In a pinch, you can treat water with pool shock chlorination tablets or calcium hypochlorite. To do so, dissolve a tablet or a heaping teaspoon of calcium hypochlorite into several gallons of water. Make sure to use a glass or plastic container—definitely not metal, which will interact with the chemicals. Now add one part of your solution to one hundred parts natural source water.
If the water is at or below 50 degrees Fahrenheit, approximately 90 percent of Giardia microorganisms, which can make you very sick, will be killed after thirty minutes. If at 40 degrees, make sure to double the time you wait before using the chlorine solution.
One of the most effective methods for sterilizing water around the world is an iodine treatment, which kills more Giardia cysts than chlorine. For example, you can fill a bottle with source water, add iodine crystals, and then shake the bottle and let it sit for an hour. At this point, you add one capful of your iodine solution to each quart of source water.
Or you can use iodine liquid, a 2 percent tincture of iodine that requires five drops per quarter of clear water and ten drops for cloudy water.
Katniss uses iodine liquid to purify water in The Hunger Games. Luckily, her backpack is equipped with a bottle of iodine, as well as a half-gallon plastic bottle with a cap. (The Hunger Games, 154) Knowing how to survive in the wild, Katniss adds “the right number of drops of iodine” and then waits half an hour (The Hunger Games, 170). It’s also lucky that she doesn’t happen to be allergic to iodine, which isn’t too common but does affect people (who are also allergic to shellfish, oddly enough).
After sterilizing water in the wild, you need some containers that you can easily carry. It obviously helps if they’re leak proof and have wide lids for easier filling. At the beginning of her first Games, Katniss has the option of trying to make it to the Cornucopia and grab water containers without being killed. Wisely, she doesn’t choose to do. Luckily, she does have a half-gallon plastic bottle with a cap, and Rue has a water “skin,” by contrast (The Hunger Games, 240).
It’s a while before Katniss finds a water source, and she hopes that Haymitch will send water down to her in a parachute; she hopes that a sponsor will supply a gift of water, which in the context of The Hunger Games is like finding a treasure in a video game and getting ten extra “lives” or a boost in health points.
In the second book, Catching Fire, decent drinking water is more difficult to obtain. In fact, it’s a major problem. This time, the Games are held in a saltwater-centric arena, where the sun is hot and the air is moist. Not having any water makes Katniss extremely thirsty, particularly given that she must hike through a jungle in such intense humidity (Catching Fire, 278). Still seeking drinking water, Katniss and Peeta later try to hike left and break through the force field and far away from the Cornucopia and saltwater. Peeta thinks they might find drinking water “between the force field and the wheel” (Catching Fire, 287). An intelligent thought, but as with all good plans, things don’t quite work out the way Katniss and Peeta hope.
When the two of them come across a large rodent with a wet muzzle, they know that water must be somewhere nearby. As in a video game, just in the nick of time, a sponsor sends a gift spile in a parachute, and again using her experience in survival techniques, Katniss remembers seeing her father insert spiles into maple trees to get sap. So this is how Katniss obtains a few drops of precious water in the second book (Catching Fire, 294). Had she not been incredibly skilled in wilderness survival, Katniss never would have survived the first day of The Hunger Games, much less the subsequent death matches in Catching Fire and Mockingjay.
As a side note, many plants other than maple trees contain water. In deserts, barrel cacti will quench your thirst, and indeed, a 3.5 foot tall cactus will supply a quart of liquid. You can also drink from the roots of plants such as the desert oak and bloodwood. In other area, you can drink water from vines, from the stalks of palms, and obviously from coconuts. In addition, all of these plants contain water that you can drink: bamboo stems, which have water in their joints; umbrella tree of tropical Africa; baobab tree of Africa and Australia; and many others.
By the time Katniss reaches Mockingjay and by the time she descends down the elevators into the labyrinth of living spaces, her water is purified mechanically, as is her air (Mockingjay, 80).
It’s ironic that, when chosen for the Games, Katniss has the luxury of as much pure, clean water as she wants. Not only does the tribute train include private quarters for each child, it also provides private bathrooms with hot and cold running water. Katniss marvels at the luxury because to have any warm water at home, her family must boil it (The Hunger Games, 42). Later, while preparing for the Games in the Capitol, she’s even more amazed by the water luxuries of her bathroom. The shower panel has “more than a hundred options you can choose regulating water temperature, pressure, soaps, shampoos, scents, oils, and massaging sponges” (The Hunger Games, 75). The futuristic shower reminds me of the old Hanna–Barbera Jetsons cartoon. If you don’t know what I mean, find some old Jetsons clips on YouTube, and you’ll see the personalized bathrooms and showers. These are so futuristic they even brush George Jetson’s teeth. However, rather than using water, they’re ultrasonic and don’t require that people remove clothing before showering.
Water Checklist: Katniss versus Reality
Natural Sources of Water and Treatment Methods
Available to Katniss in the Games
Springwater
No, but she does find a pond in The Hunger Games.
Well water
No.
Rainwater
Yes, in Catching Fire, but the rain burns her skin.
Leak-proof wide-lid bottles
Comes in her backpack in The Hunger Games.
Tree sap
Yes, in Catching Fire.
PURIFICATION
Particulate filtering
No.
Chlorination
No.
Fine filtering
Yes, in Mockingjay, the subterranean labyrinths include water and air purifiers.
Pesticide and herbicide filtering
Yes, in Mockingjay, the subterranean labyrinths include water and air purifiers.
UV sterilization
No.
Compact battery-powered units
No.
Boiling
At home, this is the only way Katniss’s family obtains warm water. In the Games, she doesn’t boil water to purify it.
Water pasteurization indicators
No.
Pool shock—calcium hypochlorite
No.
Iodine crystals or liquid
A bottle of liquid iodine comes in her backpack in The Hunger Games.
FOOD
Next to water, food might be the most critical aspect of surviving in the wilderness. Shelter is important, as is protection from the elements. But without food, you will definitely die.
Food, as all readers of The Hunger Games series know, is the one thing that everyone in District 12 never has enough of. Food is the key thing that Katniss has learned to cull from the woods to keep her family alive.
Not only is it important for someone who is stranded without food to find sustenance, it’s also essential that he or she eat a variety of items. Katniss scrubs the forest at home for meat, grains, berries, and vegetables. There are approximately 120,000 edible plants on Earth, and Katniss can clearly identify enough of them to survive. When she’s in the Games, she’s still trying to hunt and gather food as she did in District 12.
In general, when without modern methods of storing, preparing, and eating food, it’ll help if you have various fundamental items.
Salt is important because it preserves many foods and can often attract wild animals, which can then be hunted. Rice would be useful, as would wheat and grains. Corn, oats, powdered milk, canned fruits and vegetables, oils: these are all staples of the “we’re all going to die” bunkers that we hear about from time to time. A lot of fa
milies during the Cold War kept these items stocked in their basements, which served as bomb shelters.
But for someone like Katniss (or someone who has to leave town in a hurry and hide in the woods), this type of list is impractical. Not only is she going to have a hard, albeit impossible, time trying to find powdered milk and canned fruits, she’s not going to find a lot of other common bunker foods, either; foods like peanut butter, coffee, vitamin C tablets, trail mix, or energy bars.
We learn very quickly in The Hunger Games that Katniss’s father taught her how to find food in the wilderness before he died in a mine explosion. She was only eleven when she became responsible for feeding both her sister Prim and her mother, who sank into a deep lethargic depression.
Good foods to eat from the wild include berries, nuts, freshwater fish, birds, eggs, mammal flesh, insects, crustaceans, seaweed, and soft pine needles. Katniss kills, catches, and harvests most of these foods during The Hunger Games books.
Early in the series, Katniss explains that she learned to survive by harvesting dandelions (a memory intimately connected to Peeta), pine needles, wild onions, and pokeweeds, and that she swiped eggs from birds’ nests and fished using a net. Luckily, her survival skills come in handy during the first Games, which is held in a forest of pine trees. Katniss eats the soft bark that’s inside the branches (The Hunger Games, 50–52 and 155).
During Catching Fire, the second book, she returns to the house in the woods where she hung out as a child, and she knows something’s amiss when she smells “steaming pine needles.” It’s a clear indicator that she’s not alone, that somebody else who knows how to survive in the woods is there with her (Catching Fire, 134). There are other clues, of course, but how many of us would recognize the odor of “steaming pine needles” and realize that somebody’s cooking pine needle stew?
While survival skills include knowledge of foods that are safe, they also include knowledge about foods to avoid. In general, thanks to her father’s forest skills and her mother’s medicinal-herb skills, Katniss has learned what not to eat in the wilderness. Any survival handbook, such as the one published by the U.S. Army, spells out which foods to avoid, such as: toads, ticks, flies; insects that sting, bite, or have hairy bodies; saltwater fish with parrotlike beaks or spines; and mushrooms and other fungi that might be poisonous.
When younger, Katniss learned to creep out and slide under the fence when the electricity went down for a few hours in the evenings. She learned to keep her bows and arrows in a hollow tree, and unlike most people, she was lucky to have these weapons because her father crafted them and taught her how to use them. She and Gale learned to trade hunted meat for other foods their families needed.
In fact, securing food has always been so central to Katniss that she thinks that, without hunting, fishing, and gathering, there might be absolutely nothing left of her (The Hunger Games, 311).
Contrast Katniss’s food-related survival skills to Peeta, who does well—don’t get me wrong—but who offers her deadly nightlock berries without realizing that they’re poisonous.
Providing for his family is also important to Gale Hawthorne, and in Catching Fire, he goes into the coal mines while Katniss hunts for his family. She does receive food from the Capitol in Catching Fire, but for matters of personal pride, she still hunts and gathers, and for matters of personal pride, Gale is extremely reluctant to take food from her. While it makes sense that Katniss would keep hunting, it makes little sense that Gale would not gladly receive her overabundance of Capitol-provided food to help his starving family. After all, they have been best friends for a very long time. And when your family’s starving, you do what it takes.
Alas, male pride is a strange thing, so when Katniss becomes “engaged” to Peeta, Gale is furious and refuses all of her gifts, including a leather bag of food (Catching Fire, 93).
ENVIRONMENT AND SHELTER
The environment in which you’re lost—or find yourself fighting to the death in the Games—is key to your survival. If you’ve grown up in a northeastern forest, will you know how to survive in the jungle, in the desert, in the ocean? Or like Katniss, will you have to figure out how to cope on the fly, using general survival skills you’ve acquired over the years in your home environment?
True survivors can adapt to unusual environments, immerse themselves in their surroundings. They constantly protect and analyze their resources, the hazards around them, and the patterns of their new environments. They look for clues that may help them remain alive. For example, survivors seek food, water, shelter, any way to use natural objects to their advantage. When confronted with hazards that spell certain death, or with resources that don’t suffice to keep them alive, they navigate to better locations, if at all possible.
These are all techniques that Katniss uses well. She’s indeed a true survivor in the classic sense.
1.
You must have oxygen within three minutes, or you will die. If in a poisonous gas-fog, run! Get out of there quickly!
2.
You must find drinking water, or you will die within three days.
3.
You must sleep, or within three days, you will be too exhausted to survive.
4.
You must find protection from horrendous weather within three hours, or you will die. If in a scorching jungle with no water and food, get out. If in a blizzard with subzero weather, get out. If in a heavy wind, get out. And if like Katniss in Catching Fire, you ever find yourself in the path of a tidal wave, a pack of shrieking muttation monkeys, or blood rain, run as quickly as you can.
5.
Without food, you might survive for three weeks if you have enough fat in your body and if you have enough water.
In the first Hunger Games book, Katniss must survive in an environment similar to District 12. That is, the arena resembles a pine forest with trees where she can sleep at night and hide, with foods she knows how to procure, with terrain she can manage to navigate. We’re told that District 12 is located in former Appalachia, which gives us a clue about the terrain and wildlife.
The Appalachian Mountains actually range from Quebec to the southernmost Alabama and Mississippi foothills. However, the area specifically known as Appalachia is much smaller; though it’s still a huge region, including parts of thirteen states with a total of more than four hundred counties. Appalachia encompasses portions of New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Maryland, as well as portions of Mississippi, Georgia, Alabama, North Carolina, South Carolina, Kentucky, Virginia, and Tennessee, plus all of West Virginia.
Okay, so where does Katniss come from, just where is District 12?
At minimum, we know she hails from somewhere in the eastern part of North America.
We have a few more clues: pine trees, the types of animals and plants she eats, and possibly most important, the fact that District 12 relies on coal mining. This last tidbit narrows Katniss’s region of Appalachia to either western Pennsylvania, or down south: West Virginia, eastern Kentucky, southwest Virginia, eastern Tennessee, Alabama. In Pennsylvania, the mines produce anthracite, which is hard coal containing a lot of carbon. But in the more southern areas, the mines yield bituminous coal, which is softer. Unfortunately for those of us who are trying to figure out where in Appalachia we might find District 12, our clues are dwindling: pine trees are found all over the Appalachian region, not just in one part, say, western Pennsylvania.
We have a few other clues about District 12’s location. For example, District 12 has a small population of approximately 8,000 people, implying it’s a tiny district. It could be geographically large, with the 8,000 people spread all over a lot of former states. A good guess is that the people are not spread widely, however, because the people in District 12 basically know each other, everyone can cram into the public square for the reapings, and we never hear about civilization beyond the Justice house, the public square, and the mayor’s home. It’s possible that everyone lives in a small area of District 12, yet the di
strict itself encompasses a vast space—all or most of current Appalachia—which is now unoccupied due to the apocalyptic event that triggered the carving of North America in the first place. We do know that District 12 is the “end of the line,” according to Katniss (The Hunger Games, 83).
There’s been much debate among fans about the location of all the districts. But nobody knows for sure except Suzanne Collins, the author.
The most we might be able to state about District 12’s pine forest is that it’s a temperate forest much like the one in Katniss’s first Hunger Games.
Temperature varies quite a bit in most temperate forests, requiring heavy clothes, layers of clothing to peel off as temperatures warm, boots for hiking. Katniss doesn’t wear heavy coats, though she does wear traditional hiking clothes and boots. Her mother uses snow to heal bad wounds, so we do know that it gets cold in the District 12 mountains. In the first book, Peeta wraps his jacket around Katniss to keep her warm (The Hunger Games, 83). Edible plants and animals in temperate forests include birds, eggs, freshwater fish, and pine needles, from which tea can be made—remember the steam rising from the old house in the woods—as well as acorns, dandelions, maple sap, and berries. All of these items are stock fare in Katniss’s world.
The Unofficial Hunger Games Companion Page 18