Smokeless Fire...

Originally posted by jstatz
raider im glad i dont have to count on you for food,12 plus hours for a chip monk.id rather chance it and be gone in 30 minutes

What ever works for you, My way has worked for me for decades, worked for the SAS, worked for Native Americans, I dont have the luxury of "Chance" I have family to support.

reply to post by Northern Raider


native americans also used my method,it seems to me the longer your tied to one spot the more danger your in.a man that passes through a valley leaves little sign while one that lives there leaves lots of sign

I remember a freind telling my about something called sliders lamb. I think the greek use to cook it, I coud be wrong. Anyway the idea although vagie was something like this.
In the war soliders had to eat, but they didnt want the enemy finding then, with smoke and stuff. So sometimes they would get lamb, start a fire in a cave. Put the lamb in and seal it up. The lamb wuld cook real slow. The left it there for may be a day and it tasted real good and juicy. These are not exact instructions so you would need to experiment a bit

kx

Originally posted by Darthorious
Not to throw in a monkey wrench but anything you cook can be smelled.

Going through survival school we could smell things being cooked inside the instructor's camper which was about 1/2 a mile away just like it was sitting in front of us. Oh and yes we tracked his camper down and knocked on the door.

You might want to stick to some type of sushi if their actually looking for you in an isolated place.

Edit: and just in case you were wondering it was scrambled eggs with onions and peppers.

[edit on 26-12-2008 by Darthorious]

What would be the best/worst foods to cook in terms of trackable cooking smells in that case?

Originally posted by Chadwickus

I can see how a bellows-pumped fire stove would be of benefit...the hotter you can get the fire, the more complete the combustion, meaning less smoke and a more fuel-efficient stove


[edit on 26-12-2008 by citizen smith]

reply to post by citizen smith


whatever you cook will smell,northern raiders method seems best to hide that

reply to post by jstatz


Seems the POW's method worked well too, and all made from things that are readily available.

Why cook it?

Choke that chippy down whole, while he's still warm. Also, the fur is an important source of fibre and will aid in the later disposal of said chipmunk.

What was the movie where the guy lived with wolves for a year? He ran out of supplies, so he had to eat mice. He tried skinning and cooking the mice but they made him sick with diarhea. So, he took note that the wolves ate mice whole without getting sick. So he tried it and had no problems.

Smokeless Fire?

Do like Aajonus Vonderplanitz and PREFER your chipmunk raw.

He was a raw food vegan when his cancer came back, he decided to fast himself to death in the wilderness. He claims a coyote offered him a wild rabbit. He thought it would kill him quicker, so he ate it and got well. ... Its at least as plausible as your survival scenarios!

TruthHunter

The K9 species as well as most animals of the world have enzymes in there system that allows them to eat things we can never dream of eating.

On a side note Very few animals can digest fur that's why they hock up hair balls. Dogs I believe can. at least Ive never seen a dog hock up a hair ball. Note I said very few animals not all. Humans can not digest hair. it comes out as whole as it went in usually in a rush if there is a larger amount of it.

Just remember just because an animal can eat it doesn't mean you can. I know its not a popular thought but we really are not built as well as the average animal. We survive and maintain our place on the food chain because we have brains.

Smoke is a result of non-combustibles being forced to combust by sheer temperature, like wet leaves or green wood. Anything that smoulders is a problem.

A smokeless fire is easy to achieve but takes time to make it large. Start with a clean, dry site. Use the least amount of tinder possible to generate a small flame. Feed dry twigs to the flame. The flame has to be hot enough to instantly combust anything put to it, so DO NOT try to add over-sized wood - you have to grow its size slowly. Continue feeding twigs until you have a bed of embers and then graduate to larger, thicker twigs until the bed of embers is adequate. You must continue to add twigs as you add larger pieces of wood to keep the temperature as high as possible.

All of that said, a large fire may not be desireable as it is easily detected at night or by infra-red and requires the use of alot of fuel. Make your fire only as large as you need to for cooking, boiling or heating.

Raider made a great point with respect to cooking. An old SAS trick is to take your freshly killed prey, gut it and sew it back up and then coat it in mud. The mud a.) prevents the smell of the food cooking from permeating the environment, b.) seals in the heat and juices cooking it faster c.) removes the fur when removed from the animal after cooking. I do agree with his method and approach - pit cooking is as old as cooking for the reasons that he stated. It is important to note that "Cooking" is more likely to become a luxury in a survival situation and sustinence will probably go from field to hand to mouth uncooked - gathering will provide for most of your caloric needs.

If you are encamped and secure in your surroundings you may cook and hunt more often. But if that is the case, then a "Smokeless" fire probably isn't that important.

Originally posted by kozmo
Smoke is a result of non-combustibles being forced to combust by sheer temperature, like wet leaves or green wood. Anything that smoulders is a problem.

A smokeless fire is easy to achieve but takes time to make it large. Start with a clean, dry site. Use the least amount of tinder possible to generate a small flame. Feed dry twigs to the flame. The flame has to be hot enough to instantly combust anything put to it, so DO NOT try to add over-sized wood - you have to grow its size slowly. Continue feeding twigs until you have a bed of embers and then graduate to larger, thicker twigs until the bed of embers is adequate. You must continue to add twigs as you add larger pieces of wood to keep the temperature as high as possible.

Its not flames that are needed to instantly combust fuel as they willl be at a lower temperature than the main body of the fire, but a core of glowing coals. Anthracite makes the best smokeless hot-burning fire that will keep in overnight and will instantly ignite any combustible material and incinerate it completely...it's the incomplete combustion of materials that will result in smoke.

Although Anthracite (commonly called 'smokeless coal') is a bugger to get burning unless you have a fire hot enough to get it glowing, I've found that if you line the base of a fire with the stuff to a depth of an inch or two, then build your campfire on top, by the time the first couple of chunks of wood have burnt out, the anthracite will start to burn, and will give off an incredible heat that will completely combust any flammable material put on top of the coals

Also, its cheap enough and durable enough to be bought by the sackload and buried/stored as part of a long-term cache without any need for special preparation

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Q for Northern Raider:

Have you come across any kind of BoB-portable stoves that could be used to burn crushed coal as a fuel source?

Depending on the territory you are in, and the type of trees you have. I have seen the survivor guy use a method when he was in the jungle, in hostile native country.

He would build a small cooking fire into the base of an appropriate tree. The tree needs to have a lot of foliage and a large canopy. It needs to be fairly large. The idea here is that the smoke will run up the trunk of the tree and disapate into the canopy of the tree.

It seemed to work fairly well for a small cooking fire.

reply to post by JbT


How about using the leftover tins from canned-food supplies to make a dissipating chimney? Once the cans have been emptied...cut out the base plate and crimp one end to fit snugly into the end of another and build a chimney up the tree trunk so all the smoke is carried up to the canopy and dissipated there?

How about making some kind of hand crank toaster.

It might give your arm a serious workout but It would do away with the need to light a fire.

Originally posted by citizen smith
reply to post by JbT

 

How about using the leftover tins from canned-food supplies to make a dissipating chimney? Once the cans have been emptied...cut out the base plate and crimp one end to fit snugly into the end of another and build a chimney up the tree trunk so all the smoke is carried up to the canopy and dissipated there?

Im sure it would help. Assuming you have those materials.

"Survivour Guy' didnt. But thats no reason why you couldnt modify the intention to augment your smokeless cooker.

[edit on 28-12-2008 by JbT]

Just make sure you use well seasoned wood. If it is totally dry, it won't give off enough smoke to be detected unless someone is less than a couple hundred yards from you.

Bad news- Many of us with the ability to survive comfortably during times of extreme emergency will likely be considered intelligent, independant, prepared, and completely lucid in terms of what to expect of our current governments and society. These are obviously undesireable traits for a soon to be systematically opressed population. Between month2 and month 4, anyone located by means of thermal imaging ( most likely because of a cooking fire) will likely be categorized as terrorists or some other similarly accusatory term. This will be a useful tool for desensitizing troops to the killing thier countrymen from the the safety of helicopters.

More bad news- the sucess of humans as a species revolves around our ability to cook meats. this allows us the ability to process more calories more rapidly than eating anything raw. YOU CANNOT DIGEST RAW MEAT for the most part, and many of you will find out the hard way when you have to lie in your tent for two days writhing in pain , unable to puke or crap. Calories will mean survival. The energy expended stalking and killing a rabbit will be wasted if you don't have the ability to harness the calories. Additionally, wildlife lies host to a plethora of parasites. Typically parasite infested meat should be boiled 1hr per pound before roasting.

Good news!-There are at least three other ways to cook meat! Among them are dehydration and chemical cooking.Most of the people here are in various modes of preparation and have predetermined escape routes. It will be very important to expend the most of your calories gathering and preparing meat during month 1. You'll almost definitely be malnourished and/or injured during month 2 and 3. So, get your hard work out of the way.

More good news!- Take one liter bottles of 1/2 vinegar,1/2 lemon juice, 2 tblsp course pepper, 3 tblsp iodized salt, one finely diced hot chili pepper, 3 cloves of finely diced garlic, and 1/4 of a finely diced onion. thiis mixture can be held almost indefinitely. Bury in discreetly marked locations. Mark the bottle in a way so as to alert you to molestation. Discovered bottles will look like human waste and have an offensive smell to anyone who doesn't know what it is. Soak times vary, but this mixture can be reused if the amount of blood in the meat is minimized. Fish cooks in about 30 minutes. This mixture also contains iodine, vitaminc, and sodium. Three of the most valuable nutrients to a survivor. Recipe may be adjusted to taste, but this is basically acid, so be sure to test your mixture with ph strips to insure a high ph. Otherwise mixture may spoil in storage.

reply to post by Anonymous ATS


Since you brought up the idea of chemical cooking, pickling has been used for a long time to keep meat. Do a search on pickle meat and you will find tons of links to the pickled meat used in Louisiana for red beans and rice. But not a lot that folks like us can use.

I've come across mention that a "properly" pickled piece of meat can last 6 months at room temperature. I'm not sure if your liquid would help meat last that long, but it would definitely extend the shelf life. This is also something that can be prepped prior to any emergency, all that would be required is knowing where those jars were buried.

Thanks for bringing this to my attention and giving me something else to look into.

Originally posted by jstatz
whatever you cook will smell,northern raiders method seems best to hide that

What about using a pressure cooker on top of a glowing ember bed to proveide the heat source?

No smoke, and the pressure vessel will cook any foods at a temperature high enough to kill Trichanosis and other nasties that may be present, and will ensure that the foodbis fully cooked throughout, whilst maintaining 'anosmic' cover whilst cooking.

The only time that youd release cooking odours is when the vessel is finally vented of pressurised steam and when you are eating.

Can you get mini-pressure-cookers rather than the massive 5ltr stovetop variety?