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well, depends on location, and if you GM is nice and rules that some refineries and oil rigs survived.

now, if not, your stuck with scavenging gas from old gas station holding tanks, which makes it very rare and expensive.


however, alchohol based fuels would be very common and cheap, and require no special modifications to engines.

to make Ethenol fuel, all you need is grain, a still, and an alchohol refinery, all of which you can make easy.

dukeofshadows wrote:I wonder why there aren't more methane-powered vehicles in Rifts, all you need is livestock dung for fuel and you're good to go for generating electricity and all the other things that go with it.

I agree. I mean, come on, hasn't anyone at PB seen Beyond Thunderdome?

and remember gas powered automobiles are pretty common. and even the RMB mentions some places that cheif industry was oil.

I say there are gas stations refurbrished and scattered all thoughout NA, but these are mega-crop/goverment owned instiuttions with all the bells and wistles of a small military base to protect it.

A modified diesel engine can run off of veggie oils fresh or used but a standard one would not (at least not for long or very well).

A normal gas engine will burn pure ethenol (grain alcohol i.e. Everclear) but this does make the engine run MUCH hotter and will (without extensive cooling mods) burn up the combustion chambers... ruining the engine in short order, probably few hundred miles at most.

Methane is a gas like hydrogen/propane and cannot be used with out EXTENSIVE AND COSTLY mods.

NitroMethane (a liquid) is funny car fuel and is wicked expensive (like $10 a gallon) even now. Used as fuel for a normal gasoline engine it would probably have the same effect as ethonol though even faster, burning out the combustion chambers in no time 'tall.

As a side note 80ml of nitromethane mixed into 430 grams of finely powered nitrogen base firtilizer makes improvized C-4 high-explosives with a detonation velocity of (IICR) about 22,000 feet per second (real C-4 is like 26,000 f/sec) enough to shatter concrete, peirce armor, blow a car to smithereans. just like real C-4 you need a detonator/ blasting cap to get it to go boom. It also absorbs water out of the air so one should keep it sealed once it is created and use it within about an hour or so, else it becomes an inert lump of smelly putty.

fun stuff

Thinyser wrote:A modified diesel engine can run off of veggie oils fresh or used but a standard one would not (at least not for long or very well).

Actually...a diesel engine has to be modified to run on diesel fuel...the original design was created to run off of fuel the farmer grew in his own field...

Seriously though, it's not as bad as you might think. There is one couple who went across the US a few years ago in a camper with a diesel. They obtained their fuel from truck stops along the way, cracked it on the spot (ending up with usable fuel and glycerine), poured it into the tank, and kept going. They didn't haev any problems, except the exhause smelled like french fries. After all, if YOU ran a fossil fuel conglomerate, would YOU hesitate to convince everyone to use your product over what they could create themselves?

Gasoline is still available in Rifts,

El Dorado- has refineries and pipelines- that are guarded by the CS mentioned in main book, juicer uprising, and CS navy
Tampico, Mexico- has refineries and pipelines- has awesome vamp protection mentioned in vampire kingdoms and CS navy
Lone Star- has multiple refineries said book name
N Louisiana- oil fields galore
Alaska- vast oil reserve

Stock piles taken from Iraq and other conquered Middle eastern countries

Many others-

Fuel is just cost efficient- even in Rifts, most vehicles want last long enough to need a 10 to 20 yr nuclear power source

With the cost of gas as high as it is now, can you imagine how high it must be in Rifts...
Sorry, had to bring up an old post.

I using use an average of 10 credits a gallon for gas in large towns or those close to oil refineries. It can go up to 20 or more credits depending on the size of the town, distance between it and other cities, and the mood I'm in

K20A2_S wrote:How much does gasoline cost on Rifts Earth? On the oustide skirts of the burbs.

We aquired us a tank yesterday, it's gasoline powered.

Considering the Oil Barrons no longer run the North American Contienent ... less then 225 per gallon

For common things that are not listed in any book, I simply look at todays cost for the same (or similar) thing and convert 1:1 to credits.

So, if I were running a game and a player wanted to know how much gas was, Id tell him 3.5 credits per gallon.

Kagashi wrote:For common things that are not listed in any book, I simply look at todays cost for the same (or similar) thing and convert 1:1 to credits.

So, if I were running a game and a player wanted to know how much gas was, Id tell him 3.5 credits per gallon.

So I take it your use the prices around your neck of the woods as here its over 4.00 per gallon

Sir Blayse wrote:With the cost of gas as high as it is now, can you imagine how high it must be in Rifts...

let see...

much reduced useage (modern oil use is predominantly for power generation. when most of your surviving communities are medieval level or massive tech centers with acess to nuclear technologies....this means usage is effectively 0.) and there are not all that many ICE cars/planes/ships still in operation compared to today.

extensive use of alternative fuels (any agricultural community can produce ethenol and/or vegitable oils, which can be used to fuel vehicles and generators much more readily than gasoline or diesel), and nuclear power packs form the basis of nearly all military equipment.

so demand is very low.


now, countering that, you have the supply issue. very few groups actually pump oil in RIFTS, and the wells, refineries, are not common. so supply is low.

add to that you have the problem of protecting the wells, refineries, and moving the oil from the wells to the refineries and then shipping the refined products from there to the distributors and consumers. so overhead is high.


we don't have enough info to make a specific determinantion, but the price is likely to be, on average, lower than today. perhaps as low as it was last decade.

with stipulations of course. if close to an area with working wells and refineries (like texas), the price will be lower. if farther away (like say, Nebraska) the price will be higher.
of course, this ignores price gouging by merchants.


generally if oyur in an agricultural area with little oil, it will be more cost effective to buy Bio-fuels fro mthe farmers, while if in an agriculturally poor area that has oil, like texas, it will be more cost effective to buy oil based fuels.

if in an agriculturally poor and oil poor area, like arizona....lets just say you'd better buy that electric engine and solar recharger.

It's worth pointing out that a lot of agricultural communities in the Great Plains can grow a LOT more than they need in terms of biomass. If they kept some of their equipment (especially irrigation and harvesting), they can pretty easily grow enough to supplement traded fuels, while still getting a surplus of food.

Mark Hall wrote:It's worth pointing out that a lot of agricultural communities in the Great Plains can grow a LOT more than they need in terms of biomass. If they kept some of their equipment (especially irrigation and harvesting), they can pretty easily grow enough to supplement traded fuels, while still getting a surplus of food.

or stick the extra into a still and make their own fuel. the main reason traditional bio-fuels haven't replaced oil in modern times is that they aren't very cost-effective to make in bulk, like we need.

for a small community, with limited actual need for fuels (a few generators, a couple of tractors and combines, maybe a car or two), it's more than possible to supply themselves using surplus grains.

and most communities would have a still, even if primarily for making moonshine (useful not only drinking, but for purifying water, cleaning, and medicinal use) that the stuff can be used to make a vehicle run is just one more useful application.

the oil products they're likely to trade for are things like brake fuid, lubricants, and other oil products of a similar nature that can't be replaced with locally made replacements.

Not to mention, probably the town generator would be a steam powered engine. With wood, coal, or some animal biproduct to burn, may be feasible. Or even the possibility of a town utilizing geo-thermal (geysers) or my personal favorite - a TK engine.

My thought is that a lot of what is called a "gasoline" engine in Rifts is more of a "liquid fuel internal combustion" engine, more akin to a hypermodern diesel. It's not as picky about fuel (flexibility in what it could accept would be a big selling point post-apocalyptic, and would continue to be PA), meaning you can run on a mix of geo-oils, vege-oils, and some ethanol. It's probably not set up for LNG or propane, but few vehicles probably are... those fuel sources are likely used in-place, where they're mined, as a fuel source. If it's liquid at room temperature and burns, it's probably good for your engine.

Dude... Al... Twenty-eight minutes.

Don't forget about the Coalition having oil fields and that merc company in Mexico being a major supplier also.