>>About now, P_L is rolling his eyes <grin> - <<

I hate being that predictable. <grin>

I keep trying to weasel-word my opinions enough to make it clear to anyone that I wouldn't dream of telling someone how to prepare- it's their hide on the line, not mine, and my opinions are just that. I suspect that the reality is that anyone concerned and conscientious enough about survival to be researching the issues and asking questions on this forum will probably be just fine with whatever they end up choosing. Evidence seems to indicate that I still don't say it enough... people get their feathers ruffled, apparently just because I have opinions... but what else can we offer?

I'm not crazy about propane, but I'm no expert, either. We use it (sort of reluctantly) on the boat, with elaborate precautions to prevent any leaked gas, (which, like gasoline vapor, is heavier than air) from ending up in the bilge, where it could sit for months waiting to blow you to smithereens. I note that even on decks and patios, presumably well ventilated, occaisionally someone manages to blow themselves, their deck, or their house up with propane "gas grills", but I was frankly never interested in them enough to find out how they manage it.

I've always avoided the little proprietary cans of butane or propane for camping and hiking. Butane has problems at low temps- enough said. But with either, you're locked into one type, often hard to find, and if you run out, that's it. There's also no convenient way to "top off", you have to just let the things run to empty, which is annoying with a stove in the middle of cooking, but could be worse with a lantern at night, if it's your only source of light.

All that having been said, the liquid-gas stuff scares me less for use indoors than gasoline ("white gas", Coleman fuel). Decades ago I determined that I'd never use one of those stoves inside a tent, no matter how bad the conditions were outside- being covered in burning, melting nylon is a bad way to die- and I haven't regretted that. I've had two "flare ups" with backpacking stoves that scared me out of ever considering it. To be fair, I've never seen it happen with the typical Coleman two-burner green box or the typical mantle lanterns... but gasoline just doesn't seem appropriate for indoor use.

When I was researching Aladdin lamps before purchasing, this was drummed home. One of their biggest selling points, to farm households in the '20s, '30s and '40s, was that they didn't burn down houses like their pressurized gasoline cousins apparently did with fair regularity. Aladdin is still around- none of the companies selling pressuized white-gas lamps, stoves or heaters intended for indoor use survived.

Kerosene certainly has it's disadvantages, some of which I went into in a recent message... moslty that appliences tend to require more attention- but it's non-explosive, cheap, stores well, and you can get a wide variety of stoves, lamps, lanterns and heaters that use it, so you can distribute one fuel reserve in the way it's actually being used.

For a cheap, minimalist kit, you could combine an Alpaca kerosene heater/cookstove with a couple of Dietz lanterns and a 5-gallon can of kerosene, have heat enough for a small room, cooking and light, all for well under $150, and the 5 gallons would probably last for weeks... I bet a LOT longer than those cannisters... the weak liink being light, which from a lantern is ok for working by (much better than candles) but still pretty bad for reading. Add an admittedly expensive (starting at $70 or so), somewhat fussy and delicate Aladdin lamp, and you have excellent, steady, white, SILENT light about equivalent to a 60 watt bulb- luxury. Add a Kero-Sun heater for under $100 and you can expand operations to a much larger room, or two rooms, and life is beginning to look almost normal again. Top everything off in the daytime, and you never have to worry about it running out of fuel at night.

Even when there were thousands of people without power during ice storms, and you couldn't buy milk, bread, toilet paper, heaters, lanterns, batteries, flashlights, candles etc. etc. for love nor money, the rural gas stations still had plenty of kerosene to sell. With a crank radio and stored food, you might well be warm and cozy and fed, reading a book while listening to the news with one ear, idly wondering when the power might come back on, while your neighbors are abandoning their houses.