Wasteland Survivalist: A Scientific Guide to Post-Apocalyptic Survival

"I didn't get a close look, but judging from the posture of the body, it's most likely acute radiation sickness."

The ship's hull is not made of lead and cannot block gamma rays.

If within the kill radius, a gamma-ray burst can penetrate a ship's hull within seconds.

The people on board might start vomiting, having diarrhea, and fever that very night, and die within two or three days.

Those with severe symptoms can only lie in bed and wait to die, too weak to move, so their corpses tend to be in a more peaceful posture.

Those with milder symptoms can still walk around on their own, but they can only hold on for a few more days; their death will be more painful and agonizing.

Gu Lang and Jiang Peng continued walking up the stairs.

Deck D contains senior crew quarters and conference rooms, while Deck E contains the captain's suite and senior crew dining room.

The room doors were all closed, and although there were no corpses in the corridor, a faint stench could still be smelled.

Gu Lang didn't open any doors. Having learned his lesson from the B deck, he didn't want to linger unnecessarily in the enclosed cabin.

The top deck is the bridge deck, which contains a large cabin that spans the entire width of the ship.

The cockpit is spacious, with the control panel and steering wheel in the center, and a row of electronic displays that are off suspended from the top.

Behind it are the chart table and communications station, and the portholes on both sides provide a 180-degree view.

Seeing that there were no bodies lying there, the two of them breathed a sigh of relief.

Gu Lang quickly opened the hatches on both sides of the bridge, and the sea breeze swept through, dispersing much of the stench of corpses that had been lingering there.

Jiang Peng went straight to the chart table, opened the drawer and began rummaging through it.

After searching for a few minutes, he pulled a hardcover booklet out of the second drawer.

The cover is printed with "Ship's Navigation Diary" and the ship's name "Kaiyuan" in both Chinese and English, and a coded label is affixed to the side.

He opened the journal, quickly scanned a few pages, and then began to read.

"According to the ship's log, the ship departed from the port of Tanura in Saudi Arabia on July 1 this year."

The ship was carrying a total of 27 tons of light, low-sulfur crude oil.

They encountered the solar storm during the voyage and only arrived at the waters near Guangdong on the evening of July 22.

The original plan was to unload half of the crude oil at the Longke Refining and Chemical Terminal before heading to the Zhanjiang Port Petrochemical Terminal.

"The nuclear war broke out on the 23rd, which means that the ship encountered a nuclear explosion not long after it docked. That's incredibly unlucky."

Gu Lang calculated the timeline and sighed.

"According to international maritime rules, when an emergency occurs, the captain may order the ship to be abandoned."

The nautical log must be taken off the ship and properly stored for future investigation.

The logbook is still here; the crew members are probably all dead on board.

Jiang Peng handed the diary in his hand to Gu Lang.

Gu Lang took the logbook and flipped through it again, his gaze lingering on the page with the cargo records.

On July 22, the cargo oil tanks were fully loaded with 270,000 tons of oil at the Longke Refining and Chemical Terminal, and unloading began.

Uninstallation was interrupted on July 23.

In other words, at least half of the 27 tons of crude oil on this ship is still stored in the cargo oil tanks.

The total amount is equivalent to 100 million barrels. If we don't consider the problem of spoilage, we only need to take out a very small portion of it, which would be enough for us to use for a lifetime.

Anyone who possesses a spatial treasure can instantly become a post-apocalyptic oil tycoon.

Thinking of this, Gu Lang shook his head vigorously, forcing himself to stop fantasizing.

Jiang Peng operated the control panel for a while, but there was no response.

"The entire ship is without power, and the control system has completely failed."

"Let's go down into the cabin and check the actual situation first."

After confirming that there were no signs of life on board, the two returned from the bridge to deck A and walked to the end of the corridor.

The cabin entrance is a steep metal staircase, the anti-slip texture on the surface of which has been worn shiny by the soles of shoes.

Gu Lang walked ahead, his gun lamp illuminating the vast space below.

Various pipes and cable trays crisscross overhead, and there is a strong smell of engine oil in the air.

However, compared to the terrifying stench of the corpses just now, this is already considered pleasant.

Three huge diesel generator sets are installed side by side in the engine room.

Further inside, there is a separate compartment with a sign above the entrance indicating it is an emergency generator room.

Gu Lang went straight to the emergency generator and pulled hard on the start-up rope.

After pulling the lever a dozen times, the generator remained unresponsive.

He changed direction, went to the fuel tank, and bent down to check the fuel level gauge.

The glass tube was completely empty; there wasn't a single drop of oil inside.

Gu Lang sensed something was wrong, went to the main generator set, and turned on the drain valve of the sewage outlet.

Some murky oil-water mixture spilled out, landing on the metal grille and spreading into a small patch.

The color was black, mixed with water stains and rust residue.

After waiting for more than a minute, all that came out was this kind of sludge.

Once the sludge had drained away, nothing else flowed out, and the expected pale yellow diesel fuel was nowhere to be seen.

Jiang Peng walked to the control panel of the main generator set and opened the drawer where the instrument record sheets were placed.

They found the fuel consumption record sheets stacked inside.

He pulled out the top few sheets and looked at them with a flashlight.

"The power generation equipment is equipped with 1,000 cubic meters of marine light diesel oil, which is about 900 tons."

The ship has three main generator sets, consuming approximately five tons of fuel per day.

At this rate of consumption, a full tank of diesel fuel can sustain power supply for 180 days.

It takes more than 40 days to travel from Zhanjiang Port to Tanura Port, and with the time spent at the loading and unloading terminal, there are about 120 days left.

Five days after the nuclear explosion, the fuel logs were still being updated, indicating that the engine room was still staffed at the time.

There are no further records, so it's very likely that the generator continued to run.

The main generator shuts down after the diesel fuel is exhausted, and the emergency generator automatically switches in.

It switched to low-load mode and lasted for about 10 more days.

Finally, the emergency generator ran out of diesel fuel, and the entire ship lost power.

Based on this timeline, the power outage must have occurred recently.

Gu Lang leaned against the metal handrail in the cabin and remained silent for a few seconds.

"It's a pity we arrived too late. If we had discovered the ship a month earlier, we could have taken its diesel reserves."

Jiang Peng put the record sheet back in the drawer.

"It's not entirely late. The diesel fuel was used up, but the crude oil was still there."

There are still over 100,000 tons of crude oil in the cargo tanks; we just need to find a way to get it out.

Refining diesel fuel isn't high-tech; it can be done using rudimentary methods.

Gu Lang stepped forward, tightened the drain valve again, and stood up straight.

The two returned from the engine room to the upper deck, left the bridge, and came to the spacious main deck outside.

A section of the broken oil boom lay across the deck, its inner and outer metal walls torn apart by the immense pulling force.

A few strands of solidified brown crude oil residue still clung to the broken edge; these were port equipment pieces that were torn off when the tanker forcibly left the port.