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Anyone living off the grid or preparing for a major disaster should learn about activated charcoal. Why? Because it could literally save your life. Emergency rooms all over the world regularly use activated charcoal to treat certain types of poisonings. The poison sticks to the charcoal, preventing it from being absorbed into the body’s bloodstream.
Uses for Activated Charcoal
Although poison control is the thing activated charcoal is most famous for, it has many other uses. For example, it can soothe bug bites, whiten your teeth, aid digestion, purify the air, filter your water, get rid of mold, prevent gas and bloating, and improve your overall health.
And incredibly, it has no shelf life. Activated charcoal will keep its structure indefinitely, as long as you keep it dry and it never has a chance to absorb anything.
How to Make Activated Charcoal
Although activated charcoal is relatively cheap, you should consider learning how to make it yourself. If you want to live off the grid indefinitely, or if you’re preparing to endure a long-term disaster, it’s possible that you will run out of activated charcoal, or that it will be destroyed in an accident.
In order to make it, you only need a few ingredients: charcoal, water, and lemon juice. Seriously, that’s it! In place of lemon juice, you can use calcium chloride or zinc chloride, but in a long-term disaster, you might not be able to get your hands on those things, anyway.
You can make your own charcoal by cooking chunks of wood in a pot over a hot fire for several hours. It has to be extremely hot, so be careful.
Once the charcoal has cooled off, you need to smash it into powder and sift out the larger pieces. Next, add some lemon juice and water to the powder (be sure to wear rubber gloves). Finally, rinse off the activated charcoal and let it dry
Of course, there’s a little more to making activated charcoal than that. But as long as you follow the instructions, you shouldn’t have any trouble.
