Do you have a proper plan for when things go bad?

P.A.C.E. is a planning and communication method used in the military to help think through and structure your objective and give yourself the highest chance of success. It is highly adaptable and useful in preparedness as well. 

P: Primary

A: Alternate

C: Contingency

E: Emergency

When looking over specific scenarios and how you would handle them we will have a primary method. That's normal. Let's look at a low-stress, real-world scenario to walk through this. On a recent camping trip I with my girls, the propane regulator on my stove failed. We had four days of camping and just about every meal was reliant on the propane. I have a 2-burner propane stove as well as a flattop Blackstone griddle that I use for cooking. Those both were my primary cooking methods. 

When that failed, I went to my backup. I didn't quite know what the issue was at first, but on both the burners and the griddle I was getting fireballs when I went to light them. Obviously not good. I first attempted to fix the problem by shutting off the propane and checking and re-connecting every hose, but that failed to fix the issue. 

My alternate solution was to pull the propane tank off of the trailer and connect it directly to the griddle. I had a separate hose to use for connecting directly to the tank instead of the quick-disconnect hose that I use on the trailer. While it was a little annoying, that worked and allowed me to use the griddle. However, my burner had an attached hose that didn't allow me to connect direct to the tank. 

So cooking was good, but I had to go to my contingency option for the burners, which really was just heating up water. Everything else I needed to do I could do on the griddle. I keep a small pocket stove and kettle on board that doesn't take up much space, but offers a secondary method for cooking water. I busted that out and it worked well enough for the trip. 

Luckily, we weren't forced to move to our emergency method, which is cooking over an open fire. After the trip, I decided to add a more substantial single burner that I can connect directly to the tank if needed as a new contingency option. 

As you can see, having a proper PACE plan will allow you to work through solutions as things fail or the situation changes. This planning should be done in all the major (and then many of the minor) situations you might encounter. 

And just as important, you need to get out and use your gear and put it to the test. After the trip I thought through how I wanted to improve the setup based on my experience.