Cape Town, South Africa, a city with 4.7 million people residing in it. The fear now is something known as “Day Zero” will hit Cape Town in mid April.

The government cautions that the Day Zero threat will surpass anything a major city has faced since World War II or the September 11 attacks, according to CNN.com. This Day Zero is not an attack, however it signifies the day that water runs dry in Cape Town.

Coca-Cola Peninsula Beverages (CCPB) said that it was finalising the details to provide millions of litres of relief water to the Western Cape and to the City of Cape Town in a bid to help the City mitigate the impact of Day Zero, according to an article from IOL.com said.

“In Dubai, they are creating artificial islands and making water around it, so there has got to be away to give water to these poor people. We need to educate them about water conservation. We just need to do anything we can to fix this problem, or there are going to be dire consequences,” math teacher Sandy Moeller said.

Some ways that South Africans are conserving water is by embracing the ‘military type of shower,’ using hand sanitizer instead of soap, using dry shampoo, using buckets to collect rain water and using paper towels rather than water.

“We need to help them learn how to contain it, help them create water towers or collect water. We need to help them get from the state they are in to being in a better state. No person should have the threat of not having water,” sophomore Ty Patton said.

Questions dominate everyday conversation around the city’s wider strategy for the general population, which authorities are yet to publicly outline. Given this stark outlook, there are concerns neighbors could turn on each other and fears of unrest erupting the longer the crisis continues, according to CNN.com.

“There should be help from other countries and from their own government. Send people out there to help then learn how to conserve water. Teach them to preserve their resources. It sucks that this happened to them,” sophomore Julia Clements said.