With winter coming up, I’m looking for a small emergency stove to toss in the car, and this one looks like it should fit the bill.

The official winter survival advice from the Minnesota Department of Public Safety is “don’t expect to be comfortable–the challenge is to survive until you’re found.”

On the other hand, if you can be as comfortable as possible, it seems to me that’s an added bonus. The state recommends keeping candles in a car survival kit. They can safely be burnt inside a metal coffee can for both light and heat. The best choice is probably a package of inexpensive tea candles.  Most brands reportedly burn for about two hours each, and a couple of them in the bottom of a coffee can can warm up a cold car surprisingly well.

You could cook over candles, especially if you just needed to warm something up, or to melt snow. But an improvised stove made out of tin cans isn’t the most convenient setup. To make the ordeal of being stranded in a blizzard a bit more pleasant, a small emergency stove like the one shown above would be ideal. The great advantage of this stove is that it comes with fuel in the form of 24 fuel tablets. While the brand name isn’t given, they appear to be the similar to Esbit fuel tablets.  Thus, you can just toss the package in the car, with the knowledge that it’s ready to go, complete with fuel.  Any metal container, such as the coffee can the candles are stored in, could be used as a cooking pot.  (The pan shown in the picture on the box is not included with the stove.)  You might consider getting a cheap pan from the dollar store or an inexpensive aluminum mess kit.

Each tablet provides enough fuel to boil a few cups of water, so the 24 provided tablets are probably enough to ride out the entire crisis. But if more fuel is needed, you could use your candles o ra gel fuel such as Sterno or Fancy Heat (Fancy Heat is available at Dollar Tree,
so you can stock up economically).  Whatever fuel you’re using, crack open a window if using it in the car.  Outside of the car, you can also use sticks or even paper for fuel.

If you’re ever stranded in your car in the winter, then it’s undoubtedly because of snow.  The good news is that you don’t have to worry about water for drinking or cooking.  After all, frozen water is what your car got stuck in in the first place.  With this stove, you can easily melt it.  Canned goods wouldn’t store particularly well in your car in winter, but with a stove such as this one, you have the opportunity to cook many inexpensive dehydrated foods and beverages such as ramen noodles, instant soup, instant oatmeal, hot chocolate, or instant coffee.  In fact, even in lesser emergencies, such as forgetting your lunch money at home, a stove such as this would allow you to cook a pleasant lunch at a city park or highway rest area.

The link below shows the current price for this stove on Amazon.  As you can see, the price is quite reasonable, given that it comes complete with fuel.

Of course, for all of these ideas, don’t forget matches.  Wooden matches are probably the best, since they’re easier to use if your hands are cold. But in a pinch, book matches will serve the purpose.  Keep in mind that a lighter will stop working at extremely low temperatures.  Whichever kind of matches you get, it’s probably a good idea to store them in a ziplock bag to make sure they’re dry when needed.

See this link for more ideas for your car winter survival kit.

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