Re: What is the attraction of multiple-AA lights?
Hehe, I recollect a story about some Russians out in a super-cold place, who would poor some
gasoline under their car and light it 
to heat fueltank / lines / engine to the point where fuel would flow & car could be started. Might be diesel, but perhaps story even referred to regular gasoline in case temps where low enough.
FWIW: in conditions extreme enough, the above doesn't even sound unreasonable to me...
Think the kind of temps where you can't pee in the snow 'cause some parts might get frostbitten, or where attempting to lick a metal pole would get your tongue stuck (well that's dumb in freezing weather anyway).
Buy the time you really can't find AA's
anywhere, I think you'll have other things to worry about.
Continuing somewhat off topic so as to refine cold-weather operations knowledge just a bit:
When the free-air temps go below minus 40 degrees, such as north of Fairbanks, keeping a vehicle operable is a bit dicey. At those temps and below, engines are simply never shut off. Engines are left to idle all night long and the drivers hope that the engine does not kill for any reason. The vehicle's exhaust pipe was angled down-wind to avoid any wind-driven reflow back to the vehicle. Flashlights? 4-D Headlamps used battery body-packs wired past the neck from under the parkas.
Another reason for idling is to keep the windshield relatively clear of ice/frost. Windshields often were double-paned, sometimes the side windows as well.
If the driver/crew was faced with a non-op engine, a camp stove was lit and pushed under the oilpan for a while - how long depend on how long the engine was dead. If available, a rug or blanket was tossed over the hood/radiator. More primitively, the Russians will chop out a shallow hole in the ground/snow and pour some kind of fuel in the hole and push (if possible) the vehicle over that hole such that the oilpan was directly above the burning fuel.
Part of the problem is that the US Military in Alaska used "Quartermaster" gas, which was dismally low on octane. The military truck engines were tolerant of such fuel. However in the '60s when I was up there, many cars simply would not idle on that fuel, meaning that the RPM had to be bumped up (old fashioned throttle cable or a snow-brush stick appropriately jammed on the fuel pedal.)
Down in the lower-48, such as NW Montana where temps routinely drop below minus 30 F, the standard lubricant for modern cars is synthetic oil. Standard dino-oil has about no chance at those temps. I have walked outside in minus 40 temps more than once - no fun. Where I grew up in Northern MN, the standard winter weather was 20 below, 20 MPH wind. which is common all across northern MN, N.Dakota, northern Montana. You do not think about flashlights for long at those temps - reduced to dim yellow beams.
Back on topic: At that time, the US Gov (eg: USFS) recycled primary D flashlight batteries every 2 years since they were mostly dead by then. One time I requested permission to save some from the 'latest' disposal, and obtained a useable rate of about 10%. Rechargeables were the Ni-CD (sub-C inside a D pkg) from GE which had an unuseably low capacity for remote operations. Solar cells were a gleam in the eyes of designers.
