Water is a crucial element for our survival in any situation, but even more so in the desert! Without water in a hot, arid location, dehydration is inevitable unless you have some skills and knowledge about where and how to find potential water sources in a desert.
Finding water in the desert is best done by observing the terrain to find locations where water may accumulate or noting animal behavior that could lead to water. Collecting morning dew can be a method to gain small quantities of water, and solar still can work with the appropriate gear.
Finding water should be one of the highest priority tasks in any situation where your survival is in jeopardy. It should not be one of the most important tasks in a desert area, but the most important task to find water. Knowledge is a key ingredient to knowing how and where you can find water in an arid country since some sources of moisture could make your lack of water situation even worse!
Methods For Locating Water In The Desert
For many people, the first reaction to being stranded in a desert with no water is to panic, but this is the worst possible reaction to have and may threaten your survival in an arid place.
If you find yourself in the desert without water, remain calm, sit down and take stock of your situation. What supplies do you have with you? Do you have any drinkable fluids? How far are you from civilization?
Taking enough time to assess your situation and finding pieces of equipment or tools to take with you on your quest for water will be time well spent.
There are techniques for surviving in the desert without water and minimizing your water loss, but your best chances lie in finding a source of water to keep you hydrated.
Examine The Desert Terrain
Take a look around you to get an idea of the lay of the land and the direction of any slopes, gullies, hills, dry river beds, mountain foothills, canyons, or even steep dunes and rocky outcrops. If there has been recent rain, rocky outcrops could hold little pools of water in hollows in the rocks.
Water flows downhill and will collect in low places in the desert, such as hollows or depressions. If these low places are in shadow or shielded from the sun for most of the day, they could have standing surface water or hidden subterranean water you can access.
If you don’t find any surface water, select a location where water may have gathered. Look for damp ground, or dig down a little into the sand to see if the ground appears to hold moisture. Dig down a foot or so, or until the soil feels very damp. Sit back and wait to see if water will filter out of the sand and fill the hole.
If the water does not filter in, it may be an excellent place to build a solar still to extract the water from the sand through evaporation.
Where to find water in the desert is best achieved by taking careful note of the terrain and the contours of the vicinity and locating the low-lying areas where water could accumulate.
Taking note of pockets of vegetation growing in the desert is an indication the plants are accessing underground water and would be an excellent place to start looking for water.
Observe Desert Animal Behavior
Despite the apparent desolate nature of deserts, they often have a thriving ecosystem where animals have learned to survive or adapted to survive the conditions. How do animals and insects find water in the desert?
Animals living in arid environments know of water sources and will frequently travel to these locations for water. Observation of animals and animal tracks and trails can help you find water in the desert.
Birds in the desert are a good indicator that water is around. Seeing birds fly in a particular direction in the morning and evening or the heat of the day could indicate water in the locality. Observe their movement to see if they are landing in an area. This could lead you to a source of water you can access.
Can you follow animal tracks to water in the desert? Following animal tracks, particularly larger animals that need more regular and larger quantities of water can help you find water in the desert.
How do you know which way to follow the animal trail? Once again, the shape of the terrain will give you the clues you need. Follow the trail in a direction that leads toward low-lying lands such as a canyon, gully, riverbed, or valley floor. These are the most likely areas where the water source will be that the animals are utilizing.
Insects can also give you useful clues that water is nearby. The presence of mosquitoes and flies means there is water nearby. Bees also need water, so you can follow them in downhill directions to locate a water source.
Make Use Of Morning Dew In The Desert
Deserts are places of extremes, especially regarding temperature. The extreme heat of the day in a desert is contrasted with extreme cold, sometimes near-freezing temperatures at night.
You can make use of these temperature extremes to garner some moisture to help alleviate your thirst. With these temperature contrasts, dew from moisture in the air will form on the ground or suitable surfaces and can be gathered.
A cloth placed on the ground will absorb the dew. As long as you collect the cloth before sunrise and wring it out into your mouth or a collection container, you will be able to gather some water. You could even use a cloth to soak up dew formed on other surfaces such as rocks to collect as much precious liquid as possible.
Metal surfaces will also collect the overnight dew. If you have any equipment with you that is made of metal, you can put it out overnight to collect the condensation. You can lick the dew off the metal in the morning or mop it up with a cloth and wring the cloth into your mouth or a container.
This must be done before sunrise since the sun’s heat dries up any dew very quickly in arid desert conditions.
Build A Solar Still to Find Water In The Desert
A solar still is a proven method for finding water in the desert and has been a survival method that has been taught for decades.
Building a solar still to collect water in the desert requires that you have some basic tools and materials on hand to construct the still.
A solar still is also a good way to purify water should you find a contaminated source of water or even distilling water from your own urine. Let’s get into building a solar still by starting with the basic equipment you will need.
- A piece of plastic. A sheet of any plastic or a piece of plastic is a vital part of making a solar still. Transparent plastic is best, but any plastic will suffice. This can be from a plastic bag you may have in your gear or even from a pile of garbage you may have walked past. It doesn’t even need to be plastic, any waterproof material such as a tarp will also work.
- A container to hold the water. You will need some form of a receptacle to hold the water the still produces. A cup, mug, or even an old tin can will do the job so long as it does not have holes that will allow the water to escape.
- Something to dig a hole. You will need some form of tool to dig a hole. You could use a stick, a sharp stone, an old tin can, or any other similar makeshift digging tool.
- Weight for the center of the still. A small stone or similar object will suffice as a weight for the solar still.
Now that you have the materials for the still, locate a suitable place to dig the hole. A location near a contaminated water source, or in a dry river bed, or any other location where there could be moisture in the soil. You could also dig the hole and urinate into the hole to make the soil damp before constructing the rest of the still.
Dig the hole with the tool you have at your disposal. The hole should be wide enough that the plastic can span the hole and extend around all the edges. The hole should be deeper than 1-foot to get below the dry surface soil. A hole of 3-feet deep will be ideal if you have the energy.
Securely position your cup or water collector at the base of the hole, making sure it won’t tip over as the water drips into it. If you can find trees or shrubs with green leaves, you can also break branches off and place them in the hole to trap moisture from the transpiration of the leaves.
Cover the hole with a sheet of plastic. Put sand over the edges of the plastic around the hole to hold it in place. Put a small weight on the plastic in the center over your water collection container in the hole.
As the sun heats the sand in the hole, it releases the moisture from the sand, which condenses on the plastic sheet. The distilled water runs down the plastic and drips into the container at the bottom of the hole.
A correctly constructed still in the right location can yield about a quart of clean drinking water per day, but in a dire situation, whatever you get out of the still would be better than nothing.
Can You Find Water In The Desert With A Stick?
There is a method that can be used to find water in the desert that some people have found to work: finding water with a stick.
This technique is otherwise known as water dowsing, water divining, or water witching, but it may not be a reliable way to find water in the desert. Many people consider it to be a gift that not everyone is capable of performing.
The basic premise is to cut a fresh, forked branch from a tree, which may be difficult to find in the desert, and use this stick to detect underground water. The preferred sticks are from peach, hickory, dogwood, or cherry trees, so you may be out of luck to find such a divining rod in desert conditions.
Hold the stick with one limb of each fork in each hand and the single limb of the fork pointing horizontally ahead of you. Walk around in areas where you suspect water could be. The theory is that when you walk over a water source, the end of the stick pointing away from you will be drawn downwards towards the ground. The stronger the water source, the stronger the pull on the stick will be.
While this may seem to be a mystical method of locating water, it would be worth trying if you are looking for water in a desert. This technique has been used by ancient peoples to find water in diverse places, and while science can’t explain it, it does seem to have some success.
The main problem with water dowsing is finding the right stick, and once water is located, you have no idea how deep below the surface the water will be. The water may well be there, but it may be beyond your digging capability with limited equipment.
Ferocactus wislizeni Cluster by $1LENCE D00600D CC BY-SA 3.0 
Prickly Pear by Stan Shebs CC BY-SA 3.0
Can You Get Water From Cacti In The Desert?
Obtaining water from a cactus in the desert is a dangerous practice that could do you more harm than good. The flesh of most cactus plants where the water is stored contains alkaloids and acids that can be toxic to humans.
Drinking cactus water can induce severe stomach cramps, vomiting, diarrhea, and in some cases, temporary paralysis. The toxins from these plants can also be damaging to your kidneys. For these reasons, cactus plants are not a good source for finding water in the desert.
The amount of water stored in a cactus is dependent on how good the previous rainy season was, so there is no guarantee there would be sufficient water in the cactus, even if you could drink it.
There are only two species of cacti that you could extract water from in the desert to stave off dehydration; the prickly pear and the fishhook barrel cactus or Ferocactus wislizeni. To safely drink water from these plants would require that you can identify them correctly in the first place.
With its upward-pointing arm-like branches, the Saguaro cactus is an iconic desert plant, but can you drink water from a Saguaro cactus? The Saguaro cactus is one of the cacti toxic to humans, so you cannot drink cactus water from these plants without making your predicament worse.
Certain cactus plants can induce hallucinations, so drinking their water can bring on hallucinations that will not improve your chances of survival. The Peyote cactus native to Texas and Mexico is an example of a cactus that will cause these symptoms.
How To Purify Water In The Desert
Finding water in the desert is only part of the solution since the water source you find may be contaminated. Drinking contaminated water can potentially create a more difficult situation for you.
Contaminated water can cause vomiting and diarrhea, which will exacerbate your dehydrated state. Suppose you have limited gear with you, which is likely in a survival event. In that case, you may not have a water filter, water purification tablets or iodine, or the ability to boil the water. In this case, you will have to do the best with what you have on hand.
If you find contaminated water, digging a hole near the water source will help access water filtered through the sand. An even better purification solution would be to build a solar still over this hole to further purify the water.
Straining water through the fabric of your clothing will remove mud and large contaminants from the water but will not filter out microbes that can cause disease.
Giardia is a waterborne disease that is prevalent in contaminated water, but it is a curable illness, and the outcome of dehydration is death, for which there is no cure. Giardia is caused by a microbe that cannot be filtered out with basic means. Only purification tablets, boiling, or proper filters can eliminate this threat in the water.
It would be preferable to drink the water and survive and receive treatment for Giardia afterward than the alternative of perishing from dehydration.
Conclusion
Stranded in the desert with no water is not an enviable position to be in. This scenario should be avoided at all costs by proper preparation before traveling through this type of arid country.
However, part of your preparation should include learning how to find water in the desert rather than having a cavalier attitude that you will never be in this position.
Learning some basic ways to find water in the desert could save your life or the lives of others, and it is worth taking the time to explore these techniques in an arid landscape.
