All great points, and I don't know for sure how one goes about storing just water for an extended period of time. Our home shares a water well with another place, lose power for any length of time and we are both SOL. We are in the hospital grid, so we get power faster than most, but in the event of something BIG that might not matter.

We always keep a lot of water on hand...I have four five gal water containers, and my wife drinks a lot of storebought juice (the stuff in the large plastic bottles), we wash those out and fill them with water. I leave a little bit of bleach in each bottle, and date them for rotation. We have no critters to worry about, but still, even with our 40 gal water heater full of water, for a total of maybe 100 gals, we can not last indefinately. We do have a hot tub, we can use the water in it for flushing, etc, so that will really help us stretch it out. I guess we could buy some of those blue 55gal water barrels, we have the space to store them, but what about apartment dwellers?

And for sure "looting" won't work unless you are at the head of the looters line...