Wellness
Water 101
Lesson time 17:18 min
Discover practical ways to prepare this potentially life-saving element for consumption.
Students give MasterClass an average rating of 4.7 out of 5 stars
Topics include: Conserve Your Sweat, Not Your Water • Look for Signs of Dehydration • Filter Your Water • Burp Your Bottle • Double Up: Filter and Disinfect • Melt Snow • Drink the Water
Teaches Wilderness Survival
Wilderness survival expert and former Air Force SERE specialist Jessie Krebs teaches you the skills to explore nature safely and confidently.
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[MUSIC PLAYING] - Water-- water's awesome, right? We are mostly water. That's what maintains everything in our bodily systems. We need it for our brain, for our digestion, for eliminating waste, for keeping our skin hydrated-- all kinds of things. So water's really, really vital. A key thing to remember is that we really don't do well without it. And once we start getting that reduction in our optimum levels, we're not performing nearly as well. We're not thinking rationally anymore. And a lot of things can snowball if we don't get enough water, so making sure that we have it and it's on board before we start getting to those levels is awesome. So it should be something we're thinking about pretty early in a survival situation. And if we've got lots around, no worries. If it's not, start looking, because it's going to be important. So once we have it, now there's things to worry about then-- how to make it drinkable, because unfortunately, we've done a lot of polluting in our environment, and sometimes there are just dead animals or something in the water that we'd rather not drink. So making sure we know then what to do with it and how to purify it-- that's going to be part of this. Another-- and really, what we can start with-- is how to know if we're drinking enough. On average, we can survive about three days without water-- some people much less. Some people can go a lot longer. Definitely, if water is our primary concern, don't eat food. We don't eat unless we have a water source available. Digestion requires a lot of water. We need a lot of water to digest that stuff, and so if we're eating food when we don't have water, we're dehydrating ourselves faster. So don't eat. I don't care how good that cheeseburger you brought with you looks. You're not going to eat it. Go ahead give it away, preserve it-- whatever you got to do. But just focus on water. Once you have a source-- this is your motivation-- you can have the cheeseburger when you find your water source. Then you're good to go. [MUSIC PLAYING] So when we were at SERE training, we would talk about water in the sense of conserving it. Drink the water you have. There have literally been people found out in the desert dead of dehydration, and they've got full water bottles next to them. They were trying so hard-- I might need it later, and trying to conserve it that they didn't drink it, and their brain just wasn't functioning right anymore, and they literally died of dehydration with water right there. So we want to conserve it in the sense of I don't want to just expend it unnecessarily. So I'm not going to be doing activities really fast. We're looking at slow, intentional movement. In extreme temperatures-- very hot or very cold conditions-- we use more water. And we usually think of that with the hot section. Of course, I'm going to be sweating in hot environments-- not if you're doing things right. If you're doing things well, ...
About the Instructor
As a former Air Force SERE (survival, evasion, resistance, and escape) specialist, wilderness survival expert Jessie Krebs spent 30 years preparing people for the unexpected. Now she’s teaching you the mindset and skills to safely explore the outdoors. Learn essential survival techniques—from signaling for help to reading a map, finding water, making shelter, and more—and embark on your next adventure with confidence.
Featured MasterClass Instructor
Jessie Krebs
Wilderness survival expert and former Air Force SERE specialist Jessie Krebs teaches you the skills to explore nature safely and confidently.
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