Old fuel, old food, old medicine
Everything you scavenge is 412 days old. Stale fuel, flat batteries, bulging cans and expired pills, and what to do about them.
Nothing has been made for over a year. Everything you find on a shelf or in a tank is as old as the world, and some of it shows it. Hover an item, or right-click it and choose Inspect, to see how it has aged.
Fuel
Gasoline goes stale in a few months. What you siphon from wrecks and find in cans is mostly over a year old: it reads Stale fuel. A car on stale fuel still runs, just badly: it pulls a little weaker, hesitates now and then when you press on, and once in a while dies at a crawl or idling. It always starts again with the key. Diesel, and the jet fuel in a downed aircraft, age far more slowly.
- Fuel mixes in the tank. Topping up stale fuel with fresh makes the whole tank better.
- A bottle of Fuel Stabilizer treats a jerry can, or twenty liters in a tank. Use it next to a car to treat its tank, or anywhere to treat the stalest can you carry. One bottle per batch: a second does nothing.
- Fresh fuel comes from traders, faction depots and the fuel still. Haven's trader keeps a few bottles of stabilizer, and now and then a fresh can.
Batteries
A car battery you find loose has run down on the shelf: it holds about half. That's enough to start a car, and driving charges it. Jumper cables work from a running car nose to nose, or from a charged car battery you carry. A Battery Bank at your base or a camp solar panel charges flat ones.
Cans and jars
Cans outlast the end of the world. A few are dented, which is fine. A very few are bulging: the lid is domed with gas, and that means something is growing inside. You can see it on the shelf and in your pockets, and eating one asks you first. Don't. If you do, it barely feeds you and it will probably make you ill.
Medicine
Scavenged medicine has a date on it. Past it, pills and injections lose strength slowly, never all of it: a year out of date, most pills are still about ninety percent as strong. The item says how strong it is, and so does the treatment when you use it. Antibiotics are harder to find than they were and worth more. Fresh medicine comes from the clinic, crafting and the traders.
Nothing a trader, the clinic or a still hands you has aged. Only what you scavenge has.