When a disaster occurs and the food crisis factor appears, it’s recommended that you consume cooked food, as well as ready to eat food, so you will need to plan for some heat source. There are a number of options, and what is best depends on the space you have and how portable you want it to be.
The most portable options are solid-fuel solutions, or backpacking stoves. Solid fuel solutions such as “Sterno” or tablets like “Esbit” “Trioxane” or “Hexamine” will store indefinitely and take up very little space. They make small, hot, fairly smokeless flames that can be used to heat canned goods or water, or warm up small quantities of food.
The tablets also make excellent fire starters if you need to get charcoal or wood burning. They are also comparatively safe in enclosed spaces, so if you are trying to cook indoors they’d be a better choice. Ventilation is still best, however. Backpacking stoves are small, light, easy to use, and many can run for extended periods on very little fuel. They fall into two general categories: liquid fuel, and “cartridge” stoves.
The liquid fuel models rely on an external bottle of liquid fuel, such as white gas or kerosene. Many stoves can use more than one fuel, and a quart bottle of white gas will easily last a week or more. The disadvantage to them is that the fuel is volatile and messy, and they tend to be more work to light. Most require “priming” first, meaning that a quantity of fuel has to be burned on top of the stove to heat properly before use.
This “priming” stage makes them unsafe for use indoors, as well as the fact that they can generate a lot of heat towards the “ground” which will scorch a table, possibly causing fires.
The cartridge stoves use pre-packages canisters (or cartridges) of compressed gas, usually butane, propane, or a mixture of the two. The mixture and the size/shape of the canister are usually proprietary, meaning you can’t fill them yourself, and they are often only available from specialty (outdoor) stores.
For extended use, you’d have to have a quantity of cartridges on hand, which is expensive and takes up space. The big advantage of the cartridge stoves is that they are very easy to use, and most now use built-in igniters, so you don’t need matches. Some of them might be safe for use on table tops, although with both kids of backpacking stoves, ventilation is a big issue. They should not be used in any closed space.
Either of these solutions is easily portable enough for a survival situation where you need to cook food.