I was wondering how useful a rocket stove would be for hunting, camping and a long-term situation VS using a propane stove for cooking.

What rocket stoves would you guys recommend?

Long term it would be better since u have unlimited fuel.  Hunting, use a gas stove for ease.

Find a surplus Swiss Volcano, practically the same thing for cheap.

Long-term is probably different than camping/hunting.

First, hunting/camping:  I don't care for the "rocket" stoves, they're too big and bulky for me.  I use an MSR pocket rocket 2, which is super light, and folds down to an amazingly compact size - you can close your hand around the entire thing.   It's small enough that I just store it inside one of the little bowls in my mess kit.  A friend of mine has a rocket-type stove, and his boils water in maybe 10 or so seconds less, but I prefer the small and light.  Mine puts off enough heat that I've cooked a pot of food for five people on it without trouble, and remarkably fast.  

Now, long-term prepping/survival/EOTWAWKI:  Propane is going to be more common (and cheaper to store in bulk) than the isobutane canisters that the little stoves use, so get a propane stove for that.

Silverfire

& a Solar Oven

Solar charger & battery & 12 volt car defroster to add heat at night.

Hunting and camping are totally different uses than long term survival.  two different things, with different strategies...

Small gas stoves:  Love 'em.  If you are back packing in for hunting or camping, that usually means a few days, week at most.  And you are carrying it.  Weight is paramount.  I won't carry propane for this:  The 1 Lb canisters are steel and heavy.  small Isobutane are way to go.  the stoves are tiny, work well, and weigh nothing, and the Iso canisters are light.  If you are going in by canoe, or other conveyance and weight isn't as big an issue, and you are in the woods for longer, a small Naptha stove, using white gas, may be better.  When you start needing 8, 10, 12 isobutane canisters, there is a point where liquid fuel becomes more weight efficient...  I have a small, single burner, pump pressurized naphtha stove, and it not too bad weight wise.  Carrying a rocket stove is big, bulky and heavy by comparison.  And fuel, while everywhere, is often very wet.


Survival:  fossil Fuels run out.  Period.  There is fuel in nature.  Use it.  The rocket stove wins.  But its not something I would take hunting...    


A third option?:  The best intermediate, "Oh shit, it's longer term SHTF" concept may be the liquid fueled, multi fuel stove.  It not as omnivorous as a rocket stove, but easier to feed.  No smoke to give away your position.  Quick to start, rapid to cool, pack and haul ass.  Easy to feed. My little pump pressurized Coleman single burner is a multi fuel model, and will run on unleaded gas.  While Isobutane and 1lb cans of propane can become scarce, regular unleaded gasoline is farrrr more common.  And Im not trying to find it 20 gallons at a time.  A quart of gas is a lot of cooking.... other stoves will burn just about anything from gas, to keosese to diesel.  These burn a bit dirtier, but are cleaner than burning wood.  (less smoke).  These are probably an ideal  option.

As stated, the rocket stove is your best long term solution, since you just need some sticks to fuel it. When I am out and about, I use a Jetboil, though, since they are light, but there is always the potential of running out of gas.

This /\  Options are best.  For me propane is only temporary SHTF cooking situation.  Anything more than a couple weeks and we will start to conserve our fuels and utilize wood.

Cooking really doesn’t use much propane vs heating water and houses. I have a 500 gallon propane tank for the house. If I knew resupply would be an issue, I’d stop using it for heat, heat primarily with wood, and save it for cooking.

Propane is such a handy fuel for cooking, things would have to get really bad for me to NOT spend money for propane to cook with.

I also have a propane fill kit that I can use to tap propane tanks as long as they have a liquid withdrawal line. I didn’t get it for that purpose but it’s there in case I need it. While I don’t plan to go steal propane, if there was such a massive event that killed a ton of people, I wouldn’t hesitate to get propane from the tank of a person who doesn’t need it any more. And if me and my family get killed off, anyone who needs it can have what’s left in my tank.  I keep the fill kit so I can fill my propane bottles for less than I can at the propane fill places.

My uncle had a wood cook stove in his house and while it was neat, it was a headache to use and I wouldn’t want to use it inside during the summer time especially without AC. Wintertime it was ok but still a headache to use instead of propane.

Side note on propane…the times I was in Iraq I noticed they used quite a bit of propane for cooking. Things were pretty bad there at times but they still managed to get propane. Some of their bottles were pretty bad looking and likely unsafe but they kept using them.

Another consideration is access to wood. It’s not an issue for me and many others but wood can be tough to get in some places due to lack of forests.

depends on location. when I was in Texas there were maybe 3 trees in the whole neighborhood. So you'd be burning your fence by the end of the first week. Now in Georgia I have a lot more options and more trees just on my own yard.



Long term I think we need to be looking at pretty privative. Wood fire heat and cooking, smoking to preserve meat, that kind of thing. I don't know a time in recent history a first world nation fell that far, so it's low on my list of priority.

One thing I've thought about is using a small USB powered fan to help a fire, much like a pellet smoker works. Would allow higher temps and less wood use if you get it dialed in well.

A parabolic solar stove is nice to for long term. No fuel needed and gets crazy hot very fast.

dig a hole in the ground with a feeder hole and you have the ancestor to the rocket stove: a lakota fire hole

https://www.fieldandstream.com/blogs/total-outdoorsman/how-to-dig-a-dakota-fire-hole/

1. I've read about people burning out the AL Swiss volcanoes on sticks. I have 5 from when they were dirt cheap and no grand illusions.
2. The living historian was explaining why Fort Michilmack had a mortar. It used to be surrounded by sand dunes.
Sand Dunes because they had logged the area for miles for firewood.

Is it going to last longer than propane, of course. Is it going to last longer than me in those conditions, probably.
But Firewood isn't a given, especially when all your neighbors are using it with abandon.
.y point is, I think we take renewable natural resources as a given, and fail to appreciate the impact a large human population can have when The World As We Know It Ends.

For the purposes of this thread spending 50-100 bucks, or welding one up out of scrap if you have the means is probably worth it.

But long term, a grill made from green sticks is probably the best

If you are trying to ride out a SHTF scenario where you can't even get hydrocarbon fuel, but aren't surrounded by vegetation, you're doing it wrong.

You can make a Rocket Stove (aka Hobo Stove) out of a metal coffee can. We made them in Cub Scouts 30 years ago.


https://www.artofmanliness.com/skills/outdoor-survival/make-hobo-stove/


https://www.diynetwork.com/how-to/maintenance-and-repair/preparedness/z/zombie-apocalypse-be-prepared-with-a-hobo-stove


Around the homestead you ought to have the ability to make a larger rocket stove for cooking such as this one:

https://momwithaprep.com/build-brick-rocket-stove/

Scootch:

Read accounts of tough times around the world. One of the things that has stood out to me is the people who go through it mention how wood became in short supply due to everyone burning anything they could find. WWII has a lot of such accounts from people who lived it in Europe and Eastern Europe. They have plenty of wood normally but due to conflict and desperation, it disappeared pretty rapidly.

It’s like people who think if times get really tough they are going to live off the land and hunt for food. You think you are the only one who thinks that? If things get that bad, there will be plenty of capable hunters out there killing anything that moves in order to eat and to feed their families. Look what happened during the Great Depression to wildlife rates. They plummeted. It took years to bring the wildlife population back.

Despite what the environazis what you to believe, modern society can only function as it does due to modern farming and modern fuel production. Stop either of those things and the wheels just fell off the cart and things are about to get bad….REALLY bad.  A hunter/gatherer society is no longer viable due to the population.

If the SHTF I’m confident there will be plenty of fuels like propane. There may (likely will be) be shortages and disruptions and the price may be absurdly high but I believe the fuel will be mostly available. As long as you have enough storage (and you better protect it from theft) to ride out the temporary disruptions, you should always have propane to cook with.

If TEOTWAWKI hits, there will likely be plenty of dead people around to scrounge from. Personally, I think that’s highly unlikely here in the US so I don’t lose any sleep over it.

No shit, that's my point. Don't be like those people who died or nearly died. I moved out to the country. I got more trees than I can ever burn, even without regrowth

I think where are a lot of preppers/survivalists have issues is they want to store enough of XYZ to last for the rest of their lives and the rest of their kids lives. However, most likely for most of us, that’s impossible. So, instead of storing enough to last forever, have enough to ride out supply disruptions. For example, look at the fuel shortages that affected the southeast earlier this year due to pipeline issues. People living in the affected areas didn’t need years worth of fuel but a few weeks to a month of fuel (at normal usage rates….most people can cut down on their consumption of fuels). For those who live in the hurricane areas, a few weeks of fuel or enough to bug out puts you ahead of probably 99% of the general public. A month of fuel puts you ahead of 99.9% of the general public.

A years worth of propane for cooking wouldn’t take up much space at all. Maybe a couple 100 lb tanks or 3-4 40 lb tanks or 6-8 20 lb tanks. We cook with propane and while I don’t know our exact consumption amounts for cooking, based on my yearly consumption for the entire house, I think our cooking consumption of propane is around 20 gallons. Add 10-15 more gallons for our propane grill and propane Blackstone griddle.

I’m not against the rocket stove concept at all though.  Having one would certainly enable you to extend your cooking fuel supply.

Side note:
It’s kind of funny how for years we all believed natural gas is the way to go since it’s pretty cheap and was considered the most reliable utility. Well, after last winter’s natural gas supply issues, I think we all came to realize how fragile the natural gas supply really is.

Don't forget that in some areas people burn dried shit for fuel. People need to relearn how to use their common sense. Or let Darwin take its course.