Dirty water, hygiene and sickness

Open water carries sickness, cuts go bad, and a dirty camp makes everyone in it ill. None of it comes out of nowhere: you get a warning first, the first symptom tells you what it probably was, and there is always something that fixes it.

Water

Untreated water can make you ill, and how likely depends on where it came from. Look before you drink: at the water's edge, use the third eye and pick Look at the water.

• Fast, cold mountain streams are the safest open water, then rivers and lakes. Still ponds, the Alamo Sea, the swamp at Lago Zancudo and anything in the city (pools, drains, the river channel) are the worst.
• The sea can't be drunk and you can't fill anything from it.
• Rain off a tarp is nearly clean, and rain that has stood in a barrel less so. Collectors now give you rainwater: boil it or treat it.
• Boil it on a fire or a stove (bottles of dirty water, an unboiled canteen, rainwater), run it through a filter straw (good for about 120 liters before it clogs), use a purification tablet, or let a still clean it. Any of those makes fresh water safe.
• With a filter straw in your pack you can drink through it straight from the water.

Getting ill

An illness takes a while to show. A line tells you when your stomach starts to turn, and another when it takes hold, with what it is and what treats it.

• Giardia is slow and drags on. Metronidazole cures it; ordinary antibiotics don't.
• Dysentery brings fever and cramps. Antibiotics cut it short.
• Cholera drains you of water fast and can kill you through thirst. Drink clean water with rehydration salts (stir a sachet into a liter of clean water), and take antibiotics if you have them.
• Bad food, like a swollen can, gives you food poisoning, and the worst of it is botulism: double vision and weakness until it passes.
• While you're ill you get thirsty and weak, and every few minutes you'll need to go. You get a minute or so of warning: find somewhere with the third eye (Find a spot and go, or Use the latrine at one), or it happens where you stand. It takes a few seconds, you can't do anything else, and the infected can hear it.
• Rehydration salts can be mixed from salt and sugar. Haven's clinic sells them, metronidazole and the tetanus shot.

Wounds and tetanus

• A dirty wound goes red and hot after a while: that's a local infection, and cleaning it still stops it. Leave it and it spreads; then only antibiotics will do, and it leads to sepsis, fever, delirium and death. Triage shows each stage.
• Wounds left open pick up dirt, and a rag dressing is dirty. A sterile dressing keeps a wound clean.
• Cuts from rusted metal (scrap blades, shanks, a spiked bat, a slip while rummaging a wreck or a scrap heap without gloves) can give you tetanus. Disinfect the cut within half an hour and the risk is small. A tetanus shot protects you for weeks and stops tetanus even after it starts. Sedatives hold its spasms off.

Keeping clean

You get dirtier with time, blood, mud and messy work. Dirty wounds go bad more often, eating with filthy hands can make you ill, and the infected smell a filthy survivor from further away. Wash in open water, in a shower, a basin or a bath. Soap in your pack makes the wash count for more and leaves your hands clean for a while.

Camps

A base is only as healthy as its sanitation. Build a Pit Latrine (one for about ten people), keep the dead out of the fence, don't overcrowd, and set up a clean water supply. Use the third eye on a latrine to check the camp's sanitation. A dirty camp can start an outbreak that passes between everyone who lives there, and settlements have outbreaks of their own: you'll hear when there's sickness somewhere.

Carry a filter straw or tablets, a sachet of rehydration salts and some soap, and dress every cut. That covers almost all of it.