Survival Stove

A survival stove is a means to obtain a majority of your resources in the event of an emergency. It's your food source, enabling you to cook meals. It's your water source, boiling water is one of the most reliable methods for water purification. And the right stove, can be a reliable heat source for providing warmth.

You never know whether the situation is going to require that you bunker down in your home or bug out in a car or on foot. It's important that your survival stove be flexible so that it works for all situations. If you have a barbeque as your emergency stove at home, that's fine, but what happens if you need to flee in your car? Oh, you have a portable grill that you can use at home and take in your car. That's better, but what if roads aren't an option and you need to go on foot? 

I've always been a firm believer in universalizing your equipment so that it provides a solution in all scenarios. A stove you can use at home, that's portable so you can take it in your car, and that is light and compact so it can be carried in a backpack. A backpackers or hikers stove is the best choice and they fall into two categories.

Propane or Gas Stoves

A majority of the stoves you'll find at a backpacking store are the ones that either screw onto to small propane canister or ones that connect to a separate liquid gas bottle. I've used both of these on backpacking trips for many years. They are light, compact and for the most part, reliable and work great.  

The stoves that connected to a separate liquid gas fuel bottle, were the first ones to come out and we have had issues with these in the past. Gas would leak past a seal, a fuel line would get clogged or the fuel pump didn't pressurized the bottle. For this reason, we usually brought two with us. Once the stoves that screw onto a small propane canister came out, we switched over and we haven't had any stove issues since. While I'm sure they have improved the design of the liquid gas stoves since we used then, I feel much more comfortable with the propone stoves based on the lack of issues we've had with them. 

The downside to both of these stoves is that you need the propane or liquid gas in order for them to work. We've run out of fuel plenty of times on the mountain because our trip was extended due to foul weather or we burned through our fuel too fast, boiling drinking water because our water purifier seized up. They're aren't any fuel stores on the mountain and I'm not sure in an emergency, how accessible the fuel will be.    

Wood Burning Survival Stove

I'm a big fan of having equipment that can be used indefinitely, because it utilizes abundant, natural resources. If the equipment you have requires a source that isn't easily obtainable or can't replenish itself, your equipment can quickly become useless.

Survival Stove Set

That's why the survival stove I have, and suggest to others, runs on little wood twigs and sticks. It's portable and compact so I can take it anywhere and I never have to worry about fuel. The fuel is all over the ground and just needs to be gathered and placed into the stoves fire basket. The stove has a thermal generator / fan unit that attaches to the fire basket. The fan feeds air to the fire which makes the fire easy to start, keeps the fire burning, makes the fire burn hotter and creates a cyclone affect that focus's the flame to the cooking platform. The fire heats the thermal generator, the thermal generator creates power to charge the battery for the fan, the fan feeds the fire, and the cycle continues. It's a completely self contained unit. The stove also comes with a USB socket, since the thermal generator creates enough power to charge other external devices.

The only downside to this stove, is you don't have any control over the flame. If the stove is burning too hot, then you need to let it die down. If it's not hot enough, you need to add more fuel. Its a manual and inconsistent process. A small price to pay for a stove that has an endless fuel supply, in my opinion. Plus, in most cases it's not an issue since I'm usually using it to boil water for dehydrated meals, coffee or water purification.

Storage Bag	Unpacked	Assembled
Lighting	Burning	Boiling

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