I was given a box containing 12 ( 1 LITER) UNITS, 33.8 FL.OZ., 3.17 GALLONS of 5 YEAR EMERGENCY DRINKING WATER while we had no power. I wasn't sure what to do with it since there had been no warning that I knew of, not to drink our water. I thought of asking my son-in-law who did the Warrior Transition Course prior to his year in Iraq, but he was gone for his monthly National Guard drill. He served first in the U.S. Navy as a submariner, was honorably discharged, then re-trained as a "water purification specialist" for the Army National Guard. If I told you what he really did in Iraq, well I'd have to kill you, and as murderous as my thoughts can get, I'm just not the killing kind.
So I did the best I could and just let my curiosity read the box while I waited for home electricity to return, which it did. Then I went to the website listed on the box, WWW.AQUABLOX.COM. It was a poorly designed website. Weak mission statement, poorly written, with blue and pink watery waves and bubbles constantly flowing at the bottom of the page. To further distract you or play on your emotions, in the upper left was a slide show of disaster images from 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, and other recent earthquakes and tsunamis. That was enough for me.
I went back to the box and opened it, extracting one of the 12 handy AQUA LITERZ (think over-sized juice box) with the following directions: To Open (in pink) Lift and squeeze flaps and cut with scissors on dotted line. For Emergency Use (again in pink) Consume 1 pkg. (33.8 oz./1 liter) per person per day. Twice as much in warmer climates. Replace if not consumed by "Best If Used By" code date. I figure I'd better find the code date, since I planned on saving this in our stockpile for the zombie apocalypse. It was written in tiny black letters on the top, AUG 31 14, 09243, 20:00 right above the blue dotted line and blue cutting scissors symbol and the blue Non-Carbonated Please Dispose of Properly message.
By now you might be thinking, what is the point here? First, I'm sure this company does a lot of good throughout the world so I'm not criticizing those who give water to people in need. That being said, this is a money making venture, not entirely altruistic and certainly not free. The point is while I realize advertising has its place in our economy, whether we like it interrupting our TV shows or not, if you put 5 YEAR EMERGENCY DRINKING WATER on the carton underneath the plastic wrap, it's misleading when you actually open the package and read the fine print. I don't know about you, but I don't like to be misled.
These are just some of my thoughts, for what they are worth. If you want to see the method behind their madness, please feel free to check out the website. There is actually something about the whole pasteurizing and sterilized packaging that looks plausible. Except there were only machines, no people.