I have realized for several years now that all Americans should be making preparation to become self-sufficient. My advice is to get out of debt, get away from the big cities and buy a home in the country where you can raise your own food. We all need to be able to survive if, for whatever reason, our electric power and water supply are cut off for a long period of time (maybe years).
Our farm has a good community water supply, but we cannot depend on that for more than a few days if the power grid goes down. The water is pumped (by electric pumps) out of deep wells into the water tanks and then gravity fed to the homes. We do not have a good alternative supply of fresh drinking water, so we purchased a distiller to put on our wood heating stove. That arrangement would only work in the winter time when the stove was fired up. The heating stove is designed for heating the house and not for boiling water. So I tried distilling water on the heating stove and it did work, but it took several days to distill one gallon of water. That was not practical at all, so I designed an outdoor wood burning stove that concentrates the heat where it is needed. It is a “rocket” style stove that is very efficient and can be used for cooking meals, canning food and distilling water. It is designed to be permanently planted in the ground so it is ready for use whenever needed.