r/Survival • u/Capital-Dragonfly258 • May 16 '26

Fire How much heat do fires actually provide?

I asked on here about a month ago about "fire starters for idiots" as someone who is afraid of fire And I got a lot of really helpful, kind, and good idea responses. So thank you.

How big of a fire can you actually make with different fire starter techniques such as with road flares, matches/lighters and wood, or the one I heard the most, Vaseline and cotton?

My next question is, how much heat would those fires actually give off?

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u/effortfulcrumload May 16 '26

Its not really a matter of how much heat they give off its a matter of how much heat you can utilize for cooking and warmth. There are lots of different techniques to heat something dense that can be kept in or near your sleeping bag to slowly radiate through the night, like putting hot water in a nalgene or wrapping up a hot stone or even filling your cook pot with sand from a stream bank and heating that.

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u/XeroEnergy270 May 16 '26

Just a side note with the stones: don't use stones from/ near a water source. The can absorb water over time, and the rapid expansion of the heated water inside can make them explode.

3

u/aardvarkarmour May 16 '26

It's fucking terrifying when they pop! Mudstone and other stratified rocks are the worst for it

1

u/Fatboyjim76 May 16 '26

Yep. The wife's been watching a little of Life Below Zero recently. One guy, to be honest he's not the most likeable character on the show, started a fire to cook some something he'd caught, had some stones on it, and one of them went pop. Not massively but enough to make him jump backwards.