Strontium

This article is about canon fuel.
You may be looking for the Strontium Raid in the Star Wars Legends continuity.

"If you see purple or red sand, back up. That's rubidium or strontium, and even breathing it can kill you."

―Rey's survival guide^[1]

Strontium was a red-colored solid substance. It was poisonous, being potentially lethal to inhale. Strontium could be used as fuel for vehicles^[1] or explosives, with the use of the substance in the latter leading to red-hued explosions.^[2]

In 5 BBY,^[3] Sabine Wren, a member of the anti–Galactic Empire rebel crew of the starship Ghost, noted in^[2] her^[4] journal strontium as a possible fuel for creating red explosions.^[2] After^[1] the Galactic Civil War battle on the planet Jakku ten years later,^[4] the planet's surface became littered with the wreckage of starships and vehicles, leading to dangerous fuels such as strontium leaking in its sand. At some point prior to^[1] her departure from Jakku in 34 ABY,^[4] the human scavenger Rey mentioned strontium in the survival guide she was writing. She included in it a note with a visual depiction of a sample of the substance and wrote that strontium colored sand red, a fact that could inform scavengers to proceed with caution.^[1]

Behind the scenes

Strontium was first mentioned in the current Star Wars canon in Sabine My Rebel Sketchbook, which was written by Daniel Wallace^[2] and published on February 3, 2015.^[5] Rey's Survival Guide, authored by Jason Fry, illustrated by Andrew Barthelmes,^[1] and released on December 18 of the same year,^[6] provided the first visual depiction of the substance.^[1]

The name "strontium" was originally introduced to the Star Wars franchise in the Star Wars Legends continuity, where it was mentioned in the name of the Strontium Raid in the 2012 reference book The Essential Guide to Warfare, authored by Jason Fry and Paul R. Urquhart.^[7] In the real world, strontium is a chemical element and metal with a silvery luster that, in nature, is always found in the form of chemical compounds. It is generally nontoxic; however, its radioactive isotope strontium-90 is a dangerous component of nuclear fallout. Strontium is used to obtain red color in fireworks, flares, and tracer ammunition.^[8]