Wasteland Survivalist: A Scientific Guide to Post-Apocalyptic Survival

Seeing that this farce was going on and on, Gu Lang tightened his mask and stepped forward.

"Shut the fuck up!" he suddenly raised his voice.

"They just reported from the fire scene that the wind speed is increasing! The broadcast says the fire is advancing faster than expected!"

He paused deliberately, giving everyone present time to think.

There isn't even a firebreak here!

If this traffic jam continues, nobody's going to escape! Everyone's going to die!

The already palpable anger in the crowd was instantly ignited.

The direction also subtly shifted.

People were no longer just cursing the woman; they were experiencing a real, deadly threat.

"Damn it! My whole family is in the car!"

"What are you waiting for! Flip this piece of junk over!"

"Tear it up! That thing blocking the road!"

A roar erupted from the crowd.

Anger and the instinct for survival completely overwhelmed all order.

The owner of the SUV that was hit was the first to act, picking up a stone and smashing the car window.

The woman inside the car screamed in fright.

The three-person team at the head of the group hurriedly dragged her out.

The woman resisted fiercely for a while, but gave up struggling after taking several heavy blows.

It was dumped on the roadside like a dead dog.

The shirtless, burly man let out a low growl, gathering all his strength in his shoulders.

He pushed the car hard, and the car shook violently.

"Come on! Give me a hand!"

Seeing the burly man looking at him, Gu Lang had no choice but to step forward and help.

Immediately afterwards, more people roared and rushed forward.

A dozen or so hands, covered in blue veins, gripped the edge of the vehicle tightly.

The car's door frames, chassis, wheel arches—anywhere they could exert force was seized by the crowd.

"one two three!"

"one two three!"

The crowd chanted rough work songs, their shoulders and backs hunched.

Muscles were taut and knotted from sweat and dust.

The shoes on their feet gripped the ground tightly, searching for a point of leverage.

"rise--!!!"

With a roar that embodied everyone's despair and rage, the accumulated power broke through the critical point in an instant.

One of the wheels left the ground first.

Even the slightest imbalance is immediately captured, exploited, and amplified by countless hands.

"Turn it over!"

"lift!"

The white sedan revealed its black undercarriage before tilting and rolling off the right side of the roadbed.

It rolled onto the soft, loose soil slope of the roadbed.

"Boom—"

A dull thud was followed by more cracking sounds.

The car crashed into a birch tree, kicking up a cloud of yellow dust.

"Let's go, let's go!"

"You can move now! Get in the car!"

The crowd quickly dispersed, heading towards the cars.

The sound of car doors slamming shut echoed repeatedly.

The noise of the engines restarting blended in, replacing the previous cacophony of voices.

"That was awesome! So awesome!"

The bread truck passed by the woman who was sitting there blankly.

Gu Lang, the instigator, couldn't resist making a few sarcastic remarks.

When we arrived in Renjiang City, it was still dark.

The solar storm disaster has lasted for three days.

Power has not yet been restored to this county-level city, and a curfew is in effect in the urban area.

Most vehicles did not choose to enter the city, but continued south.

The bread cart in Gulang has run out of power.

So he drove the car to the banks of the Renjiang River outside the city.

He picked up a bucket of water and washed the car overnight.

The front bumper, fenders, and hood of the car were all deformed.

The chassis beams do not appear to be bent, and the rigid structure of the vehicle body is normal.

The air conditioner condenser is intact and there is no leak.

The headlights and fog lights are working properly.

The seatbelt malfunction alarm kept going off while we were driving.

For proper use, the airbags and seatbelt pretensioners also need to be replaced.

"The front part isn't difficult to repair, but you'll need to find a master of bodywork."

Gu Lang didn't have a good solution for the time being, so he could only use a crowbar to make minor repairs and cover up the ugliness.

After washing the mud and ashes off the truck, he opened the door and took stock of the supplies.

The water had run out, so he picked up a bucket and threw it into the river.

Under the headlamp's illumination, the river water appeared extremely murky.

Visible to the naked eye are floating mud, algae, and debris from dead branches and leaves.

This type of water quality can be filtered directly by portable outdoor water purifiers.

However, this will obviously severely shorten the lifespan of the filter media, so it can only be done in emergency situations.

The water purifier consists of three stages of filter media.

In order, they are PP cotton used to filter out solid impurities.

RO reverse osmosis membrane with a filtration accuracy of 0.0001 microns.

And activated carbon to improve the taste of water.

The PP cotton for this portable water purifier is pitifully small.

If you filter this bucket of water directly, it will soon become unusable.

This caused the lever handle to become completely unpressable.

Therefore, Gulang first performed a coarse filtration of the river water.

The coarse filter bag is made of multiple layers of dense nylon mesh.

There are three layers of mesh with different densities: 300 mesh, 400 mesh, and 500 mesh.

It is inexpensive and can be reused after cleaning.

Even after coarse filtration, the water in the bag remained cloudy and yellowish.

But at least those "hard things" that clog the filter are gone.

Gu Lang took out a packet of food-grade alum from the inner layer of the first aid kit.

"Chemical precipitation, it's up to you now."

He added the coarsely filtered water at a ratio of 0.75 grams per liter of water.

Tighten the bucket lid and start shaking it vigorously.

The liquid in the water bag became even more turbid as it was shaken violently.

Alum hydrolyzes in water, producing colloidal aluminum hydroxide precipitate.

These flocs are like countless tiny magnets.

It encapsulates, adsorbs, and aggregates suspended impurities in the water.

Twenty minutes later, the upper layer of water gradually became relatively clear.

The lower layer contained a layer of yellowish-brown, flocculent silt.

During this time, Gulang did not waste any time, and more and more buckets of water were placed there.

He then took out a blister pack of pills wrapped in aluminum foil from the inner compartment of the first aid kit.

Add chlorine dioxide disinfectant tablets at a ratio of 0.3 grams per liter of water.

Chlorine's strong oxidizing properties can destroy the structure of microbial cells and kill bacteria, viruses, and parasites.

After waiting another half hour, the water was ready to drink.

However, the degree of pollution in the water source varies each time.

In practice, it is difficult to be precise in the proportion of water purification chemicals added.

When he has enough time, Gu Lang still prefers to use a water purifier to filter pure water before drinking it.

Essentially, it involves using cheap drugs to extend the lifespan of expensive water purifiers.

Long-term survival in the wild also requires avoiding unnecessary health risks.

He inserted the water purifier's inlet hose into the bucket.

Pressing the handle repeatedly caused the two water outlet hoses to discharge pure water and wastewater respectively.

Due to its operating principle, RO reverse osmosis membranes generate a large amount of wastewater when producing pure water.

The wastewater ratio is usually two to one, meaning that producing 1 liter of pure water requires discharging 2 liters of wastewater.

Manual filtering is very inefficient; my hand got sore from pressing the buttons repeatedly.

It took more than an hour to pour out the bottom sediment that hadn't been filtered properly.

The nine 13-liter buckets were finally filled.

Gulang received 3 barrels of drinking water engraved with the word "pure" and 6 barrels of domestic water engraved with the word "waste".

I used a TDS meter to measure the water quality; the pure water showed 20 PPM, while the wastewater showed 580 PPM.

The operating principle is to indirectly estimate the total amount of dissolved solids by detecting the conductivity.

Generally, water with a concentration below 50 PPM can be consumed as purified water.