Even the most efficient engine is useless without fuel. Fuel is a vital part of TL5-8 civilian and military logistics. Finding a fuel source – or defending one – can be an adventure all on its own!
Wood as fuel is customarily measured by the cord: a pile of wood weighing 1-2 tons. Wood has the advantage of being a sustainable fuel; an acre of average forest produces about a cord per year. A household in even the coldest of climes needs no more than 20 cords a year. Homes in more temperate areas may use as little as 3-6 cords a winter. A cord of wood costs $50-$200, depending on the type of wood and whether it’s seasoned (drying since the previous cutting season) or green (newly chopped). Since a full day’s work with a good axe can produce a cord of firewood – felled, cut, split, and stacked – a cord of wood is the price of a day’s pay for an unskilled laborer in most settings. At higher TLs, a chainsaw and hydraulic splitter can work 10 times as fast!
Wood (TL0). Per cord. $50-$200, 1-2 tons.
Ethanol is an alcohol distilled from various food crops. It’s an advantageous choice for frontiersmen, survivalists, and other independent types – a farmer can raise something to eat and use some of it to distill fuel for his tractor. Ethanol is also a disinfectant, a painkiller, and a cleaning agent. Perhaps best of all, it has its traditional recreational use . . . George Washington’s Mount Vernon distillery produced over 11,000 gallons of rye whiskey a year until it burned down in 1814.
Alcohol must be of at least 80% purity to burn as fuel. Of recreational alcohols, only a few hard liquors are useful as fuel: certain whiskey and rum, and pure grain alcohol (sometimes called “white lightning” or “moonshine”). Wine and beer, at less than 15% alcohol, won’t burn. Fuel isn’t always suitable for consumption, either; notably, commercial “denatured alcohol” is ethanol with chemicals added to make it poisonous so that people won’t drink it!
The efficiency of alcohol production depends on the crop. A bushel of wheat (60 lbs.) or corn (56 lbs.) produces about 2.5 gallons of alcohol; a bushel of potatoes (60 lbs.), only 0.5 gallon.
Alcohol (TL5). Per gallon. $1.30, 6.8 lbs. LC4.
An alcohol still that can fit in a garage or the bed of a pickup truck takes about 30 man-hours to build. Major requirements are a suitable container for the mash (such as a 50-gallon drum) and the various pipes and fittings. Construction requires a successful roll against Chemistry, Machinist, or Professional Skill (Distiller). Cost is $200 – but a successful Scrounging roll could drop this to $20 or less. The completed still weighs less than 50 lbs. empty, around 500 lbs. full of mash. Legality Class varies, depending on the local view of alcohol consumption.
Corn is probably the survivalist’s best choice for alcohol production. A bushel of unshelled corn (70 lbs.) produces a bushel of corn kernels (56 lbs.) and 14 lbs. of cobs. The dried cobs can be burned to provide the heat needed to turn the corn mash into alcohol – or they can be fed to livestock. The mash left over from the distillation process (18 lbs.) is a highquality feed for livestock, and even fit (but unpalatable) for human consumption. A still like the one above can produce 3 gallons of alcohol fuel in three days from a bushel of corn. A whole acre of corn will yield over 200 gallons!
Crude oil – or petroleum – is what becomes of dead organisms after millions of years under tremendous heat and pressure. Often portrayed in fiction as a thick, black liquid, petroleum can actually be thin and clear, and may have a red or green tint. To locate oil, use the Prospecting skill. A party of prospectors can find plenty of adventure at any TL. At TL5, locating oil mostly involves looking for a “seep” – or surface oil – and then digging a well. (Early well-diggers in Pennsylvania during the first “oil rush” charged by the foot and contracted with several companies.) Small-time diggers, called “wildcatters,” strike out looking for oil on their own, and sometimes find it. The search for oil is likely to take adventurers to remote or uncivilized areas.
Things are no less complicated for modern geologists and oil developers. In the Middle East, Asia, and South America, they face violence and intrigue; indeed, oil companies routinely hire ex-special forces soldiers for security and hostage rescue. With corporate jets, helicopters, large ships, and offshore drilling rigs in far-flung places, an oil company would be an excellent Patron in a modern-day globetrotting campaign.
An adventure could start with finding oil, too. A well that strikes oil sometimes catches fire, and “hellfighters” might be brought in to put it out – most often using explosives. In the 1991 Gulf War, hellfighters from all over the world, including Texas and Russia, battled Kuwaiti oil-well fires in the wake of Saddam Hussein’s “Mother of All Battles.” The initial prediction was that snuffing all 600 fires would take three years. The hellfighters finished the job in nine months . . . while dodging roaming Iraqi soldiers, unexploded mines and bombs, and sandstorms.
Once you have crude, you need to refine it. The chief constituents of petroleum are hydrocarbons – a class of compounds composed only of hydrogen and carbon. Various petroleum products are characterized by the length of their hydrocarbon chains. Since their boiling point increases with the size of the molecule, they can be separated by boiling. This process is called straight-run refining or fractional distillation. In fractional distillation, crude is heated with steam to over 1,100°F and fed into a tower that traps the various products at different levels as they boil and rise. Near the bottom of the tower is diesel oil. Above that – and moving up the tower – are diesel fuel, kerosene, gasoline, and naphtha. At the top, gases such as methane and butane are captured. These products are frequently reformed, cracked, coked, or otherwise altered in separate processes elsewhere in the refinery. At late TL6, catalysts can convert one type of product into another (typically to produce gasoline). At TL7+, increasingly sophisticated chemical additives are introduced to improve engine performance and reduce emissions. Petroleum and its products are customarily measured in 42-gallon barrels. A TL5 refinery produces 50-80 barrels of kerosene a day. A TL8 refinery produces 100,000 barrels or more a day, about half of that as gasoline. Crude is stored in above- or below-ground tanks of several thousand gallons – or in underground salt domes created by pumping water in to dissolve the salt, and then pumping it out while pumping in millions of barrels of oil (a barrel of crude weighs 303 lbs.). In a post-apocalyptic setting, such an oil-storage site would be a tremendous find!
Diesel Fuel (TL6). Per gallon. $1.25, 6 lbs. LC4. Gasoline (TL6). Per gallon. $1.50, 6 lbs. LC4. Kerosene (TL6). Per gallon. $1.50, 6.5 lbs. LC4.
Early oil refineries produced kerosene simply by boiling crude oil in a large iron box and tapping the exhaust stack at the appropriate height to draw off the kerosene. A dirty-tech refinery like this could fit in the back of a pickup truck and would produce 30-50 gallons of kerosene a day. Versions the size of a small house could (and did) produce hundreds of gallons of usable fuel a day.
Since kerosene boils at 700°F, the crude itself can be burned to provide the necessary heat. Efficiency is well under 10% – that is, 100 gallons of crude might produce 10 gallons of kerosene.
There may also be other problems. The raw petroleum, heavy smoke, and noxious vapors in the vicinity of the stack count as a toxic atmosphere (see Hazardous Atmospheres, p. B429). In certain settings, the giant black plume coming from such a ramshackle refinery might attract the wrong kind of attention!
Kerosene produced in a dirty-tech refinery will burn in a modern internal combustion engine. The absence of modern additives reduces efficiency and engine life, however. Assume that fuel consumption is 30% higher and maintenance requirements are at least three times normal.
Propane gas cylinders commonly fuel barbecue grills and camp stoves. They’re also potent field-expedient explosives. To set one off, it’s necessary to rupture the cylinder near a flame (like the ever-popular hand flare). If any non-crushing damage penetrates the cylinder’s DR 6, the cylinder will rupture and ignite into a huge fireball. The explosion does burning damage, calculated according to Demolition (p. B415) using the cylinder’s full weight and assuming a REF of 0.5. Fragmentation from the cylinder alone is 1d cutting.
Small Cylinder (TL6). A disposable tank for camp stoves, lanterns, etc. (4dx2 burn ex). $5, 1 lb. LC4.
Large Cylinder (TL6). A bulk tank, often found under a barbecue grill or on the exterior of a camper trailer (6dx5 burn ex). Swapping an empty tank for a full one at a retailer costs about $8; a brand new tank is $45, 14 lbs. LC4.