by Michael Eddy

Listen to the story!

Did you know? When a pellet leaves a barrel at more than half a mile per second and hits a Nalgene water bottle less than 5 meters away, nothing happens.

Right now in Alaska there is a craze for these supposedly indestructible and very colorful bottles. Urban dictionary.com allows people in the know the opportunity to post their own definitions.  One entry states that Nalgenes are “ the best water bottle of all time. It comes in loads of colors, and there are wide mouth and small mouth bottles. They are completely indestructible...you can boil water in them, and they are bulletproof .”

But enough about that, we'll touch on it later when I put one nalgene bottle to the test. First is that subject we all love: history!! Before the age of Lexan, the polycarbonate plastic that makes up Nalgenes, bottles were made of a more flexible plastic polymer. REI Community Outreach Coordinator Andrew Cutting said that Nalgenes have been around for a long time.  

“It's got to go way back… everyone has a water bottle now.”

Cutting said the Anchorage REI store sells approximately 5,000 32 oz, wide mouth Nalgenes per year and about 10,000 of all brands. He also said almost every month has the same sales activity, even during the holidays. Cutting said the only big spikes in sales are when the company comes out with new colors, sizes and models. At last glance, there were at least 73 types of Nalgenes on REI.com.

My family is living proof of Nalgene's popularity, we own at least half of those 73 bottles. This proves Nalgenes are popular among all age groups.   My grandma even has a flask.

So getting back to that claim of being indestructible, I wanted to find out if all that hype is true. I already knew a pellet gun doesn't do much damage but are these bottles as indestructible as people say they are?

The first thing I did to try and break a Nalgene was drop it from a height of four feet. Needless to say this was not successful. Next I lobbed it, full of rocks, at a white brick wall. This did nothing but leave a white mark on the bottle. Then I tried to run over it with a car. Friction seemed to have flown south for the winter for the bottle did nothing but spin out like the Dukes of Hazard's General Lee. Then we happened upon a Caterpillar-brand snowplow working its way down a city sidewalk. Would a Nalgene give under the full weight of this enormous machine?

…Nothing. The Nalgene was then dropped off a three-story building, four times, twice with rocks in it. It was shot, frozen with water in it and dropped and nothing killed it until I filled it to the brim with water, sealed it, and froze it.

This finally split it open like a banana. Voila, this is the only normal way I found to break a Nalgene.

So a phrase from the heart of camelbackers everywhere: “Hydrate or die!!”