We are on the edge of a global catastrophic disaster.
Human conflict.
Nuclear bombs.
Natural disasters.
Chemical and biological warfare.
Without warning, the world as we know it can come to an end.
Six days ago,
these volunteers entered a 10-week experiment
designed to see if they could survive and rebuild
after a simulated global disaster.
Their world constructed to mirror
what survivors could experience
if a viral outbreak left los angeles
and the rest of the planet devastated.
The volunteers' backgrounds and skill sets
represent a cross section of modern society.
Their new home,
a cordoned-off, 80,000-square-foot warehouse
near downtown los angeles.
An old manufacturing plant for something.
Inside,
they've been provided with limited tools,
supplies, and food.
They have no electricity...
no running water...
nothing.
...and no communication with the outside world.
As part of the experiment,
a gang of looters and thugs will attempt to compromise
the colonists' resources and security.
Yeah!
So far, the volunteers have focused on survival basics...
fire...
a water filter...
electricity...
whoo!
And their security has been tested.
If there's only two of them,
i want you to get on out there and kick some butt!
Now sustainable energy...
you've got a bomb here.
You light it, it will blow.
...and a dangerous street scavenge.
Drop that or i'll shoot you!
What we got, we go on back!
When a person is forced to be in a place of seclusion
and forced to be away from things that are familiar,
it creates a sense of anxiety and internal unrest.
Morgan.
A recent rainstorm provided the colonists
with a 9-day supply of water.
Now it's time to look beyond the basic necessities
and think about how to make the colony livable.
We have to survive. This is where we live now.
And there's still so much we have to do.
I know it will get more difficult
when we start running out of things.
It's always the things
that you don't think about that blindside you,
and all of a sudden you're without water or power runs out.
Then it's... it's gonna be a nightmare.
The colonists' first few days were so hectic
that they haven't had a chance to take full stock
of the resources available to them.
Disasters force people to view themselves
and the world in a different light.
Things once viewed as trash may become as valuable as gold.
To survive,
you must use anything and everything you find.
Did anyone er check in this thing?
Luckily, we're blessed enough to find this place
and have all this,
but we haven't even scratched the surface
in looking around here.
The rest of them have clothes
to change into welding safety gear.
I mean, i think it's gonna take us days,
maybe weeks to figure out all the stuff that's here.
John c. Discovers a crate in the side room.
So, i saw them back over here.
I wonder how long this has been sitting here.
Let me get it for you.
Stand back.
Ha! There you go.
Flip. Watch the nails.
Let it rip.
Watch the nails.
Ah, circular saw.
Oh, that's a new one, too.
And rechargeable. That's gonna be great.
"Drill master electric reciprocating jigsaw."
There were a couple of crates in there
that had some great rechargeable power tools,
which will be helpful for doing woodworking.
The power tools will dramatically expand
what the colonists can accomplish.
But they're worthless until they're charged.
Let's go ahead and swap this one out.
Joey charges the batteries for the drill
and the sawzall with the colony's power supply...
an array of 20 car batteries daisy-chained together.
But charging the tools is a huge drain
on the already-depleted battery bank.
Machinist john v. Estimates the colonists only have 4 days
of electricity left.
Once the batteries die,
the colonists will have no lights, no power tools...
nothing.
If those batteries get drained too quickly,
the voltage drops too low,
we actually have a big battery bank of junk,
and we are basically screwed.
Finding a way to recharge the battery bank
takes precedent over every other project.
The batteries are getting really low, mike.
I think we've got to come some sort of generation.
I'm thinking about an idea to run a small engine,
run an alternator.
A simple generator can be made from a small engine,
a pulley, and a car alternator.
To create electricity,
the engine's drive shaft must turn the pulley,
and the pulley must spin the alternator.
Just like in a car,
the alternator is designed to convert mechanical energy
generated by the spinning pulley directly into electrical energy,
which is exactly what the colonists need
to charge their batteries.
Michael begins the search for an engine
to be the foundation of the generator.
Well, i would rather have
the smallest displacement combustion engine
because all we're gonna do is spin an alternator.
This is an alternator.
It doesn't take much to spin.
Okay, maybe not.
The lawn mower doesn't cut it.
Michael tries to get the engine
of an old pressure washer running.
Let's give it a shot and see.
Come on.
Whoa, whoa, whoa! Whoa, guys!
Come on, come on!
Whoa!
Whoo!
No exhaust.
The pressure-washer engine works.
Now michael can start converting it to spin an alternator
angenerate electricity.
But to keep it running, they'll need fuel.
So, we can run the generator either on gasoline,
which we could either scavenge, siphon.
Maybe there's vehicles outside.
But i've got to imagine
that that's getting less and less plentiful.
The colonists begin to search for gasoline
or another source of fuel for the pressure-washer engine.
But it's empty. I know.
It's empty, man.
But i can't find it, man. Yeah.
Not a lot in it, man.
With an inventory of less than 5 gallons of gas,
john c. Thinks of another option.
We have tons of pallets, so wood is a great option.
So, i think we all agree
we got to get to a more sustainable power generation.
We got to have something that's renewable.
In times of disaster,
resource shortages force the survivors to make do
with the materials at hand.
I used to live in austria,
and i lived with a family that the grandparents told me,
during the second world war,
they and all of their friends had to convert their cars,
their gasoline cars, to run on wood.
John's idea is called a wood gasifier.
A wood gasifier consists of two containers,
each filled with wood scraps.
The wood in the first container is used to build a fire.
The fire heats the wood in the second container,
releasing a flammable vapor made of hydrogen,
carbon monoxide, and methane, known as "wood gas."
The wood gas is then piped into the pressure-washer engine
that will be outfitted with an alternator.
The engine will run off the wood gas just like gasoline.
I mean, the gasifier is a simple technology
that's difficult to control.
We figure out a system like this for filling it,
closing it, building a fire under it.
Handyman michael is skeptical
that computer engineer john's idea will work.
He's so pie-in-the-sky sometimes.
And i actually looked this up a long time go,
but i've never actually built one.
The idea is great.
The first step is finding containers to hold the wood.
Does that one have a top on it, morgan?
Yeah, it does.
Oh, yeah. Flip it over.
We got one right here.
Okay?
This is gonna be perfect. I like it.
It feels good to be using my brain.
It's fun to be able to, you know,
sit down and do engineering...
just really using your mind to figure out a problem.
Okay, so, what we're gonna do is
we're gonna take this big one here.
We're gonna put wood chips in it.
We're gonna put it on top of this,
and we're gonna cut a hole in this one,
have a fire going under it, and it's going to let...
it's gonna make all the wood chips in here kind of smolder,
but it's gonna release all of the gas in the wood,
and we're gonna funnel that gas
in up through an exhaust pipe here.
While morgan and vladimir fill the barrels with wood,
john c. Looks for a nozzle
to release the gas from the gasifier.
I've been able to find a fitting...
just put a little bit of teflon tape.
I've got this hydraulic fitting.
At this point, we should be able to cook that thing up
and see if we get a jet of gas out of this thing.
All right. So, a little bit of teflon tape here.
Mm-hmm. Make an airtight seal.
We put the fittings that i had found, we closed it up.
Vladimir had lit a fire with the wood that morgan had drawn.
It looks like it's catching pretty well.
After 30 minutes to let the fire build up,
it's time to test the gasifier.
If it's successfully producing wood gas,
the engineers will be able to light the vapor
coming out of the nozzle.
Hey, mike.
So, you want to know what's going on? Yeah.
We started the fire.
We put a nozzle on the top here.
We're gonna siphon off the gas.
We're gonna light it on fire.
You know what? Um, this is deadly.
You've got a bomb here.
A bomb.
The 10 volunteers in the colony are running out of power.
They're working on a generator to recharge their batteries
and a wood gasifier to produce wood gas,
a fuel that can power the generator.
Engineers john c., vladimir, and morgan
are ready to test the gasifier prototype,
but handyman michael thinks they've ignored
a potential danger.
You've got a bomb here.
This is deadly.
Michael came outside to take a look,
and he kept asking the question,
"is this thing... are we making a bomb?"
Do not... do not light this. Do not light this.
If a gasifier is constructed properly,
the barrel will be full of only flammable wood gas.
If not constructed properly, air might mix with wood gas,
and lighting it from the nozzle could create a flashback,
igniting all the gas in the barrel like a bomb.
That's why we have the vent opened.
It's still a bomb.
You have fuel in a confined space,
you light it, it will blow.
I don't want to hear a bang from in there.
I don't need mike to watch out for me or take care of me.
Go away.
The engineers dismiss the handyman
and ignore his warnings.
If anyone's got tequila, now is the time to speak up. Okay.
I'm gonna let them figure it out.
I'm not gonna say anything. I'm gonna let them fail.
You know?
I'm not gonna save them.
Let's just keep going.
I know what panicked him.
Not used to the fire. Fire! Look at this. Smoke! Whoa!
They think they know what they're doing.
They got phds or fartsy-artsy degrees.
They want to cop an attitude.
Little miss morgan says, "get out of here."
You know what? Blow yourself up.
If the gas ignites, the project is a success,
but the flame could also light the gas in the barrel,
creating a deadly explosion.
Burn it! Burn it!
This is only water vapors.
Only water vapors.
The gasifier isn't a bomb, but it's not working, either.
The distillate, the vapor that was coming off,
was never... had enough wood gas to actually ignite.
When the gasifier failed, i knew why.
But i'm not gonna say anything.
Just because someone has a letter
after the name "phd doctor,"
does that make them more capable
of surviving in a world like this?
No, i don't think so.
That's engineers, folks.
The gasifier's failure sets back the energy project.
Without a gasifier and generator,
the colonists will be unable to charge the battery bank
powering their lights and tools.
But rationing electricity
isn't something the volunteers are used to.
Some of the colonists are using the power tools
without waiting for the battery bank to be recharged.
So, here's what i'm thinking, allison.
This is gonna be the sole of our shoe, right?
Then we can lay it flat. We have to cut across.
We can use the sawzall.
The trip down the l.a. River
destroyed many of the colonists' shoes.
So george and allison decide to make new ones out of a tire.
But they can't do it by hand.
George needs the sawzall to cut the thick rubber tread
and the steel belts inside the tire.
They should be adults enough to know
that we have a finite amount of power
and we should use it wisely.
Uh, the battery's dead.
They keep wasting resources like this, i, you know...
i'm gonna run out of patience.
To help solve their energy problems,
michael and john v. Continue to work on the generator.
They need to find a pulley to spin the alternator.
Finally, the builders catch a lucky break.
Ohh!
That's what we were looking for.
Mm-hmm.
For some odd reason, this fan was sitting way up,
and what i noticed is,
is the drive shaft is inch and a quarter
or inch and an eighth,
which happens to be the same size drive shaft on our engine.
Awesome.
So, now we can put our pulley...
anywhere along here.
We just pick our spot.
Isn't that brilliant?
Wonderful.
The gasifier prototype has cooled off.
The engineers analyze it
to determine why it failed to produce wood gas.
It's just goo is coming out.
We're trying to see if it's charred
or if it had even gotten hot enough to burn.
In the first stage of gasification,
wood turns to charcoal.
If the wood in the gasifier isn't charred,
then it's not getting hot enough.
We were not efficient enough.
In the end, we never got enough heat into the barrel.
We need more heat and a smaller vessel.
With the gasifier and generator projects
taking up so much time,
some of the colonists are worried
that smaller projects might fall by the wayside.
There are big issues coming up.
It's the anticipating all the other little
that we're not doing
and making sure that small projects get done
and that everybody's busy appropriately.
These little things are starting to come up,
stuff like soap and toilet paper.
We're not even finished with the crap that we need to do,
and now you guys are micromanaging
with who's dealing with toilet paper.
We still have no power, people.
I'd rather have toilet paper than power.
Great.
To hear morgan say,
"i'd rather have toilet paper than electricity"...
what kind of a statement is that?
In an extreme survival situation,
it may not be possible to ignore or dismiss
the personality styles that may conflict with yours.
Because these might be the same people
that are actually keeping you alive.
We got to talk also about
how we're gonna do security later on tonight.
I, as always, will do the first long shift, as always.
It's not a long shift.
The scheduling right now with the shifts at night,
some of the guys think they can only take
the 9:30-to-12:00 shifts.
That's not how this works.
I was wondering if you were gonna take on a hard shift.
You keep jabbing me. Why are you jabbing me?
I don't bother you.
You bother me all the time.
But do you want to take a hard shift or not?
I don't mind taking a hard shift.
We know that that's the way he is.
We're not trying to baby him.
We're just trying to get him to a certain point
where he's compatible with all of us.
I don't really care.
Coming up...
drop that or i'll shoot you!
...a street scavenge.
Start going back.
...and a new threat.
I do not have any degree.
I have nothing. I have no education.
I can't spell.
I can hardly read.
But yet those people who do have that capability
seem to know better than me about what i can do.
Well, has anything gotten done here that we needed without me?
Well, screw it.
You do better. Go ahead.
Though energy is the group's priority,
dr. George and trauma nurse allison
are keeping an eye on another major concern...
the food supply.
You want to count right next to what we had,
and i'll just put in the new number?
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10.
With 10 people,
we're going through a lot of our canned goods.
1, 2, 3... 3.
We're gonna need more oil. We're gonna need more sugar.
We're gonna need more fresh foods.
Whether we hunt it or whether we forage it
from abandoned homes or grocery stores,
we're gonna need more food.
That's a concern.
Food isn't the only reason to go foraging,
because it's extremely important
to be aware of your surroundings...
what resources and what dangers
might be lurking just behind you.
So, guys, there's a number of things we need.
We need to go foraging.
Honestly, we can't build food. We can't build water.
I don't feel comfortable... i don't think any of us do...
that all of us leave, 'cause then this place is vulnerable.
I think you guys are working on something incredibly important.
It might be best if you stay.
So, you stay and mike.
Lock up behind us. Lock up all the doors.
We stay in groups of at least two to three at a time,
and we never get too far away from each other.
In a post-apocalyptic event, looting is foraging.
There are no owners of property anymore.
In the aftermath of hurricane katrina, for example,
people reverted to a pack-like mentality over food and water.
We see that happen often during major catastrophes
where people are forced on their own to survive.
We're not foolish with all the dangerous people
and the conditions we have to encounter
when we leave these guarded walls.
I did some years in a pretty serious prison, you know.
It's a part of me.
I know i'm a survivor.
So, if you're attacked, you try to protect your stuff,
and if you can't protect your stuff,
you protect each other.
John. But if somebody separates...
john. Have you ever been in a fight? Yes.
Have you ever been in a life-and-death fight? No.
I have.
I was a member of the military,
and i've seen a lot of people die.
And i've seen a lot of people dead.
So, uh...
...that's where i'm coming from.
I'll let you know what happens
when we go out after we assess things.
This is no longer the world
of sharing and good-naturedness.
The only way to control a wild animal
is being wilder than the wild animal.
Let's put it this way. I do not plan to run.
We are going to be the wildest animal there is.
Oh, you had those. Great.
No, no, no, no.
Take a peek, so...
just be aware 360.
In a post-disaster setting,
they'll be fierce competition
for the resources in any given area.
As part of the experiment,
food and other supplies have been scattered
throughout the surrounding streets.
Hostile outsiders are in position
to threaten the colonists' sense of security
and steal their resources.
They're not allowed to physically harm them,
but the colonists don't know that.
Come on, leilani.
All right.
Hey, guys, there's goats down here!
We got two goats.
Hey.
We're good on a burner,
but do you need any parts or anything off of this?
Uh...
there's jerky in here.
Oh, watch your back! Watch your back!
Drop that!
Drop that or i'll shoot you!
Get the bag and let's go.
Start going back.
You didn't... no, no, no. No conversations.
We got what we got for today. Let's go.
Roll.
Vladi, those were two guys.
How do you know there's not more?
Are you me?
There's the guys. There's the guys.
To the edge.
Send it back.
Just keep going back what you got and go on back.
Now! Not later! Now!
Get the goat. We cannot lose the goat.
What we got and go on back.
What we got and go on back!
Let's go.
Let's go!
I'm super-worried about going out on the streets.
When things get heated, we just...
we fragment and splinter and scream without having a plan.
We cannot lose the goat.
What we got and go on back.
What we got and go on back!
Let's go!
I'm not gonna hide out. I'm not gonna be on defense.
I'm not gonna put myself in a rathole
and hope that there's nothing out there
when i put my head out there.
That's crap.
I'm want to be the cat.
I'm not gonna be a rat.
That's a nice bike! I like that bike!
I like that bike!
These marauders, they have more malicious intent than we do.
There's scarce material out there,
and we're all contending for it, and it's gonna cause conflict.
I mean, one thing this says to me
is that we do need to get out of here.
Let's just go. Let's just turn it back.
Open the door.
All right. Coming, coming, coming!
Holy crap.
I feel incredibly successful.
We found a good bit of food.
We found some fruit, we found some vegetables.
We got some...
we have some dried apricots.
We actually broke up a camp.
I think there were two guys in a tent,
you know, just trying to get by like we did,
and our guys went in and grabbed everything they had.
Two heirloom tomatoes.
And i was... i was really struggling with that.
You know, on one hand,
i know how desperately we need the stuff,
but i also know that we really screwed them.
In extreme situations, you may be forced to do things
you wouldn't normally do to survive, like stealing.
Eventually, we can have fresh goat meat.
Well, as a very, very last resort.
Bringing back the goat, being able to have cheese,
being able to have milk...
milk is protein, and i've been so worried about that
because we haven't been eating much.
I don't know how long i'm gonna wait for the cheese and milk.
Those animals are cute, but they're also delicious.
We got some clothing, you guys.
I was pretty happy. I think i found two towels.
So, this one's relatively clean.
Some of it was treasure.
Some of it seemed like trash.
Another shirt... another good blue shirt.
All of it seems like trash, actually.
It all seems like trash.
We just raped somebody's friggin' tent for nuts,
and, oh, what a good day... what the things we found.
I want to get the hell out of dodge.
That's what i want to work on.
With three days of additional food supplies scavenged,
joey, george, and john c.
Turn their attention to an old truck in the yard.
As part of the experiment,
the volunteers are confined to the warehouse compound.
But what they do with the supplies inside,
including a broken-down truck, is entirely up to them.
I think, long-term, we do have to leave.
We are gonna exhaust our means here at some point.
That huge truck, i believe, you know, it's gonna be our exodus.
It's our salvation.
Think about this.
This thing could be like this giant mars lander thing.
And it's big enough to bring the stuff that we have
because i'm not leaving some of this stuff behind.
It could carry all of us.
It could be one badass battlewagon, too.
I mean, the best defense is a good offense, right?
We need to bring the big truck inside.
I think if it's in front of us,
we can take a better handle of it
and figure out what direction we want to go with it.
Can we push this with 10 people?
Screw this area. Screw this warehouse.
Let's get that truck going.
It's gonna be a pain to steer.
Let's get it inside. Let's get it inside.
We're burning daylight.
Easy. You don't have to put your back into it.
Just push gently.
Is there no brakes? No.
Turn, turn, turn, turn, turn, turn, turn!
Turn it, turn it hard!
He's doing it, he's doing it, he's doing it.
Slow down. Slow down.
It'll slow down by itself.
Leilani, this is our workout.
Steer this bad boy. You comfortable with that?
You know what? You want to steer?
Yeah, i'll steer. Okay.
Yeah, no one has to be in the cab.
Push the clutch. I did.
Push the clutch in. Push the clutch in.
There we go! Oh.
Pull it in.
And push!
Wait.
And she's got her foot on the brake.
It's the other pedal.
Which one... this one?
That's the clutch. Okay, go.
Push.
Go, guys! We're almost there!
Way to go!
Oh, we're in!
Is it straight? Whoo!
The battlewagon.
I'm just really... what i am is i'm psyched,
because you take a look at this thing now,
it is gonna be so different in a couple of weeks.
This is our ride out.
Fixing the truck will be a massive undertaking,
but without a generator to charge the batteries
for the power tools, it won't be going anywhere.
They want to make the truck run, electricity is key.
It gives us the ability to fabricate.
It's crucial to running the shop.
We need power tools. We need lighting.
We can't do without it.
Excelente.
Coming up on "the colony"...
the race for power heats up...
it's burning!
...but the generator may fizzle out.
We're back where we started.
It's day 8 in the colony.
The energy project was on hold for 24 hours,
but the colonists still need a generator
to recharge the battery bank.
The concern is definitely being able to charge up the batteries.
We are running very low on our power supply.
Their plan is to build a generator that runs on wood gas,
a vaporous fuel produced by heating wood scraps
in a device called a gasifier.
But the gasifier
built by engineers vladimir, morgan, and john c.
Didn't get hot enough to make any fuel.
If they can't make it work,
the colonists' power will run out the next day.
Vladimir has an idea on how to achieve the heat they need.
This... that's inside... here.
The gasifier's fuel container needs to reach 451 degrees
to start producing wood gas.
One way to increase the temperature
would be to place the wood container
directly inside the drum.
Vladimir's modified design
requires a smaller container for the wood
and a longer pipe to release the wood gas.
As the engineers search for parts,
over in the shop,
michael works on attaching the alternator
to the pressure-washer engine.
Yeah, i want a bracket here and here
and then bolt onto the alternator.
Vladimir looks for a pipe
while john finds an army-surplus gas can.
We found an aluminum pipe.
It probably was from an umbrella or something like that.
And we found some fittings that actually work with it.
Like this here? It is going to fit like that.
And we got to tighten it up,
and it's going to be a tight seal
because we need to have all the gas coming out right here.
Morgan fills the can with wood scraps
while vladimir builds the fire.
Hold on a second. Yeah. Let me make a little room here.
What we would expect is to see, just like before,
a bunch of steam as it starts to come out,
but not nearly as much.
And then over time, we should be able to torch it,
and it should burn with a kind of sooty flame, i'm hoping.
Do we want it facing that way?
Yeah, that sounds good.
Excellent.
It's already caught.
Just put it on the side.
Okay. What are you thinking there, you guys?
I'm gonna try and ignite these gases coming out
and see if they burn.
That's gonna tell us that we are making renewable fuel.
It's burning. Look, it's burning!
It's burning! It's burning!
Whoo-hoo! Whoo-hoo!
It's burning.
Holy crap.
We torched the end of this thing, this pipe,
and
hey, hey, hey!
It was like the friggin' olympic torch.
It's burning, huh?
Oh, yeah, it's burning.
Michael, still stinging
from morgan's rebuke two days ago...
go away.
...is less than impressed.
All righty.
You want to put that in your engine?
So, they thought, "hooray, we did it!
Hooray, we made fire come out of a pipe!"
Thank god this works.
This worked today.
That's an accomplishment, guys.
You know, they got one little experiment that worked out,
so now, you know, morgan thinks she's an engineer
that's worth something.
Now what? Now they throw it in my lap.
The gasifier is just a fuel source.
In order to actually charge the batteries,
michael needs to finish the generator.
He's down to the final step...
mounting the alternator that will produce electricity
from the pressure-washer engine.
Voila.
You guys coming?
There's enough gasoline left in the engine
from its previous owner for a test-run.
Yeah, so, here's what's gonna happen.
We're gonna start her up, and it's gonna stink.
I want you to measure the voltage on the battery.
If the generator is constructed properly,
the alternator will produce the 12 volts needed
to charge a car battery.
Hold the handle.
Clear.
Okay.
Well, we got up to about 9 volts.
If we don't get to 12 volts, we're not getting anywhere.
Yeah.
It's not a perfect world,
and that's pretty damn obvious right now.
The generator is not a done deal.
We're back where we started.
The batteries are on their last legs.
If the generator isn't finished today,
the colonists will have no power.
Morgan packs the gasifier with wood scraps...
and moves it closer to the battery bank,
ready to be hooked up to the generator.
Morgan's part of the project is done.
But if michael can't figure out
why the generator isn't creating enough electricity,
the gasifier will be useless,
and the colony will be in the dark.
Well, there's a problem.
This pulley is lower-geared than the alternator.
So we're running three-quarter to one.
That's not gonna freakin' cut it.
The pulley is too big to spin the alternator fast enough
to produce 12 volts and recharge the batteries.
We have no choice.
We have to find a smaller pulley.
Michael finds a smaller pulley on the same fan
that the large one came from.
Yeah!
Awesome.
It better work.
But the pulley's hole is too small
to fit on the engine's drive shaft.
Michael finds a small steel shaft that will fit the pulley
and a metal collar to connect it to the engine's drive shaft.
The small shaft and the collar must be welded together
to keep it from spinning apart during operation.
This little thing may not look important,
but this determines whether we have electricity or not.
Michael is in a classic catch-22.
To create power, he needs to weld,
but the batteries don't have enough power left
to run a welder.
So he needs to find another solution.
Through our trial,
we came across an acetylene and oxygen torch.
Hey, guys.
That torch thing's a last-ditch effort.
I mean, welding's the best way.
Acetylene torch is sloppy and neanderthal.
You want to use one of these light rods?
I'm just gonna melt it.
Go for it.
I think i might have melted it together.
I mean, i don't... i don't know.
Aw, you got to love that.
See that crappy little weld there?
Question is, will our little shade-tree-mechanic weld hold?
Looks like it's holding.
It's spinning straight.
Whoa-ho-ho!
We need to find out if it's actually producing 13 volts...
let's go to the meter. Let's go to the meter.
And our inverter?
It's... fluttering on 13.
It's charging, and it's charging good enough.
It's the ugliest weld that i've ever had work.
The generator is working.
Now it's time to answer the big question.
Will it run off of wood gas from the gasifier?
Because it's vapor and not a liquid,
the wood gas bypasses the engine's fuel tank
and goes straight into the carburetor.
Let's do it.
I got this wood over here.
You got enough wood in there, so it should be fine.
All right.
Let's go get everybody and show off.
Come on, guys! Drop everything!
Drop everything, guys! Come on!
Let's go.
There's only enough gasoline in the engine to start it up.
If it runs for more than a few seconds,
it's running on wood gas.
Connect her up, mike.
Doom for the second time.
Come on, come on! Get it, get it, get it!
Go, go, go, go, go!
Wow!
It might be too rich.
Okay. All right.
There you go.
There's no gas in the engine right?
Wow!
That's very cool.
It's amazing.
There's no end to what we can run with that.
Now we have electricity.
Now we don't have to walk around in the dark at night.
Properly maintained,
the generator will produce electricity
as long as the colonists have enough wood
to fill the gasifier.
We got electricity.
Now i just need to find a blow-dryer.
Good job, mike.
I really believe that michael, in his heart, is a good guy,
and i think he's incredibly creative.
It's important to take the good that michael provides,
in terms of his technical insight,
and just try to shrug off the rest.
It's nice to finally be finished
on a project that i thought was horribly important.
Compact fluorescent. Very efficient.
We're gonna light up the place.
Yeah, i can relax a little,
but, i mean, there's still a lot to be done.
I mean, you can never really be done.
What do you say... right about there?
Are we gonna stay here?
Are we gonna mosey on to greener pastures?
Is there greener pastures? How do we know?
That's the big question is, where do we go from here?
What's the next step?
This season on "the colony"...
...the rebuilding process continues...
...and the colonists are pushed to the breaking point.
I've never left a man behind!
This is hell!