A professor of mine had an excellent description of what goes through the mind of a person affected with gastroenterits (stomach bug). She said "At first you are afraid that you might die, then you become concerned that you might not die."

A friend who had Giardia told me that there was about a 5 second delay between getting the urge to defecate and shit exploding out of his ass. After a while he just gave up trying to get to the bathroom and shit himself. He got it in the Adirondacks.

And another thought about the importance of filtering water when in developing nations: If you get sick enough to need IV rehydration, the odds that the needle they use has been sterilized is about 50/50.

It's totally up to you though, you can choose to not filter your water. It's good job security for me if you don't. (Don't worry, my needles have all been sterilized.)

Also believing that the UV from the sun will sterilize stream water, remember;

most streams have enough silt to attenuate some of the light, some streams will attenuate most of the light

the UV dose (its an intensity time thing) used in the biosterility hoods are a hell of a lot greater then from natural sources (you'll fry tours eyes quickly in the hood, not sofast outside)

if you doubt this. The light striking a NYC sidewalk is less attenuated then in a stream. Go lick the sidewalk for 20-30 minutes, and see if anything develops. Now do this 2-4 times a day for a week (or a month) and see if anything develops

Chas, funny you should mention the NYC sidewalk thing. Once observed a woman drinking from a puddle on a NYC sidewalk. She probably had worse problems than the water though.

I'm almost inspired to go swab the sidewalks tomorrow morning, and see what I can get to grow on an LB agar plate.........

Just my inner microbiology geek coming out

Do you suppose Jim Bridger and Kit Carson carried iodine tablets around with them? Do you think they boiled every bit of water they ever drank?

Are you guys really so post-1960 that you have never drunk untreated water? Never drank from the pipe at the Uberfall?

Sure you can trot out all of the extreme cases - confirmation bias - to support your positions.

Why are you on Gunks.com? Don't you know that even using ropes and crap, that many people fall and die? Or are you just really afraid of diarrhea ?

Do you suppose Jim Bridger and Kit Carson carried iodine tablets around with them? Do you think they boiled every bit of water they ever drank?

Cool!

I'm going to walk around shooting people, killing all the critters and having a blast. I'll tell everybody that you said it was cool gradeD75iqpointsainttoomany!

as for the climbing fatalities versus diahorrea fatalities, well, your analogy stinks!

Do you suppose Jim Bridger and Kit Carson carried iodine tablets around with them?

times aren't what they used to be ... when i was a kid on canoe trips, i used to drink directly out of lake george -- i think i'd suffer mightily if i did that today. even so called wilderness areas, from lake colden in the 'daks to island lake in the wind rivers, have so much pressure on them from people camping (and shitting) that the water just isn't what it used to be.

"You think" - No, you fear.

What is the temperature and volume of Lake George? What parasites, that would harm humans, from human fecal matter would it support for any significant amount of time? And how would those parasites get there?

Answering those questions would involve thinking. The rest is mere speculation.

Giardia cysts are extremely temperature tolerant.