Well water is now unpurified?

[PaulOverAgain]

So I was exploring the lands around Echo creek and found a big house with a bunch of zomboids in tinfoil hats, which made me chuckle. Anyway, there is a well in the pavement next to this house and when im trying to drink from it, it shows "Unsafe for consumption, sterilize in an oven or over the fire.
So I guess wells are no longer sources of ready-to-drink water? Why?

[PaulOverAgain]

Upd. Found second well nearby, same with unsafe water. Which is funny, as it placed right next to a lake, whats the point of it being there?

[xAlphaStarOmegax]

That is odd because in real life, well water is safe to drink; we use well water here.

[AriGryphon]

Lore-wise, it wold not be surprising if infection got into the groundwater from the thousands upon thousands of rotting corpses saturating the world now. Wells are not automatically safe, they 100% can be contaminated and require checks and maintenance to ensure they don't have any issues. Heck, my piped in city water isn't safe from the tap anymore because the pipes are so old and the fix is too expensive - These poor country folk may have been in a similar boat and just living with the extra step to purify even before the apocalypse.

If we could dig our own wells, though it ma be nice to be given an option to build them well enough that we can trust them. But I wouldn't drink straight from an unfamiliar well whose condition I know nothing about IRL. If there's massive piles of corpses rotting into the groundwater within miles, even less so.

[xAlphaStarOmegax]

Originally posted by AriGryphon:

Lore-wise, it wold not be surprising if infection got into the groundwater from the thousands upon thousands of rotting corpses saturating the world now. Wells are not automatically safe, they 100% can be contaminated and require checks and maintenance to ensure they don't have any issues. Heck, my piped in city water isn't safe from the tap anymore because the pipes are so old and the fix is too expensive - These poor country folk may have been in a similar boat and just living with the extra step to purify even before the apocalypse.

If we could dig our own wells, though it ma be nice to be given an option to build them well enough that we can trust them. But I wouldn't drink straight from an unfamiliar well whose condition I know nothing about IRL. If there's massive piles of corpses rotting into the groundwater within miles, even less so.

That makes sense, but then again there are covered wells, and the ground naturally acts as a filter.

[AriGryphon]

the ground naturally acts as a filter, but there are plenty of contaminants that ordinary ground can't filter. Even fresh mountain spring water can be contaminated and should be tested and confirmed safe or else boiled before drinking. Some pathogens are smaller than others. It's why masks that will protect from some sicknesses won't stop others, and why only high end HEPA filters can handle some things. Sand and clay isn't enough for everything, and once the groundwater itself is contaminated, the aquifer the well pulls from, passive filtration won't cut it. All depends WHAT has gotten into the water. That's why IRL wells getting contaminated can be a very expensive fix or a cheaper one, depending what the contaminant actually is.

Granted, if we were being that realistic, I would expect boiling to not cut it because not all contaminants are pathogens and I really doubt waste disposal was handled perfectly in the madness of the outbreak at ALL of those industrial facilities nearby...

I WISH wells were always safe and passive ground filtration really did get the job done universally. There are a lot of villages globally in crisis with countless deaths because they don't have access to safe water, and not for lack of digging wells.

But game-wise, I do kind of want to find a zed in a well someday. Just for the ambience lol.

[diecastano]

Originally posted by xAlphaStarOmegax:

That is odd because in real life, well water is safe to drink; we use well water here.

It depends where the well is. I am from the countryside and we learn that the well has to be built far away from the septic tank or any feces and urine dump. It needs at least 15m (50ft)
In industrial areas usually well water is unsafe due to soil polution. Therefore it makes sense in a zombie apocalipse the tainted water everywhere.

[[Censored]]

Originally posted by xAlphaStarOmegax:

That is odd because in real life, well water is safe to drink; we use well water here.

ok so theres an older episode of walking dead were the zombies fall down the well and decompose in there.... open wells are subject to contamination... the important thing is you have a source of water to boil ( and no most of the time well water is not safe to drink.... any kind of farming and you well is contaminated with fertilizers.... the entire us state of idaho is contaminated with nitrates for example.... hurray for the culligan man!)

[GovernmentMuffins]

The water from the well is unsafe but from what ive noticed the how connected to it has safe water from the well (Might be a bug). But to be far they are not modern* wells and any of the water you are getting from it is open to the air and elements.

[maviscruet]

Originally posted by PaulOverAgain:

So I was exploring the lands around Echo creek and found a big house with a bunch of zomboids in tinfoil hats, which made me chuckle. Anyway, there is a well in the pavement next to this house and when im trying to drink from it, it shows "Unsafe for consumption, sterilize in an oven or over the fire.
So I guess wells are no longer sources of ready-to-drink water? Why?

I think I found the same house not so long ago. not only was the well water needing to be boiled, but it also seemed to have a counter on it so it wasn't an infinite source of water. I didn't stick around enough to see whether this counter refilled after rain or over time as to be honest I'm more interested in exploring the new area right now.