There are a lot of ways to eat food if the grid goes down, but almost without fail the best way is hot. Oh, sure you can swallow a lot if you are on the run. MRE’s were designed to be eaten cold. Canned food is edible right from the can, but I haven’t met a meal yet that didn’t taste better with a little doctoring. Maybe its some spices or cheese, but heating almost anything up makes it taste better. The warmer your meal is, especially in colder months, the better you feel when you are eating it. A warm MRE meal can actually taste great. OK, it can taste pretty good if you heat it up.

With the need for warm meals you are looking at some type of system for getting that food warmed up. We have discussed how if the grid goes down, how you might find yourself where there is no kitchen to cook your meals. Yes, you can use a fireplace, but what if you don’t have any wood? What if you want to keep your fire smaller to help avoid detection.

This is when knowing how to make a survival stove system can come in handy.There are hundreds of examples of stoves out there. I have a jet-boil, which isn’t really a stove, but I can boil water for soup or cook foods quickly with just a little gas. There is always the rocket stove if you have the time and wood available, but I just found a great tutorial for how to make a small alcohol stove out of two coke cans. If you can’t find two coke cans laying around somewhere you are hurting.

Alcohol stoves use denatured alcohol for fuel and are very common with ultralight backpackers because of the huge weight savings. You can pay a pretty high amount for these stoves, but that isn’t necessary if you have some time and a willingness to try your hand at creating something. These can be made simply with just a couple of tools you may already have and give you an excellent source for cooking or even heat in a pinch.