One of the better survival and bugout bag innovations to come along in a while are tiny survival stoves that let you heat your food while on the go. These survival burners are basically a folding set of metal feet with an ignition system and a gas valve. Some are meant to be mounted directly to a fuel canister, while others have a hose that let you hook up the canister independently. In my opinion, the hose units are better, because fuel tanks vary in size and this gives you more options. There’s a bigger problem than the layout of your stove and canister, though, which is, which fuel do you use?
The thing to remember about survival stoves is that they’re very simple. It’s basically just a valve system that allows a stream of fuel from the canister to come out at a measured pace. When you spark this fuel stream with an electric ignitor (many stoves have piezo-electric ignition, which never needs batteries and produces a spark through a physical button-push), you get fire — often a very powerful torch. Most stoves have the capability of using multiple fuel sources provided you have the right valve adapter.
Your basic choices are all liquified petroleum gas. They include propane (the basic camp stove fuel that you’ve probably used before for barbecue grilling), isobutane, and butane. Propane is a naturally occurring hydrocarbon gas that is found with natural gas (and produced by separating the propane from the natural gas). Basic butane fuel is the same stuff used in disposable lighters and handheld torches. Isobutane is what is called an “isomer” of butane. It has the same chemical formula, more or less, as “butane, but a different molecular arrangement. This improves the qualities of the fuel (we’ll get to that).
When people think of using gas for heat or for cooking, they usually think of propane first. Propane is easily the most common fuel, one that a lot of us have already used. You’re probably very used to seeing those green Coleman fuel tanks in the grocery store and drug store when summer cookout season starts. (These same canisters become increasingly hard to find starting around August and then disappear from shelves until the following May or June). The downside to the basic Coleman propane tank, though, is that it’s big and heavy, making it difficult to carry in a bugout bag or survival kit. Propane, however, performs best in cold weather compared to isobutane and butane.
Isobutane canisters are smaller and lighter — a LOT smaller and lighter. This makes them easier to carry in a bugout bag, and they provide a pretty good bang for your buck. There’s more energy in a canister of isobutane fuel than there is a comparable amount of butane. Isobutane also performs better in cold temperatures than regular butane (which is actually a very poor fuel to use in cold temperatures).
Butane is the worst performer in the cold, and offers the least amount of energy per comparably sized canister. One advantage of butane fuel, though, is that it’s very inexpensive. A butane canister will typically be taller than an isobutane canister, but smaller and lighter than a propane canister. There are stoves on the market built to take butane cartridges specifically.
That brings me, though, to the valves on your typical survival stove. While a barbecue grill will typically have a propane valve, a much smaller survival stove often won’t. A lot of survival and bugout bag stoves are intended for use with isobutane canisters because, obviously, they’re the smaller and more compact option. The survival stove in these pictures can be connected directly to the nozzle on an isobutane canister.
To use a butane canister with a stove like this, you need an adapter. The adapter for butane cartridges will have a notch that mates with a notch in the butane cartridge or can. You simply screw the adapter to the stove valve and then attach the stove and adapter to the butane canister.
You might prefer to use propane fuel simply because you already have some on hand (and lots of people do). It’s not as convenient, because the propane canisters are so much larger, but if you’re using your survival stove to, say, weather a blackout after a storm, then it would be the logical choice. To connect a survival stove intended for isobutane to a propane fuel canister, you need a valve adapter called a Lindal Valve. These sometimes even ship with the stove or can be purchased online for around ten bucks US, give or take. That’s a pretty high cost compared to the inexpensive survival stove itself, but the investment is worth it.
The obvious reason to invest in a survival stove and these adapter valves involves your personal supply chain. If the pandemic of 2020 taught us anything, it’s that your personal supply chain can be disrupted at any time. Things you were able to get before, things that were plentiful on store shelves, could suddenly become unavailable. This might be due to panic buying, as was the case with bottled water, toilet paper, and later, meat and other food products. It might also be due to the disruption in normal shipping, such as the issues we’re now seeing with shipping containers and trucking. (If you weren’t aware, there is currently a shortage of shipping containers with which to send goods from one continent to another, because of the imbalance in shipping caused by the pandemic.)
The more types of fuel your stove can use, the better off you are. Sure, butane might not be the best option, but in warm weather, it will still work fine. Being able to switch from one type of fuel to another based on what you have stockpiled and what you can still get gives you many more options for long-term survival and survive-in place scenarios. This is less critical for bugging out, where you won’t need the stove for day after day… but you never know.
Consider these options when you gear up for survival and choose a survival stove. A few fuel adapters could really make your life easier across a broad array of different situations.