Wood Stoves and Survivalism

Disasters can strike at any time and in any place. When high winds, a blizzard, a tornado or a hurricane hits,  power lines often go down and electricity is off for days (or longer). Earthquakes notoriously knock out power and sever water lines. Rural residents might lose electricity when someone accidentally knocks down a power pole. If your home depends on electricity for heat and cooking meals, either with electrical heat, electrical stoves, or to power an electrical whole-house blower, your house is cold and so is the food you eat.

Wood Stove Disaster Preparedness

The beauty about a wood-burning stove is that it can heat your home, and even your food, when the electricity is off. Sure, a homeowner can install an expensive gas-powered generator to kick on if the electricity goes off, but it must be large enough to power the entire electrical home-heating furnace. That means you can be paying big bucks to acquire such a generator.

When your home is already heated with wood, life without electricity, in some key respects, is as simple as it was prior to the power going off. You just grab another chunk of wood and add it to the fire, like you do throughout the heating season. Without electrical lights, you simply light some candles or a lantern and sit back to rely on your wood stove’s warmth.

Cooking is an important consideration when buying a wood stove you plan to use in a surival situation, because not all wood heat appliances can be used for cooking or boiling water. The good, old-fashioned wood stove without the electronic controls, transformers and fans installed to produce high-efficiency burns, works best for cooking food.

Advantages of Wood Cook Stoves

An even better solution is to own an efficient wood stove for heating your home and a wood cook stove for preparing meals. Wood cook stoves are built so that heated air surrounds the oven box. Amounts and types of wood burned in a wood cook stove determine heat volumes. A wood cook stove can be used without putting excess heat into the room on a hot summer day. Simply opening the oven door of a wood cook stove allows heat into the kitchen of a home on a cold winter day. Best of all, you have an oven to bake bread, or a hearty meal in a wood cook stove, something that cannot be accomplished easily on a wood stove without additional supplies.

Another practical aspect about a wood cook stove, and even some traditional wood stoves, is an optional possibility of a water coil that circulates hot water into your hot water heater from the wood stove. It reduces electric or gas usage in the hot water heater, and in the case of an electrical outage, provides all of your hot water. Of course, another hot water option is breaking out the old short-and-stout steam pot and heating water on the top of the wood stove.

Disasters Are No Panic With Wood

Imagine how you feel when the electricity fails for several hours or days and you already heat and cook and heat with wood. While neighbors with all-electric heat and kitchen appliances panic, you’re sitting pretty, except for all of the visitors who want to stay warm in your house. The power is out, so restaurants are closed. You can still prepare food with a wood cook stove. The house stays warm. There is a winter’s supply of wood outside in the woodshed.

Of course, preparing for a disaster equals thinking ahead and getting ready. You can check more than a few things off your list if you are already heating with wood. Instead of installing an alternative flue for backup wood heat, you’ve already performed your annual inspection and soot removal, since it’s already part of your yearly wood burning routine. Rather than making sure there’s enough wood for the secondary wood heater, you already enjoy a fully-stocked woodshed with a year’s supply of wood fuel.

With wood heat in your home, you’re already prepared for a disaster. And, when you think about it, a disaster only becomes a disaster if it’s a hardship on you and your family. In that respect, heating and cooking with wood eliminates certain elements of disaster, because you’re already prepared.

About the Author: Geoff Hineman
Writer, runner, musician and devoted father, Geoff likes to write about a wide range of topics and does so for a number of helpful websites, including Wood-Furnaces.net.

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