If Your Family Only Prepares For One Thing This Year, Make It Your Water

Something shifted in this country over the last couple of years, and a lot of people haven't quite registered it yet.

I hadn't, until recently.

I'm David. I'm 58. Two children, and a granddaughter who's four. My daughter's in Reading, my son's in Bristol, and I'm in the middle, in the Midlands.

A few months ago I started reading about the state of our national infrastructure. Not survivalist forums. Not doom websites. Proper sources.

One phrase kept coming up that I haven't been able to shake.

That's the language security analysts and infrastructure experts are now using to describe the environment we're in. Not a tabloid headline. The considered view of people whose job is to think about this for a living.

Here's some of what I came across.

A recent industry report found that the overwhelming majority of organisations responsible for the UK's critical infrastructure experienced at least one successful cyber attack in the past year. Not a handful. Nearly all of them. The bodies that keep the lights on, the trains running, the hospitals working, and the water flowing.

The part that genuinely made me put my cup of tea down: in 2022, a British water utility supplying around 1.6 million people had attackers hidden inside its computer network for nearly two years before anyone noticed. Two years. Inside the systems of a company supplying water to over a million people. Nobody knew.

Then there was a case in late 2023, in a small town in County Mayo, Ireland. A hostile group reached in and caused water outages across around 160 homes for two days. Just to make a point.

And the question very few families seem to be asking is a simple one: what's the plan if something like that ever happens closer to home?

I'll tell you what most plans look like, because mine was the same a year ago.

A six pack of bottled water in the cupboard under the stairs from the last big shop. A couple of two litre bottles in the fridge. Maybe some long life cartons left over from a camping trip.

That's three days. Four if you're careful.

Then what?

The mains might still be flowing, but if there's a contamination event or a treatment problem, what comes out of the tap may not be safe. Boiling helps with some things and not others.

You could drive to the shops. But the bottled water aisle at every Tesco, Sainsbury's, Asda and Co-op for miles tends to clear within hours the moment there's any kind of scare. We all saw that pattern in early 2020. The 2018 Beast from the East emptied water shelves across Surrey and Kent in under a day, and that was just from burst mains.

You could look for a stream. But almost every natural water source in this country carries some mix of bacteria, parasites and agricultural runoff. The Environment Agency has said for years that surface water in this country shouldn't be drunk without treatment.

So a lot of families could find themselves stuck between two poor options: run low on clean water in a few days, or drink water they're not sure about.

I sat down and actually counted what we had. Not what I assumed we had. What was really in the house.

This is what I've been turning over for the last few months. Not because I think the sky is falling. Just because I read what I read, sat at my kitchen table, and asked myself an honest question.

The honest answer was no.

So I started looking. Not at bunkers and freeze dried rations. That's not me, and I don't think it's relevant to normal family life.

I was after one specific thing: a way to make water safe to drink, without electricity, without batteries, without a complicated setup. Something I could keep in a drawer and not think about again until I needed it.

What I learnt is that the technology already exists, it isn't expensive, and almost no ordinary household has one.

The British Army uses portable filtration like this. Aid organisations carry it into disaster zones. It's standard kit in places that take infrastructure seriously. But ask the average person what a hollow fibre membrane filter is, and you'll get a blank look.

How It Actually Works

Here's what it is, in plain English.

It's a small filter, about the size of a torch, containing millions of microscopic hollow fibres. The holes are so small that bacteria and parasites can't fit through them.

No electricity. No batteries. No cartridges to swap every few months.

The one I went with is the ClearX Pro™ from Standby Supply. It filters 1,500 litres before it needs replacing. Weighs 60 grams. No shelf life. You can drink straight through it from a water source like a straw, or attach it to a bottle.

I've now got one in the kitchen drawer, one in the car, one at my daughter's in Reading, and one at my son's in Bristol.

They cost less than a small shop. According to the company, they carry a lifetime warranty, and their testing shows the filter removes 99.99% of contaminants and sediment from 1,500 litres of water.

I've tested mine on stream water near my house, on rainwater from the butt in the garden, on water I wouldn't normally touch. It's worked every time for me. Comes out tasting of nothing at all.

• ✓Filters 99.99% of contaminants & sediment (per manufacturer testing)
• ✓Filters 1,500 litres before replacement — a long runway for most households
• ✓60 grams — fits a kitchen drawer, glovebox, or go-bag
• ✓No electricity, no batteries, no cartridges to swap
• ✓No shelf life, no maintenance until the day it's actually needed

Being Honest About What This Is

I want to be honest about something. I hope I never need it. I hope the people working on this keep doing a good job. I hope our infrastructure holds. I hope County Mayo turns out to be a rare exception.

And when the people who study this for a living are using a phrase like "radical uncertainty," I think it's reasonable for an ordinary family to have a simple backup that doesn't depend on the very systems the experts are worried about.

That's all this is. A backup.

You'll most likely never need it. Nor will I. But if the day ever comes, you'd need it quickly, and by then it's too late to get one. The day any real scare hits the news, the bottled water shelves and the filter websites clear within hours. We've seen that before. We'll see it again.