Part of Phase 1: First Month
Energy at this stage means light and cooking heat without a grid, and the three topics here split by what each one does with fuel. An oil lamp turns rendered fat into hours of usable light through nothing more than a wick and capillary action, a technique that has worked for over 10,000 years. A rocket stove turns scrap wood into cooking heat using 60-70% less fuel than an open fire, by insulating the combustion chamber and forcing a chimney draft. A haybox then takes the heat a rocket stove already produced and finishes the cooking for free, extending every fire you light instead of requiring a new one.
Oil Lamp Construction and Rocket Stove Design both stand on their own — neither has a prerequisite, and either can be built first depending on whether light or cooking is the more urgent gap. Retained Heat Cooking is the dependent step: it only works once there is a stove to boil food on, since the whole method is bringing a pot to a full rolling boil for 5-15 minutes and then sealing it away from the fire, not generating heat of its own. Build the stove first if cooking fuel is the bottleneck.
The stove is close to foolproof once built — small-diameter scrap wood burns almost completely inside the insulated chamber, and the main constraint is getting the chimney draft strong enough. The haybox has a real safety rule attached to it: food needs a full rolling boil, not a simmer, before it goes into the box, and the interior only holds above 75°C for 4-6 hours, so it should not run past 8 hours without reheating. Dried beans need at least 15 minutes at a hard boil before the box takes over, to destroy their lectins — skipping that step is a food-safety problem, not just a slower-cooking one. The lamp carries no equivalent hazard; the only real choice is fuel, and almost any rendered animal fat — tallow, lard, poultry fat, even foul-smelling fish oil for a workshop — will draw up a wick and burn.
Lighting
Turning rendered fat into usable light with a wick, and choosing a fuel from whatever animals are already being processed for food.
Cooking Heat
Burning wood efficiently, then stretching that heat further once the fire is out — in the order they depend on each other.