Wasteland Survivalist: A Scientific Guide to Post-Apocalyptic Survival

They drove back down the road they had come from, and neither of them spoke a word the entire way.

Zhao Xun occasionally glanced back at the body bags on the back seats, constantly checking to make sure they were still there.

The car drove smoothly through the broken streets, around crooked lampposts and cracked pavement, and returned to the shore without incident.

There was no danger whatsoever, not even a glimpse of the berserker.

The 022 submarine remained steadily in place, its gray-silver hull almost blending into the overcast light.

Zhangzhou Port was so quiet that only the sound of waves crashing against the dock could be heard. Zhao Xun silently carried the body bag onto the speedboat.

Gu Lang drove his Lynx assault vehicle into a warehouse near the dock and hid it. He planned to go to the city the next day to search for useful supplies.

Back on the boat, they couldn't find Zhao Xun; they only saw that the door to his cabin was closed.

Gu Lang maneuvered the 022 boat away from the dock, using the side thruster to move the boat laterally out of the berth.

Then push down the control lever, and the water jet propulsion system churned up two white waves.

We drove south and eventually turned onto a deserted artificial island on the outskirts of Zhangzhou Port.

After we lowered the anchor, it was completely dark.

Gu Lang launched a drone from the stern of the boat and switched it to an infrared camera.

The thermal image on the screen was completely black, with only one or two bright spots occasionally flashing by. Upon closer inspection, they turned out to be either wild dogs or seabirds.

He expanded the search radius to five kilometers, then to ten kilometers, but still found no human heat source.

So Gu Lang put away the drone with peace of mind, locked the hatch, and returned to his crew cabin.

As he lay down, he heard Zhao Xun's voice coming from next door, as if he were talking to someone.

I couldn't hear the specific content through the bulkhead; I could only discern the fluctuations in tone.

Gu Lang rolled over and covered half of his ear with a pillow, knowing that those words were not meant for him.

The next morning, Gu Lang was awakened by hunger.

After finishing breakfast, he left Zhao Xun a self-heating rice dish, and then docked the speedboat back at the pier.

Although Zhangzhou Port was not his destination, the fact that the people in this area had evacuated in a hurry meant that there might still be supplies left in the ruins.

Gu Lang drove his Lynx assault vehicle around searching, checking each of the suspicious locations marked by the drone yesterday.

The numbers on the Geiger counter indicate that the radiation levels here are safe.

His first stop was a few aquaculture supply warehouses in a remote corner of the dock. He used a crowbar to pry open three roller shutter doors.

He found ten barrels of diesel fuel inside and used a hydraulic forklift to move them all to the speedboat.

Having already traveled over 600 nautical miles, he needed to seize every opportunity to refuel if he wanted to continue south.

The second stop was an abandoned shop on Zhangzhou Port Commercial Street.

The building hasn't completely collapsed, but all the shelves inside have overturned.

Large sections of the plasterboard on the ceiling have fallen off, revealing the rusty light steel keel underneath.

Gu Lang searched through the unloading area at the back entrance of the mall with a flashlight and unexpectedly found more than a dozen boxes of bottled beverages.

There were soft drinks, milk tea, and sports drinks, and the boxes were all soaked with sewage.

The cardboard box was soft and moldy, but the plastic bottle inside was sealed perfectly.

He pulled out a few bottles and looked at the labels; there were still three months left until the expiration date.

These are probably damaged goods that were discarded during the cleanup work in the mall after the disaster.

There are gaps where the bottle cap and bottle neck are screwed together, and contaminants can seep into these gaps.

Once the bottle cap is unscrewed, contaminants accumulated on the bottle neck threads will contaminate the beverage inside.

For ordinary survivors after a disaster, there is a risk of illness, and no one dares to risk drinking it, so it is discarded as waste.

But Gu Lang knew how to deal with this thing.

He carried all the beverage bottles back to the shore and thoroughly rinsed them one by one in the seawater.

After rinsing a bottle of iced tea clean, he didn't unscrew the cap, but instead used a knife to poke a small hole in the bottle.

Let the drink in the bottle flow out of the hole, pour it into the kettle, and drink it all in one go.

As long as the bottle cap is not unscrewed, contaminants in the gaps at the bottle opening will not come into contact with the liquid inside the bottle.

This batch of beverages is now safe to drink.

The third stop was a bottled water store, where Gu Lang found more than a dozen discarded water dispenser buckets.

Each bottle has a capacity of 18.9 liters, and a brand new matching lid was found in the cabinet drawer.

There are many reservoirs in the surrounding mountains, and he originally planned to go there to find a water source.

When passing by a villa area to the south, I noticed that every building there had a solar water heater installed on its roof.

So they changed their target to solar water heater storage tanks.

These water tanks range in capacity from 80 to 200 liters and are automatically filled with tap water under normal circumstances.

After the locals evacuated, some of the water remained sealed inside.

Gu Lang climbed to the roof of a building, opened the sewage outlet, and collected some water. The water was clear and odorless.

He did a quick test and found no obvious radioactive contamination readings, confirming that it was tap water.

So, after cleaning the plastic bucket, water was poured directly into it.

They lowered it downstairs with ropes and then loaded it onto the car.

It took some time, but a total of more than 200 liters of clean fresh water were released, which was enough to make up for the insufficient water storage of the 022 submarine.

In addition, he also collected a lot of production and living supplies that were about to run out.

When Gu Lang returned with his bounty, it was nearly noon.

He temporarily moved all the supplies to the cargo terminal at the southernmost part of the port area, piling them up near several small, still relatively intact red cranes.

As they drove back to the speedboat, they heard the door to Zhao Xun's cabin open, and a strong odor wafted out.

Gu Lang leaned back slightly from the stench; it was a mixture of smoke and alcohol.

Zhao Xun stood at the door, his eyes bloodshot, his lips chapped, looking as if he had been soaked in tobacco and alcohol all night.

Gu Lang jokingly suggested that he take a seawater bath on the flight deck.

Surprisingly, Zhao Xun accepted it very calmly.

He took off his clothes and went to the stern landing platform.

I filled a bucket with seawater, and braving the cold sea breeze, I used a towel soaked in the seawater to scrub myself from head to toe.

Then he changed into clean clothes and quietly returned to the driver's seat.

After they finished their lunches, the two had a short meeting.

"Old Zhao, what are your plans for the future?"

"I want to take my family back to our rural hometown, find the family cemetery, and rebury them."

After a few seconds of silence, Zhao added another sentence.

"If we had let them stay in the rural mountainous areas back then, the outcome might have been different."

By bringing them to the coastal city, I was essentially pushing them towards the brink of death myself…

"How do you plan to get there?" Gu Lang immediately interrupted the other person's self-blame, trying to change the subject.

"The mountain road is difficult to travel, so I'm going to fly back in my gyroplane."

The flight deck is too small; there's not enough running distance. Could you help me get the plane off the ship?

Zhao Xun turned to Gu Lang for help.