Staying Warm, Cooking Food And Boiling Water Without Electricity

You’d have thought that rocketing fuel prices had already taught you how to stay warm, boil water, and do the cooking using minimum energy. A natural or manmade disaster could leave you without any electricity at all – so how will you cope then?

Staying warm

Sheer survival relies on keeping your body temperature between 36.1º and 37.2ºC (around 98.6ºF). If your body temperature drops below 35ºC (about 37ºF), you’ll suffer hypothermia – a medical emergency that requires the type of hospital treatment you’re unlikely to find if disaster has struck.

The secret to staying warm, therefore, starts with keeping your own body as warm as possible – and only then turning your attention to keeping your home or other place of refuge warm:

• keep the extremities warm – and that means woollen socks, gloves, and hat;

• wear several layers of thinner clothing rather than attempting a single, bulky item – the air between each layer acts as its own insulation;

• thermal underwear can help – but look hard enough and you can also find fleece-lined trousers and leggings;

• like a lot of prepping activities, stocking up on warm clothing doesn’t have to involve huge expense – start browsing around second-hand clothes and charity shops to assemble your emergency wardrobe;

• keeping the inside of your home warm is also a question of maintaining as much insulation as you can manage – block draughts around windows, doors, up through the gaps in floorboards;

• if temperatures within your place of refuge continue to plummet, build an indoor tent or bivouac from blankets draped over a large table – and set it up near the bathroom so you don’t lose further heat travelling in and out of it.

Boiling water

When your electricity is down, you will still need to boil water. That’s not just so you can make that proverbial “nice cup of tea” but because it’s also one of the most efficient ways you’ll have of purifying water that’s fit to drink – and when the electricity’s down, your supply of fresh drinking water is also likely to be compromised.

As the World Health Organisation (WHO) recommends, when you heat water to a “roiling boil” you’ll deactivate harmful protozoa, viruses, and pathogenic bacteria in it.

Even though you’ve usually relied on a battery of electrical appliances to boil your water, when the power is down, there are lots of alternatives – with fire or solar power as the primary sources. An article in Primal Survivor on the 14^th of November 2022, suggested some of these alternatives, including:

• the outdoor camping gas stove that will be in the basic starter kit of any self-respecting prepper – you’ll find any number to choose from online;

• as far as fire is concerned, the most obvious is an open “campfire” or one you can light in the fireplace at home;

• if your access to fuel to burn is limited, then a “rocket stove” is one of the most efficient devices that can generate enough heat to boil water even if you’ve only got a few fir cones or twigs to burn;

• a can of tuna – or any other food packed in oil – can also be turned into a one-time heat source that will burn for up to 25 minutes (long enough to boil your water) if you put a couple of sheets of toilet paper over the oil, allow the paper to absorb some of the oil, then light the paper;

• candle power is not going to give you enough heat to boil water – unless, of course, you use enough of them and with five or more grouped together below your water container, you might just do it;

• you might even harness the awesome power of the sun to boil your water – the 4 Patriots Sun Kettle is a little pricey (at just over £100) but promises to boil 17 fluid ounces (0.48 litres or a little less than a pint) in 45 minutes;

• if you have access to a car – and the fuel to run the engine – a far less energy-efficient way of boiling water is to plug a small, portable immersion heater element into the cigarette lighter socket (though it will probably take you 50 minutes or so to boil a relatively small volume of water.

Cooking

Your prepped supplies of food are probably going to include rations you can use straight from the can or packet without the need for cooking or even heating up the contents.

When you are facing the constant challenges of an emergency situation, however, hot cooked food is not only nourishing but can also prove a psychological boost to you and the group you’re in. That’s when the lack of power to an electric stove or microwave is going to throw up further challenges.

You’re already part way to having found the solution, of course, when you learnt how to boil water without access to electricity – now you’ll need to go just a step or two further and generate the necessary heat for a little while longer:

• once again, the open fire is the most obvious, simplest, and most primitive way of cooking any kind of food;

• some cooking can be done at lower temperatures, but for a longer time, than it takes to boil water, so a solar-powered portable camping grill and outdoor oven – such as that made by Juyicai – could be just the ticket;

• the rocket stove you made on which to boil water can also be pressed into service for cooking – though you’ll obviously need more fuel, and you can probably only cook the smallest proportions of food at any one time;

• all your needs are likely to be met if you were prudent enough to have invested in a camping gas stove – and have also stored sufficient canisters of gas.

Summary

There’s nothing like a manmade or natural disaster to bring home to you just how much you have relied on a constant and reliable source of electricity. When it goes down, you won’t want to be stuck for ideas or left cold, without potable drinking water, and no means of cooking.

Just as with most other areas of prepping, a bit of forethought, ingenuity, and the ability to put into practice things you might have read online or in a book can come to your rescue.