No Fireplace?

We have a wood stove. The pipe goes right up through the roof and the thing heats up the few rooms around it just fine.

Generator to run the furnace is a good idea, but if it's a small portable for just that, you either have to do a lockout kit on the main panel and light up only that circuit or do a whole transfer switch thing. This can be problematic if that particular circuit isn't right near where you'd put the generator and line into the house. Some guys just back feed the house, but this is dangerous and possibly illegal, even with precautions. Others put the furnace on a circuit where you could plug it in as opposed to direct feed, but this may be against code in your area. And of course, you need to have enough fuel to run the thing for the length of your anticipated outage at a wattage level that can push your furnace as well as whatever forces the air or water through the heating system.

One more option might be a ductless heater/air conditioning unit running of a generator. This would be all electric. Those things can be expensive though, ($3K - $5K), and would have similar wiring issues as the furnace.

Gas fireplace is ok if you have gas to the house. If not, a propane stove with a decent sized tank outside can work, (maybe 120 gal), however, in extreme cold this can still be an issue because if the tank - even a decent sized tank - gets low the lower pressure from the cold could cause failure in that the regulator can actually freeze up. We had one of these as well, and ended up just getting rid of it. This was only a problem in extreme cold and when the tank got below maybe 30%, but it made me just not trust it. Even though this was a low probability event, the fact is simply burning wood is fairly reliable.

Personally, I'd consider pricing out cost of installing a wood stove if that's possible in your area. With a decent wood pile, you don't have to worry about the gas company continuing to flow the gas or a propane company being able to deliver. The question always gets back to how long do you think you'd need to do this? That is, any outage of more than a few days probably means bigger problems and needing to consider going elsewhere anyway. Oh, the other advantage to a wood stove is you can also cook on it if you had to.

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No Fireplace?