Invasion of America

Chapter 134 Oil Refining
After delivering a brainstorming-style attack plan, Omar successfully gained some prestige among the unwilling survivors and became a temporary leader along with a guy named Scott.

The reason it was 'temporary' was because these survivors distrusted each other, were disorganized, and lacked tools for command and communication.

The gathering was less about discussion and more about an outpouring of pent-up anger.

Twenty or thirty people, their faces flushed and spittle flying, were cursing the "holy light" and those "yellow-skinned monkeys" for daring to ride on their heads, as if doing so would give them some sense of existence.

After the gathering, everyone vented their anger, but then they were hungry and could only disperse like monkeys, each looking for food to fill their stomachs.

Omar felt a wave of helplessness. His original small team had long since disbanded, and the little food he had painstakingly accumulated had been ruthlessly confiscated.

He wandered around the town, clutching only a thin QR code identification tag, and returned to the "Holy Light" camp like a stray dog, continuing to play the role of the lowest-level "basic labor force".

His unexcused absence in the afternoon resulted in a downgraded dinner.

Skilled Nedved got canned meat; the obedient ones got bread with ketchup; but he only got boiled potatoes, and even those were rationed.

After receiving the few mushy potatoes, Omar squatted alone at the edge of the scavenging site, leaning wearily against the tire of an abandoned car, and listlessly gnawed on them.

Not far away, the rudimentary equipment for "homemade oil refining" has been set up and began trial production belching thick black smoke after nightfall.

The pyrolysis of plastics emitted a pungent odor, forcing workers busy around the equipment to wear thick masks and goggles, otherwise they could not get close at all.

Guo Yi, who was in charge of the oil refining, also felt quite helpless about this, spreading his hands to explain: "This is a primitive method, this is a primitive method! If it can be clean and pollution-free, then what is it called a primitive method?"

However, for the long-term operation of the "refining business" and for his own health, Guo Yi promised to get a purification device as soon as possible—to find a way to transfer air pollution into water and then discharge it.

Even from a distance, Omar could clearly smell the suffocating odor of burning plastic permeating the air.

But he was too lazy to move, so he just leaned back lazily, and before long, he swallowed three fist-sized potatoes whole.

This stuff is nothing but starch, bland and tasteless, and it doesn't fill you up at all. He was actually a little envious of those hardworking guys, especially Nedved, who was finally able to eat meat.

"Tch, what's so great about that? So what if he has two young daughters that those yellow-skinned monkeys have their eyes on? Who knows, maybe one day even his wife will be targeted..."

Omar cursed inwardly. The afternoon's workload was considerable and exhausting. Three potatoes wouldn't be enough to digest; he was sure he'd wake up hungry in the middle of the night.

After thinking for a moment, he struggled to his feet and walked toward the "kitchen" where food was being distributed, hoping to get two more potatoes so he could at least have something to eat for the night.

The kitchen was just a room, where food delivered by Pikachu and the 'warthog' was stored, and it was guarded by Nedved's wife.

Omar thought he could easily get some potatoes for a late-night snack, but to his surprise, Nedved's wife became the "food-serving lady," refusing to make an exception and even hurling insults at him.

"You bastard, get out of here! Don't think I don't know you. You've set fires several times at night to steal our food, trying to burn our whole family to death."

Even if God comes, I won't forgive you. If you want potatoes, you'll have to exchange them for work points. If you don't have work points, you'll starve.

The 'Holy Light' team uses a work-point system for 'basic labor force': the more work done, the more work points earned. These work points are used as currency to exchange for all living necessities.

The work points are linked to the QR code on the identity tag, which can be scanned for payment.

Omar missed half a day of work, so he lost his work points and was no longer entitled to the potato snack. He angrily cursed outside the 'kitchen' door.
"You damn shrew, all I want are two potatoes, and you won't give them to me. If I had a gun, I would have killed you right now."

The kitchen door was fitted with an iron gate, preventing direct communication between the inside and outside.

Omar gripped the thick railing and shook it violently, cursing menacingly. If he had a gun, he really would have shot this annoying woman in front of him.

Unfortunately, the 'Holy Light' team spent three days enclosing their base with abandoned vehicles and turning it into a campsite, setting up a ring of surveillance cameras, and only keeping two entrances and exits open.

The remote-controlled machine gun mounted on the wall is a formidable weapon.

The requirement for 'essential workers' to undergo security checks every time they return has drawn complaints from many, but it has now become a great safety guarantee.

Nedved's wife was so frightened that she took two steps back. Realizing that Omar couldn't do anything to her, she started yelling even louder and even picked up the walkie-talkie, saying that she would call Zhou Qingfeng over.

“Omar, never mind.” A figure walked in from outside the kitchen door, grabbed the black man’s arm, and pulled him away. “I have a potato here, you can have it.”

Nedved's wife wanted to see who it was, but she was standing in the light of the 'kitchen,' and it was already dark outside, so she couldn't make out the face.
-
Omar didn't recognize who had pulled him, only vaguely remembering them. It took him a while to recall that it was a stranger he had seen at the noon 'gathering'.

“My name is Sani. Like you, I was blacklisted because I skipped work this afternoon and only had potatoes for dinner.”

The stranger dragged Omar into the darkness and headed towards the dormitory for the 'basic labor force'.

As Omar tried to struggle, he grabbed his arm and whispered, “Don’t be stupid. There are surveillance cameras everywhere in this camp. Your every move will arouse suspicion.”

We underestimated the cunning of these yellow-skinned monkeys. They actually knew a little about management; not only did they try to use food to keep us bound forever, but they also bewitched a group of fools into becoming their lackeys.

Omar looked around nervously and lowered his voice, asking, "What do you mean?"

“It means your original plan won’t work, but finding ‘outside help’ is an option.” Sani led Omar slowly through the simple lodgings, as if taking a stroll. “Do you remember what happened last winter?”

“Of course I remember, it was a tough time,” Omar replied. “We still had some food, but electricity and fuel were scarce, so we had to tear down our houses and burn wood to get through it. But many more people didn’t make it.”

Compared to the scarcity of water, electricity, and food, the threat of low temperatures in winter is often overlooked, but it is actually more deadly.

Once a polar cold front sweeps south, it can freeze the earth into a frozen wasteland within hours. Anyone caught off guard will perish in this sudden onslaught of extreme cold.

“Hmph,” Sani turned his gaze to the “homemade oil refining” equipment in the corner of the camp and said with a hint of pride, “I’ve always been a person who looks at the long term.”

Food supplies are even tighter this year than last year, so if we want to get through the long winter, we need to start preparing now. But not like this haphazard, disorganized rush.

Omar listened thoughtfully, but quickly realized that Sani was subtly criticizing him for being stupid. He snapped, "What are you thinking?"

Sani entered the so-called "dormitory"—which was actually a large, empty house. Inside, several "basic laborers" stood up and surrounded Omar from the front and back with hostile expressions. Omar's face changed drastically as he tried to struggle free, only to find himself pinned down by several thick arms, his shoulders and arms held firmly in place, rendering him immobile.

Sani's gentle expression vanished, replaced by a sinister look as he leaned close to Omar's eyes and lowered his voice, saying, "We need to be patient and wait until this camp is completely built before we take it."

"As for how to seize it, that's up to me, not you. In the meantime, you'd better work quietly and don't cause any trouble. Otherwise, I'll shut you up forever right now, understand?"

Omar felt a chill run down his spine, and his body trembled uncontrollably. He realized that he had underestimated the situation.

Within this seemingly rudimentary camp, not only was there an overt ruler, but a gang was also rapidly growing in the shadows.

This seemingly insignificant Sani has actually gathered several subordinates and become a secret leader.

Omar nodded repeatedly, as if he had been choked, and replied in a dry voice, "I understand, I understand."

"Go to sleep!" Sani pointed to the basement of the "dormitory" as if shooing away a bug, and whispered a reprimand, "By the way, from now on, I'll take 10% of your work points as protection money."

After Omar left in a panic, like a stray dog, Sani scratched the back of his head and arrogantly turned his gaze toward the core area in the center of the camp.

That was the residential area for the core members of the "Holy Light" team.

In the past few days, 'warthogs' and pickup trucks have been appearing from time to time, each time bringing two or three tons of supplies, including not only precious food and medicine, but also batteries to keep the core area running.

Although the core area is under blackout, it has long been electrified and lit up at night.

The living conditions of Zhou Qingfeng and others were no different from those of ordinary people, a world apart from those of the "basic labor force" living in the simple "dormitory".

It's the height of summer, and the air outside the camp is sweltering. Ordinary people inside the stuffy rooms are so hot they want to pant with their tongues out to cool down like dehydrated stray dogs.

Inside the core area, however, one can enjoy air conditioning and ice cream—the large-capacity batteries mounted on those electric pickup trucks are playing a vital role at this moment.

Sani said angrily, "Why can those yellow-skinned monkeys eat and drink their fill, but want to enslave us? We are not black slaves, we will not pick cotton for them."

His subordinate asked grimly, "Should we get rid of Omar? That black guy is too unpredictable; he might ruin our plans."

Sani shook his head. "No, at least not now. Those yellow-skinned monkeys are very fierce. They want order, they don't care about our lives."

Killing Omar is easy, but if they find out we're secretly plotting something, they might wipe us all out—after all, if I were in charge, I definitely would have done that.”

The men exchanged glances, and one of them asked in a low voice, "So what do we do next?"

“Wait,” Sani whispered. “I’ve already sent people to contact survivors in other nearby towns. There’s bound to be someone interested in the supplies from these yellow-skinned monkeys.”
-
In a corner of the camp, the simplified "homemade oil refining" equipment had been humming and running for half a day.

The inside of the oil refining kettle is maintained at a high temperature of several hundred degrees Celsius. The waste plastics put into it undergo dry distillation in the oxygen-deficient closed environment. The solid polymer molecules break down and evaporate, turning into light hydrocarbon gases.

Some of the gas is guided back to the heating furnace below, where it mixes with the oxygen blown in by the blower and burns violently, providing a continuous source of heat energy for the entire refining process.

The remaining gas then flows through a pipe into a condenser, where it undergoes simple sifting at different temperature gradients, gradually cooling and fractionating, and finally condenses into valuable industrial liquids such as kerosene, gasoline, and diesel.

Zhou Qingfeng stood beside the condenser, watching the oil slowly flowing out from different outlets. He turned to Guo Yi, who was wearing oil-stained gloves, and asked, "Once this thing is started, it can't be stopped easily, right?"

"Yes." Guo Yi adjusted his glasses, which were covered in oil, and nodded solemnly, explaining, "To be precise, we can't stop easily."

Otherwise, the losses could be enormous. At best, the pipes will become clogged, which will be time-consuming and laborious to clean. At worst, the entire equipment could be completely destroyed due to sudden temperature changes and the solidification of internal residues, resulting in more harm than good.

Ideally, the machine should be shut down every six months or so to thoroughly clean the internal pipes and residues, and then production should be resumed as soon as possible to keep it running continuously.

Therefore, this equipment requires a continuous supply of raw materials and the maintenance of stable processes; any fluctuation could have disastrous consequences.

Although Zhou Qingfeng knew nothing about complex chemical principles, he always respected the opinions of professionals when it came to technology.

"We only have a few sets of oil refining equipment in our camp, and each set is a precious resource that cannot be compromised in the slightest."

I'll have a serious talk with Lao Xiao later. We need to significantly increase the work points for oil refining so that those in charge of operations can receive adequate compensation.

The person doing this job must have a high sense of responsibility. We absolutely cannot use unreliable labor, and we cannot allow any basic operational errors to occur, otherwise we cannot afford the losses.

With this equipment, our external communication and winter survival are guaranteed.

The 'playground' shelter has about 10,000 square meters of solar photovoltaic panels installed, which can provide five to six thousand kilowatt-hours of clean electricity every day on a sunny day.

However, the fatal flaw of photovoltaic power generation lies in its extreme instability, and the electricity is difficult to store on a large scale and efficiently.

If there is continuous rainy weather, the power supply to the entire shelter will be at risk of being completely cut off.

"The weather in this godforsaken place, the United States, is absolutely insane!" Zhou Qingfeng couldn't help but mutter a curse under his breath. "In winter, it's always freezing cold, sometimes dropping to minus twenty or thirty degrees Celsius."

Last winter, the shelter desperately needed electricity to maintain heating and keep all its equipment running, but it was hit by a series of rainy days, rendering solar power generation almost nonexistent.

Guo Yi recalled the experience with lingering fear and a touch of relief, saying, "If the shelter hadn't stocked up on some diesel fuel and had a backup generator, a lot of our team would have frozen to death."

Now we can refine our own oil, although the output is not high, but at least we have taken a crucial step in terms of energy security and solved a major problem that we may face in the future.

After saying that, Guo Yi looked at Zhou Qingfeng with a strange expression, "President Zhou, everyone says you're from the future, is that true? Otherwise, why would you have prepared 'primitive oil refining' in advance?"

Zhou Qingfeng immediately laughed it off, "Rumors, rumors, don't listen to 'Grey Shark's' nonsense. I just have too much money to burn, and I was preparing for the apocalypse. It just so happens that I'm using it."

Guo Yi whispered, "President Zhou, just admit it. There's too much evidence to prove you're extraordinary. Even Mr. Conger's wife has said it several times."

Zhou Qingfeng was shocked and quickly interrupted, "Don't talk nonsense! What could Julia possibly know? I didn't tell her."

(End of this chapter)