The Most Important Survival Item

The Most important survival item you will ever need in any type of survival senerio is good ol' plain water. That's right, water. I don't care who you are your body needs water to survive above any other items. The average person can only last from 3 to 5 days without water. There is no set amount of time, each person is different and each senerio is different. The 3 to 5 days is kind of set for a person in normal health is a nice environment. But, lets say you are in the northern US in winter, it is 10 degrees and your freezing, your days are cut down. What if your in the desert, you all have seen the old cowboy movies when the cowboy is lost in the desert and starts to see halucinations, maybe a dried up skeleten, well that is you if you don't have water.
There are as many ways to get water as there are ways to tie a knot. My first reference book that comes to mind is Army FM 21-76, Survival. You can also do searches online for many different ways, I recommend you print them out so you always have the references, remember you may not have electricity to run that computer.
As far as at home storage, that too has many different ways. The easiest is to have containers of water stashed around the house. You can use your empty 2 liter soda bottle, gallon jugs, 5 gallon jugs, anything. Make sure whatever you use is a food grade container. I personally recycle my gallon jugs that my Lipton tea comes in. One trick many do not think about and this is a last minute type of thing is your bathtub. If you know something is coming fill that tub up! While I am rebuilding my homestead roof I opted for something a little different than the normal shingle roof. I used a product by Ondura, a corrugated roof panel made of some kind of plastic/fiberglass I think. These are just like the metal roofing you see on barns, it comes in colors, is low maintance and can withstand 165mph winds. Why I used it was the simplicity of instalation and how easy rainwater comes off it. With gutters installed I have rainwater going into storage barrels with no shigle materials mixed into it. I still use a filter cloth and screen on the barrels but personnaly I love this type of roof material.
All in all there are so many ways to have water for your survival. it does not matter if you are home, on the road or in the woods, you MUST have water. If you are not sure, always boil your water, why get sick for no reason. Remember water is always your number one need.