>>479680Precisely the thread I was looking for
I was watching a documentary the other week, it was about alcohol consumption in Europe and Colonial America. The water was so dirty in Europe (especially Britain) and the colonial days in the US that they drank more beer than they did water, because the alcohol killed bacteria. Even the children drank booze. This wasn't new to me, I had known that was how things were.
But I couldn't stop thinking - were they just too stupid to boil the water? Even in huge pots and store it in wooden containers after? Or am I wrong, does boiling not effectively kill bacteria? I was under the assumption that you could take water from a lake/river/stream/pond, use a makeshift filter for physical debris (a piece of cloth around a cup for example) then boil the water for a good while - would that not give you drinkable water?
I actually just clicked /out/ for the second time since its creation to ask this, I was curious.
