing this, but they don't seem very convenient.
-Pour an amount of water into a cup or other container and then drink from that container. But that means packing a cup, which takes up more room, adds more weight, and is one more thing to keep clean.
-Pour the water into your mouth without letting your lips touch the rim of the bottle. Harder and messier than it sounds.
-Use a squeeze bottle with a straw that is bent in a downward direction. Like the ones they use in school athletics. Several people can drink from the same water bottle without fear of drinking other peoples' backwash. But this is not a Nalgene bottle.



Thanks
Wayneburg



/edit Ok since writing this post, I've found that Nalgene makes a soft canteen. If fitted with a tube in the lid, turned upside down and squeezed it could function just like that squeeze bottle in school athletics. And I've found that the thing can be boiled too.