History Main / CoolClearWater

* Averted in an episode of ''Toys/MachineRobo Rescue''. When Ace, Taiyou, and the VictimOfTheWeek get lost in the jungle, Ace makes a point of putting the water they find through a makeshift purifier, noting the potential dangers of drinking "natural" water.

* Played completely straight in ''[[Anime/JapanSinks Japan Sinks 2020]]''. After fleeing Tokyo, the family runs out of water (because they tried to share theirs with some elderly survivors [[NoGoodDeedGoesUnpunished who promptly took all of it]]). So the father decides that they should head into the mountains, then declares that the water in the first stream they come across is "good" after simply looking at it.

* The trope is subverted in the Marvel war comic ''The 'Nam'' where the lead character on his first patrol in the bush of Vietnam is about to drink from a river and his experienced comrade stops and shows what he has to do to properly treat the water to make it fit for drinking. The end result is not ''palatable'' mind you, but safe enough.

* Luna, in the ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'' fanfic ''Fanfic/LunasPowerAndRainbowsLove'', points out that it's not safe to drink right out of the river, and makes a point of boiling the water first.
* In the ''Series/Adam12'' fic ''[[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/5061075/1/Into-the-Forest Into The Forest,]]'' Pete Malloy and his ranger girlfriend are caught by a group of criminals. When Pete and the guys need to drink, the girlfriend, Jenny attempts to invoke this by slipping a purification tablet into Pete's water but not putting any in the water for the bad guys. It doesn't work, though, they don't get sick.

[[folder:Films -- Live-Action]]
* Parodied in the Creator/JackieChan film ''Film/TheTuxedo''. The film [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFRepsKKfVo opens]] with a shot of a "pure" mountain stream, and then shows a deer urinating in it. We then follow the water downstream where it is bottled by a water company; the BigBad of the movie.
* An earlier Jackie Chan film shows Jackie kneeling to drink from a sparkling stream...and then he notices the boy upstream a few yards peeing in it.
* Subverted in ''Film/{{Rashomon}}''. A notorious bandit is finally captured when he takes a drink from a river and becomes violently ill. He explains "A snake must have died upriver."
* The [[https://youtu.be/XxG-cIiaKeg?t=84 preview]] for ''Survival Family'' includes the city-dwelling father celebrating finding water for his family by taking a long drink from a river and exclaiming how wonderful it tastes. Cut to later that night, as he's crouched in the long grass suffering the results of his decision.
* Averted in the TV movie ''Kidz in the Wood''. At one point two characters stuck in a scorching valley stumble upon a pond, and one of them suggests they get a drink. The other one says not to, noticing the bleached white steer skull laying right next to it.

* The early western film ''Hell's Heroes'' (later [[LighterAndFluffier remade]] as ''Film/ThreeGodfathers'') has this as a major plot-point; the only water in a particularly ferocious stretch of desert looks OK, but as noted above it's laced with arsenic. (A sign is posted warning this.) At the end [[spoiler: the last surviving protagonist drinks the water anyway because it's the only way to stay alive long enough to get the baby he's trying to save to the nearest town.]]

* Parodied in ''Film/TheScorpionKing''. When the heroes find an oasis, Cassandra asks if the water is safe. Out of nowhere, the PluckyComicRelief sees the water and jumps in, cannonball-style. Mathias quips, "Not anymore".
* In ''Film/TheWayBack2010'', the characters spend most of their time trekking through the wilderness and drink unpurified water all the time with no ill effects. Semi-justified in that they're far away from any man-made pollutants, and since most of them came from a [[TheGulag gulag]], it was probably much less contaminated than what they were used to drinking.
* ''Film/DancesWithWolves'' has a scene of John Dunbar going to fetch a bucket of water from a nearby lake for the first time, but he stops just as he sees the corpses of some deer in and around the area. He spends several days cleaning it up as best he can by himself, and he even notes that he took pains to see if they had been poisoned.

* ''Film/TheManWhoWouldBeKing''. The MightyWhitey conmen use their military skill and advanced weaponry to help one of the local tribes attack another tribe, one of their grievances being that they are pissing upstream from their village. When that village is conquered, they're used to form another army to attack the next village up the river, whose inhabitants have also been pissing in the water...
* The catastrophic TV-movie ''Thirst'' averts this. The water contaminated with ''Cryptosporidium'' parasite looks no different from safe water, [[ArtisticLicenseBiology though symptoms and consequences are quite different]] from RealLife.
* Averted in ''Film/{{IO}}''. Micah balks at drinking the cup of discolored water Sam offers him, but she explains the color is because it's been filtered through sand and charcoal to remove toxins.

%%* Since Literature/HardToBeAGod takes place on a planet deeply immersed in TheDungAges, the locals are deeply disturbed by the protagonist's insistence upon bathing regularly.

** There is a version in the Literature/ArabianNights where the water was dripping from a tree, and when the retainer went to collect it he found out that the "water" was actually ''venom'' and the tree was ''full of live vipers''. Snake venom is actually not toxic to drink, but you certainly wouldn't want to drink it thinking it was water. (Or get that close to a tree full of live vipers.)

** This was also used in Series/BetweenTheLions to the story "A King and His Hawk", and [[TearJerker to make this even sadder]] not too long after moving on his kingdom was very close so the King killed his Hawk [[AllForNothing for nothing]].
* In ''Literature/TheGirlWhoLovedTomGordon'', Trisha drinks some Cool Clear Water when she runs out of her bottled water. It causes a severe bout of vomiting and diarrhea, although she luckily manages to get over it relatively quickly. Less fortunately, that appears to be because it weakened her system enough that she got a worse illness, and her body just gave up on purging the toxins.
* One ''Literature/TheMagicSchoolBus'' book dealing with the water system specifically pointed out that a clear-looking glass of water might still have germs and other yucky stuff in it, hence the need for filtration. This includes the [=MSB=] class themselves, who have to get out and walk around the filters.
* Downplayed in ''Literature/TheLordOfTheRings'', when Frodo and Sam are entering Mordor. Sam comments that they will not find water to drink since orcs probably drink poison as water. Frodo responds that as foul as orcs are, they surely cannot live on poison, so he fills their water packs with the brownish water the orcs drink. Although it does taste foul and sicken them a little, it also helps them on their way.
** Averted earlier in Moria: Gandalf says that while there are water streams in Moria, some of them clean, this water is not safe for drinking, so they have to conserve water supply.
** Also averted earlier in Ithilien, as Faramir warns Frodo and Sam of drinking from any stream that flows from Imlad Morgul, [[IDontLikeTheSoundOfThatPlace the Valley of the Living Death]].

* In the Creator/CliveCussler novel ''The Wrecker'', set in 1907, a temperance group tries to demonstrate how dangerous alcohol is by showing how a few drops of alcohol can kill all the various microbes living in a small container of water. The audience, seeing how many things were living in their well water, resolve to never touch it again.

* The ''Literature/FreewayWarrior'' adventure books acknowledge the need for drinking safe water. Part of Cal Phoenix's Fieldcraft skill training involves identification of safe water sources, Water Purification Tablets can be found, and Medkit supplies are often stated by the text to contain more water purification tablets. On top of that, the primary sources of water in the books are from water tanks and the surviving colonist's water supplies.
* In ''Marcovaldo'' by Italo Calvino, Marcovaldo is tempted to go fishing in a particular stretch because it looks so beautifully blue. He later discovers the blue colour is due to contamination from the paint factory.
* In ''Literature/TheWolfhound'''s prequel novel ''The Ultimate Stone'', set during the Wolfhound's Jewel Mountains time, a group of kinda runaway slaves ([[ItMakesSenseInContext it's a long story]]) find the body of a boy miner, for decades a subject of the UrbanLegend, on an island in a cave lake, surrounded by the incredibly clear, azure and ''glowing'' water, perfectly preserved as if he's actually alive. It is heavily implied that the lake is highly radioactive, and the blue light is a [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherenkov_radiation Cherenkov radiation.]]
* Played painfully straight in PC Cast's ''Goddess by Mistake'', in which Shannon (a person from our world, trapped in a fantasy-esque land) drinks from a river constantly and doesn't so much as suffer an upset stomach. Of course, given [[{{Utopia}} what kind of place]] the land she's in is like, this could possibly be handwaved as AWizardDidIt.
* In ''[[Literature/CiaphasCain Death or Glory]]'', the Imperial aqueduct in Prosperity Wells was full of clear, cool water ... but since Prosperity Wells was full of Orks, Cain and Jurgen stick with the water in their canteens rather than risk finding out the hard way what the Orks might have dropped in the aqueduct. (Cain admits that wading hip-deep in the aqueduct to get across town might have been risky, but it provided concealment and minimised the desert heat so he was willing to take the chance.) Later in the book his party does partake in a desert oasis, but their local guide vouches for it and it was that or die of dehydration.

* [[AvertedTrope Averted]] in ''Literature/TheOverstory''. Douglas thinks to himself how bad an idea it is to drink from a certain natural body of water, despite it looking perfectly beautiful and clear.
* ''Literature/JohannesCabalTheDetective'': One pristine mountain spring owes its clarity to the fact that it's ''unholy water'' running from the [[UnholyGround tomb of an evil archmage]]. It gives some nasty [[ImHavingSoulPains soul pains]] to the one man foolish enough to drink it despite the total lack of plant life near its banks.

* In ''Survival Family'', being of their last bottled water, the father drinks the water off the stream saying it's clear, much to his family's protest. The next scene, he under a diarrhea emergency in the middle of a storm.

* Averted in ''The Whistler'' episode "Death Has a Thirst." The characters get stranded on a desert island, and when some of them go exploring for water sources, they carry a test kit to detect unsafe levels of arsenic and zinc. Every source they test turns out to be contaminated. One character, who has already exhibited paranoid behavior, is reluctant to believe that the water is poisonous (since after all, it ''looks'' fine); he thinks the others are trying to make him die of thirst.

* Averted in ''VideoGame/{{Fallout}}'', where a survival manual directly states that in this high-radiation, post-nuclear setting, clear water--especially if it's not running water--is most likely radioactive and should be avoided. When you consider the background radiation is high enough to produce irradiated rats the size of a man and irradiated scorpions that are ''bigger'', this is probably good advice. ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 3}}'' goes out of its way to warn you of this fact, as short of the major rivers, virtually any outdoor water pool has rising '''brown steam'''. Most still water sources like toilets and sinks are irradiated and there's even cults that consider irradiated water to be holy.

* Many "ultralight" campers and hikers will drink water from mountain rivers and streams, forgoing the weight and inconvenience of filters and purification chemicals. Whilst it is true that most waterborne pollution and disease comes from human habitation and agriculture (especially the nastiest kinds, heavy metals and viruses that can't be simply filtered out), even small fast-flowing streams in high mountains are not guaranteed to be safe. The odds of picking up something nasty are low enough that the trend persists.

* In ''Film/TheWayBack'', the characters spend most of their time trekking through the wilderness and drink unpurified water all the time with no ill effects. Semi-justified in that they're far away from any man-made pollutants, and since most of them came from a [[TheGulag gulag]], it was probably much less contaminated than what they were used to drinking.

* Played completely straight in ''Japan Sinks 2020''. After fleeing Tokyo, the family runs out of water (because they tried to share theirs with some elderly survivors [[NoGoodDeedGoesUnpunished who promptly took all of it]]). So the father decides that they should head into the mountains, then declares that the water in the first stream they come across is "good" after simply looking at it.

* In the ''{{Series/Adam Twelve}}'' fic ''[[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/5061075/1/Into-the-Forest Into The Forest,]]'' Pete Malloy and his ranger girlfriend are caught by a group of criminals. When Pete and the guys need to drink, the girlfriend, Jenny attempts to invoke this by slipping a purification tablet into Pete's water but not putting any in the water for the bad guys. It doesn't work, though, they don't get sick.

* Played painfully straight in PC Cast's ''Goddess by Mistake'', in which Shannon (a person from our world, trapped in a fantasy-esque land) drinks from a river constantly and doesn't so much as suffer an upset stomach. Of course, given [[MarySuetopia what kind of place]] the land she's in is like, this could possibly be handwaved as AWizardDidIt.

* The ''VideoGame/DarkCloud'' and ''VideoGame/DarkChronicle'' games feature Springs in the RandomlyGeneratedLevels which can both quench the character's thirst and replenish their HP. These springs can occur in the [[DownTheDrain Sewers]], in the middle of a [[LostWoods Forest]], in underground grottoes, in cliffside caves, in volcanic hot springs, and in palace fountains. At least the ones in volcanoes are boiled... never mind the acidity.

* At the beginning of UsefulNotes/Covid19Pandemic lockdowns in March 2020, people in Venice noticed that the water in the [[CityOfCanals canals]] was not murky anymore, to the point that the riverbeds were visible. Local authorities noted that this was because the gondoliers weren't stirring up the mud in the waters with their oars -- and that while the water looked ''clearer'', it wasn't necessarily ''cleaner'', as there were still many invisible contaminants in the canals. All that stuff merely settled on the bottom, and regardless of its opacity, it's still as salty as it's always been, hence why artisan wells are used to supply the city with fresh water.

* At the beginning of UsefulNotes/Covid19Pandemic lockdowns in March 2020, people in Venice noticed that the water in the [[CityOfCanals canals]] was not murky anymore, to the point that the riverbeds were visible. Local authorities noted that this was because the gondoliers weren't stirring up the mud in the waters with their oars -- and that while the water looked ''clearer'', it wasn't necessarily ''cleaner'', as there were still many invisible contaminants in the canals.

Except, of course, for the myriad waterborne parasites and diseases that sicken and kill thousands in the real world. Many animals have immunity to all sorts of microscopic nasties that humans removed from the wild don't (and they still get sick fairly often). There's a reason water purification kits are standard issue for hikers, campers and survival kits worldwide. Not to mention the billions of dollars governments pour into building and maintaining municipal water facilities and sewage treatment plants.

** In the long story, ''Nobita and the Legend of the Sun King'' the gang ends up in the Amazonian jungle. Reaching the Amazon River and thirsty for a drink, Doraemon then takes out one of his gadgets, a purifier that converts water into fruit juice. Everyone's enjoying a cup of juice made from the gadget, until Gian noticed Nobita taking a pee upstream roughly a few meters away. ('''[[SpitTake PFFFFT!!!]]''')

* Inverted by glacial meltwater, which is generally safe to drink, yet ''looks'' cloudy due to particles of "rock flour": minute fragments of stone, ground to a fine powder by the glacier's slow crawl over bedrock. Filtering out such pulverised minerals is often done for aesthetic reasons, but it won't hurt you to drink the stuff.

* In the ''{{Series/Adam Twelve}}'' fic [[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/5061075/1/Into-the-Forest "Into The Forest,"]] Pete Malloy and his ranger girlfriend are caught by a group of criminals. When Pete and the guys need to drink, the girlfriend, Jenny attempts to invoke this by slipping a purification tablet into Pete's water but not putting any in the water for the bad guys. It doesn't work, though, they don't get sick.

* This trope is one of the reasons The UK Armed Forces sometimes come off as a bit obsessed with procuring a SpotOfTea in the field; tea acts as a mild antiseptic on top of the sterilising effect of boiling the water.

* People have not been drinking pure water for very long. Much of the Western world drank weak beer. The major part of the purification process when making beer, however, does not come from the alcohol, but from the first stage in brewing, which is boiling water. On a side note, most rural people who drink water nowadays draw from an aquifer, which is always cool, clear water albeit mineral-y.

* Averted in ''The Whistler'' episode "Death Has a Thirst." The characters get stranded on a desert island, and when some of them go exploring for water sources, they carry a test kit to detect unsafe levels of arsenic and zinc. Every source they test turns out to be contaminated. One character, who has already exhibited paranoid behavior, is reluctant to believe that the water is poisonous (since after all, it ''looks'' fine); he thinks the others are trying to make him die of thirst. [[spoiler:Later he does drink some of the water, though [[TamperingWithFoodAndDrink not intentionally]]. It kills him quickly and leaves his corpse with a distended abdomen and [[NothingIsScarier unspecified]] evidence of poisoning on his eyes, lips, and tongue.]] This is actually an ''exaggeration'' of what drinking arsenic- and zinc-laden water is likely to do.

* Averted in ''The Whistler'' episode "Death Has a Thirst." The characters get stranded on a desert island, and when some of them go exploring for water sources, they carry a test kit to detect unsafe levels of arsenic and zinc. One character, who has already exhibited paranoid behavior, is reluctant to believe that the water is poisonous (since after all, it ''looks'' fine); he thinks the others are trying to make him die of thirst. [[spoiler:Later he does drink some of the water, though [[TamperingWithFoodAndDrink not intentionally]]. It kills him quickly and leaves his corpse with a distended abdomen and [[NothingIsScarier unspecified]] evidence of poisoning on his eyes, lips, and tongue.]] This is actually an ''exaggeration'' of what drinking arsenic- and zinc-laden water is likely to do.