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Fire: Your Partner in Survival, by Pledger
Eons ago when people lived in caves, one of their most important tools was fire. Its ability to keep them warm, cook food, provide light, and scare away predators was of the utmost importance. Some kind of a societal upheaval may not necessarily mean returning to a stone age existence, but when the systems that keep our everyday life humming along go down, fire will once again have a huge impact on our ability to survive.
This fact was brought home to my wife and me two winters ago, when a February blizzard knocked out the power to several counties. It was early evening – the lights flickered a few times, and then the house was plunged into darkness. Everything became eerily quiet, save for the wind howling outside and snow pelting against the window.
Then there was another sound – the reassuring popping of a log in our big airtight Franklin stove which continued to throw off its heat, oblivious to the fact that the juice was off. For the next thirty-six hours we used it to keep us warm, melt snow to flush toilets, and even did a some cooking over its coals. While other folks along our country road bundled up in sleeping bags and shivered until the outage ended, the disruption to our lives wasn’t nearly as great.
If you live in a northern climate, staying warm is important for nearly half of the year. Did I say “important”? Make that “vital” because without a way to keep the temperature in your home or bug-out place at a life-sustaining level, you will die of exposure! Your gas or oil furnace will be fine… as long as your fuel supply lasts or the electricity doesn’t fail. These are finite resources, however, and during a long-term disruption of goods and services, your pilot light will go out at some point (probably just when a January blizzard comes howling in).
The only logical solution is to turn to wood heat, or more precisely, a wood-burning airtight stove (fireplaces are fine for ambiance, but horribly inefficient for warming you since most of the heat goes up the chimney). The next question, then, is where will your wood come from, and what skills and tools do you need to convert it to usable fuel for your stove?
The countryside is full of burnable litter. Next time you’re out and about, take a look around. Fallen branches and even a downed tree or two are common sights in any woodlot or park, or along rural roads. Most of it, though, is too small to keep a fire going with the BTU output that’s needed to warm your home. Real “firewood” consists of pieces of thick branches or trunks that have been cut and split to a size of about 16” long and roughly 5” or 6” in diameter. Anything smaller will require re-stoking the stove every few hours, while bigger pieces may smolder unless the fire is wastefully large.
At present, I get most of my firewood supply from a local landowner, who doesn’t like downed trees lying around and sees it as a favor when I clean up the woods for him.
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