Wasteland Survivalist: A Scientific Guide to Post-Apocalyptic Survival

After sailing at a low speed for eighty kilometers, the outlines of islands began to appear on the distant horizon.

Gu Lang carefully concealed his yacht near an uninhabited island a few kilometers west of Yushan Island and meticulously observed the sea and sky with binoculars.

Anchors were lowered only after confirming that there were no signs of other ships or aircraft in the vicinity.

The situation was pretty much as he had predicted; the typhoon was indeed formidable.

But it also acted like an invisible broom, temporarily clearing away the threat lurking on the sea surface and giving him a fleeting "safe window".

He must seize this opportunity to complete the crucial refueling.

The drone took off again, and the images on the screen gradually revealed the current situation of Yushan Island.

The outline of the massive reclaimed land plant area is emerging, with huge refining and chemical facilities, rows of cylindrical oil storage tanks, and a dedicated chemical wharf within the flat area.

From an aerial view, the main structure of the petrochemical base is remarkably well-preserved.

"We weren't hit by a nuclear attack." Gu Lang breathed a slight sigh of relief, but his heart immediately tightened again.

Although Yushan Island was spared from nuclear blasts, it is not a pristine place.

Zooming in with a telephoto lens reveals increasingly clear details.

The dock was filled with boats, ranging from trawlers to larger cargo ships.

Despite the typhoon, the masts, railings, and even the sides of these ships still faintly show "decorations" made of strings of white bones hanging from the ground, which look particularly ferocious in the gloomy sky and sea wind.

This is an unmistakable signal that this place has been overrun by raging forces from the sea.

Upon closer inspection of the situation on the island, the outlook is even more pessimistic.

There are quite a few berserkers on the island, and they seem to be hunting normal people as well.

Just now, a petrochemical worker wearing work clothes was found and brutally skinned alive.

However, Gu Lang also keenly noticed a detail.

These rabid individuals are scattered around the factory roads, tank area, and residential buildings, and roam freely.

"If we can eliminate a portion of them quietly, perhaps there will still be a chance." A bold idea took shape in Gu Lang's mind.

A direct confrontation would obviously not be very successful, but by using assassination methods, combined with terrain and environment, it might be possible to "defeat them one by one".

He retrieved the drone and began searching through his equipment.

Soon, the long-unused crossbow was found. Holding the familiar crossbow, he recalled his earliest battle memories.

Just as Gu Lang was about to put the crossbow and the remaining 9 intact bolts into his backpack, his gaze fell on the drone that had just been retrieved, and the airdrop hook below the drone.

A brilliant and interesting idea struck him like a bolt of lightning.

Why not use drones for precise, silent "air-to-ground" assassinations?

Traditional crossbow shooting is limited by range and angle, and the sound of the bowstring can easily reveal one's position.

But drones can hover hundreds of meters in the air and drop specially made "arrows" vertically downwards.

Gravitational acceleration gives arrows considerable penetrating power, making attacks extremely concealed.

Without hesitation, Gu Lang immediately began modifying the "airdrop crossbow".

He analyzed the forces involved and concluded that the destructive power of this arrow relied almost entirely on the kinetic energy of its vertical fall.

Therefore, it is more like a javelin than an arrow.

The center of gravity must be shifted extremely forward, and the arrowhead needs to be heavier to keep it stable during the fall and enhance its penetrating power.

He removed the arrowhead from a crossbow and carefully attached a thin iron tube to the front of the aluminum shaft.

Then, some lead blocks were melted in a quartz crucible, and the molten lead was poured into the iron pipe.

The molten lead cooled and solidified rapidly, which not only served as a counterweight but also firmly fixed the iron pipe to the arrow shaft.

Finally, he reattached the original arrowhead to the front of the reinforced and weighted arrow shaft.

Thus, a rather strange-looking, top-heavy, air-dropped arrow was born, which Gu Lang named "Toothpick".

After testing confirmed that the "toothpick" could remain straight and stable when falling vertically, he completed the modification of the remaining 8 crossbow bolts.

As night fell and darkness provided the best cover, Gu Lang began his "aerial hunting" operation.

He attached a megaphone to the top of the drone and then used a sturdy thin rope to hang a modified toothpick on the hook of the airdrop device.

The drone quietly took off, blended into the night, and arrived in the air above the central area of ​​Yushan Island.

Gu Lang pressed the play button, and a pre-recorded scream played through the loudspeaker. He then controlled the drone to fly to the residential area to the north.

The island's berserkers were alarmed. They grabbed flashlights and rushed out of the labyrinthine petrochemical plant, chasing after the screams.

Seeing that he had already aroused hatred, Gu Lang immediately turned off the megaphone and increased the altitude of the drone.

As time went on, the white dots in the thermal imaging gradually concentrated in the northern residential area.

In the petrochemical plant area to the south, only two conspicuous bags remained.

One of them was hiding in a corner, hugging a leg and gnawing on it.

Another one, under the watchful eye of a thermal imaging camera, silently climbed to the top of an oil storage tank.

After lying down, the berserker picked up his gun and aimed it at the port to the south.

"Hmph, who is the stick figure squatting on?" Gu Lang immediately controlled the drone to fly over the oil tank and took aim.

"Whoosh—Pfft!"

The first strike was completed in the darkness. Gu Lang saw the berserker's heat source, which had been hit by the "toothpick," suddenly twitch and then quickly went still.

The drone returned to base, reloaded, and quickly and successfully eliminated the remaining "gourmet."

Gulang finally cleared out a relatively isolated area on the south side of the dock, near several large oil storage tanks.

He turned off all the lights on the yacht and, relying solely on a low-light night vision device, steered the small boat like a ghost, quietly approaching a secluded loading and unloading platform on the south side of Yushan Island.

Based on his memory of the daytime drone reconnaissance, he quickly arrived at the nearby diesel storage tank.

After carefully searching along the bottom pipe, the sampling valve was finally found.

Gu Lang crouched beneath the massive pipe, using the faint green light from his night vision goggles to turn on the ball valve, controlling the diesel fuel to flow into the portable oil can.

Then they moved the oil drums back and forth, filling the yacht's fuel tanks with the precious fuel.

More than an hour later, the yacht's fuel tank and the 200-liter spare fuel tank were finally filled.

Gu Lang carried the oil drum back to shore, intending to fill the 20-liter portable oil drum and then leave.

He turned the valve one last time, and all he could hear was the faint gurgling of diesel fuel flowing and the rhythmic lapping of the waves against the shore.

Just as the oil drum was about to fill up, he was about to tighten the lid.

A sudden, uncoordinated sound of hurried footsteps came from the shadows of a cluster of pipes and valves behind us.

Gu Lang felt a chill run down his spine, and his survival instinct made him instinctively lunge forward and roll over without thinking.

"Bang—Clap"

A barbed steel harpoon flew past his shoulder and pierced the base of the storage tank behind where he had just been standing.

It fell to the ground with a dull, teeth-grinding thud, and the forked tail continued to tremble.