The "What if" question....when it comes to water

I have been doing some research lately, and I realized that this whole "living simpler" is actually going to be harder work, which is okay. I don't mind. I have been running into one thing though that bothers me more than anything...the "what if" question.

What if.....our water supply, which we have through the village system were to have contaminants?
What if.....we had a nature disaster here, and couldn't get fresh water?
What if....it was the middle of winter?

Okay, so these are all around one thing really....water.

I know that people can only live so long without water. So I have a couple gallons of bottled water on hand...here's the deal....do you actually know how much water you go through in a day?

Here's 2 things you can do to see just what you use...

1. Every time you go to the faucet and run water for anything mark it down for what you ran it for, do this for one day.

2. My favorite, put a sock over the tip of the faucet, and go 1 day without running any water....

Difficult isn't it. When I started doing calculations of how much water we all use in a day here....I realize that my couple gallon back up is not enough....what if we have to go a week without water....guess what....either I better have a lot of water stocked up, or I need a method of distilling surface water.

Now, if something happened to the water supply in winter...we would be okay, to a point, as long as I could boil the yuks out of the snow...we would make it, but summer would be a different story. Winter also though would bring the challenge of boiling if we didn't have power...so I need to make sure I have supplies to be able to heat water. Oh geez...

Now, don't think that I am going all "Armageddon" on ya....but look at the recent past, Hurricane Katrina, the Japan earthquake, water was all rendered unsafe. If a water main breaks in a town...that water becomes dangerous to drink...this isn't that unlikely of a situation. I just want to be prepared. I guess I will have to sit down, and figure out my plan of attack to keep fluids in my family....