[Legbreaker]

I'm thinking most of the lubricants would be synthetic in nature rather than oil based. Existing supplies don't really last very long - a few weeks, perhaps a month if not glowing in the dark. Yes, civilian vehicles will provide some fuel, but it's not just the military needing and scrounging for it either.

Regardless of how the war is progressing, people still need to eat. Fuel is needed in the modern world to till the fields, harvest the crops, transport them to processing facilities (which also need power to operate), and distribute to the starving masses (those who are left after the initial nukes anyway).

Given there's little ongoing oil supply, and Europe in general has little crude oil that isn't under a few hundred metres of sea water, some very tough choices would have to be made to allocate what little there was to best effect. No point sending it all to civilian and industrial needs if you completely paralyse the military and lose the war, whereas giving the military priority may prevent defeat, but at the cost of tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands to starvation, disease, etc.

But what about animal power to drive production you say? Well, the late 1990's is a very different time to even the 1950's. Almost all farms, distribution, etc had switched away from horses, oxen, and so on many decades before. SOME of the old animal powered machinery still exists, but in poor, unmaintained condition, and certainly not in sufficient quantities. Also very few animals trained to pull plows and the like, and probably even fewer people who know how to hook them up, let alone train others.

The discussion regarding alternate fuels would have started well before the nukes. As evidence I point towards the existence and relatively wide spread use of multi-fuel engines. Seems pretty clear there has been serious thought put into what to do in the event oil supplies dried up - limited fuel has after all been an issue almost since mechanisation. Just look at the issues faced by both sides in WWII.