If I had an oil well, I wouldn’t build a distillation tower BECAUSE the waste products are incredibly toxic.
It just so happens my family owns acreage over the Monterey oil shale in California. There is an old natural gas well on the property. We’re looking into fracking those parcels. If we get oil, so be it. If it’s natural gas, it can be used straight from the well (I believe).
If I am wrong, don’t hesitate to correct my mistakes.
You don’t need an oil well, just use all the wood from houses that all the people are dead in to make producer gas. The Nazis did it in WWII - see Fischer-Tropsch.
Consider this: what fraction of the population would you guess has essentially no food available at home? More than a few days worth? A weeks worth? That’s about how many days you’ll have before the mobs ascend on those who do. It’s not a matter of “prepping”, it’s a question of numbers - the number of people who depend on EBT cards vs. the number of bullets you have...