Sanya has made extensive use of steam engines in its development, including not only the second-type standard steam engines, the Mozi Type 1 and Type 2, but also the light-duty machine "Suichao Type 1", which is copied from the small American steam engine. These machines are widely used in all aspects as the prime mover, which greatly saves manpower and improves work efficiency. Compared with the state of D-Day that year, the elders couldn't help but sigh: although the overall level of jishu has decreased, the scale of application has increased several times.

One consequence of the widespread use of the steam engine was a surge in demand for coal. So much so that the Navy soon had to arrange three transport ships to transport coal.

The most Haode thermal coal is naturally Hongji's anthracite, but Hongji's coal supply is intermittent, and Lingao's main supply is low-quality lignite and peat from the Nanbao area, as well as lignite shipped from Guangdong. The demand for coal in Sanya's development has caused the coal reserves in Lingao to drop sharply, and Zhan Wuya has to warn that even if the production of agricultural fertilizers is stopped, all lignite and peat will be transferred to power and chemical use, and the inventory will not last for a week.

The Jiazi Coal Mine, which had been mined with great effort, supplied lignite for coking, and everyone was reluctant to burn it -- it was not easy to accumulate this little thing. Coking coal is a scarce resource in the south.

The Ministry of Commerce issued a notice asking all stations stationed in the country to try to step up coal imports. Within the group, the call for the development of Hongji Coal Mine has once again been raised. There are constantly people complaining to the Planning Institute about the importance and significance of developing Hongji. There are also many people in the Standing Committee of the Senate who hold this view. At the State Council, many professionals of the CWI also expressed concern about the coal supply situation and demanded a stable and reliable supply of coal.

"It is really necessary to develop Hongji," said Wu De, "but to open another sub-base in the short term is beyond our capacity at this stage." The fortification pressure of the Hongji Coal Mine is greater than that of Sanya, which means that it will have to be armed under the nose of the Northern Dynasties, and it will not work without sending heavy troops and a sufficiently strong naval detachment. ”

"According to the report of Bei Kai and others, isn't Hongji deserted? Will the Northern Dynasties make a big deal for such a small place? ”

"It's hard to say." Yu Eshui was summoned to serve as an adviser to the meeting, "Everyone, you want to know how this place in Vietnam has gradually changed from a county of the Han Dynasty to a small tyrant in Southeast Asia?" He cleared his throat, "That's yours is mine, mine is mine." Successive chieftains of Vietnam spared no effort to encroach on the surrounding land, and maintained a high degree of vigilance against the encroachment of others. Moreover, Vietnam is not a big place, and the news spreads much faster than that of Daming. As soon as we build a fort in the local area, it won't take long for the Northern Dynasty court to know. If you know that, you'll definitely attack. ”

"Can we collude with the Southern Dynasties? Anyway, I want to break my face with the Northern Dynasty. ”

"Of course, the Southern Dynasty will certainly welcome us to burn ourselves to the Northern Dynasty in such a desperate way, but the question is," Yu Eshui said, "what can we get if we have the support of the Southern Dynasty?" ”

"The Southern Dynasty will not necessarily send troops to support our operations, and even if they come, everyone may not want to use them, right?"

"The army of monkeys is a fart...... Dongmen Blowing Rain was interrupted by Yu Eshui just after he made a comment:

"Don't underestimate the Vietnamese army of the North and South Koreans at the end of the Ming Dynasty, they were equipped and trained under the guidance of the Portuguese and Dutch, and were widely equipped with firearms, which was quite Europeanized. It's definitely not the kind of semi-savage army of the princely states of Southeast Asia. Moreover, there have been civil wars for decades, and the combat capability of the army will not be very bad. It's okay for us to hold the fortress, but to effectively control and exploit it, I'm afraid we can't do it without investing a lot of money. ”

"In this case, the only way to do so is to go peacefully." "I think we should send people to Vietnam, buy land through commercial channels, and build a manor to mine it slowly," Wu said. If possible, use a local agent. ”

In the end, it was decided that the Leizhou station would handle the matter specifically - they already had a certain commercial and trade relationship in the local area. A little bit of social relationship was also established. The proposal put forward by Leizhou Station to set up a trading company with Vietnam was also approved by the State Council. Vietnam has not only coal, but also a large amount of rice and timber, which are the most needed materials for the crossing group, and even strategic materials.

Everyone has long coveted this treasure land of Vietnam, but because of its lack of strength, it is not possible to start directly. This sullen feeling is like a plump and beautiful woman nearby, who can eat some tofu from time to time, but cannot possess her body.

Panda was carrying a large bag and riding a motocross motorcycle in the wilderness, with a full set of professional-grade bomb disposal protective suits imported from the United States hanging from the back seat. Although he had spent a lot of money to get his hands on this set, he didn't think it was worth much - Panda's colleagues had said in the past that the only thing it did was to leave him with a whole corpse.

Although Zhuo Tianmin is the chief commander of the construction, he is from a working and civil construction background, and he basically knows nothing about blasting. Pan Da served as the deputy commander-in-chief, who was in charge of blasting and military engineering construction.

Panda's available personnel were mainly from the engineer platoon of the Sanya Dispatch Battalion - this platoon was formed from the engineer training company, one-third of which were veterans who had received more than six months of professional training as engineers, and the rest were new recruits, who had been trained in explosive skills for a month.

Then there were the graduates of the blasting training course run by the labour corps, where short-term surprise training was carried out to train some labourers. But the quality of these blasters and sappers cannot be compared. For the sake of safety, Panda mixed the personnel after landing. A small number of sappers and demolitions were combined with demolitions to form a demolition team, a total of five demolition teams, two of which were dispatched to the Luhuitou Peninsula, where they were tasked with carving out roads in the mountains, clearing vegetation, and clearing a solid platform for the forts at the top of the mountain. The stones produced by the blasting act as building materials.

In order to supply building materials locally, Zhuo Tianmin and Pan Da had already discussed that in addition to opening a local brick and tile factory, it would be better to have a quarry. For this reason, Bai Guoshi led a team to explore the vicinity under the escort of the special investigation team. The quarry can't be too far away, and it doesn't make sense to squeeze the transport capacity too far.

However, in this way, maintaining the operation of the quarry would require at least one demolition team, and all he could use was the second team. There is a growing demand for blasting on the construction site, especially for the Yulin-Tiandu subgrade project, which is quite complex, even though the subgrade is built along the flatter valley of the Tiandu River. From time to time, you will encounter mounds and boulders, which must be cleared in time.

If it is cleaned by hand, the amount of earthwork is staggering, and the level of hunger for iron ore in the steel sector is clear to everyone. Now that the source of coking coal has been solved, more and more coking coal is hoarded, and it is waiting for rice to be boiled into steel.

Panda had no choice but to dilute the number of personnel, reduce the number of people in each team and the proportion of sappers in them, and double the number of demolition teams. As a result, security is at stake. Sometimes on a motorcycle, sometimes as a boat, Panda patrols the various blasting sites, corrects all kinds of unsafe hidden dangers in a timely manner, and if necessary, he personally directs the blasting.

The sea breeze mixed with sand hit his motorcycle helmet, and he was nervous inside. Recently, blasting has been widely used on construction sites to speed up the construction process, and the proportion of qualified personnel is relatively small, and the hidden danger of accidents is increasing. In fact, there was an explosion just a few days ago. An unexplained explosion of a transport boat transporting black powder in the bay leaves all six people missing - needless to say blown to pieces.

Black powder is the only explosive they can supply in large quantities, but it is not very powerful or stable. No matter how it is refined, the explosion speed of black powder is too slow, and it is not very powerful to use it as engineering explosives. It's nowhere near as good as nitroglycerin.

At his request, nitroglycerin explosives and a small amount of ammonium nitrate explosives were brought to him from Lingao. Nitroglycerin is relatively safe, adsorbed with diatomaceous earth, and then passivated by a series of treatments. Although it is still a little lacking in stability, Sanya is now in urgent need of high explosives, and it is not enough to care about it.

The Navy recruited volunteers to pilot the ship, which had been a seven-day voyage that took almost 10 days to arrive. These valuable goods are carefully unloaded and stacked in a purpose-built bungalow warehouse that is not close on all sides.

But the problem still came out, Panda had just received the news that there was a squib on a construction site.

Squibs are the most feared thing for the demolition team, and if you don't handle it carefully, you will kill people. For this reason, Panda personally kept the detonators to ensure the safety of the fire, and issued them to the sappers before the start of work every day.

I didn't expect that there was still a problem with the squib. And it was also loaded with ammonium nitrate explosives. This ammonium nitrate explosive is slightly safer than nitroglycerin, but the risk factor is still very large.

The blasting site is at 0+1400 meters of the Tiandu-Yulin roadbed, where a small mound mixed with earth and stone is on the construction line, and Shan Daoqian plans to blow it up directly, that is, remove the obstacles and get the building materials.

"How?" Pan Da then asked the engineer captain who was at the scene.

"The fuse is lit, but it doesn't blow up." The sapper captain gestured, "I went to see it in 15 minutes: the fuse burned out, but the detonator didn't explode." As he spoke, he pulled out the explosives bag rolled into a cylinder, "I'll take it back." ”

Panda saw that the detonator had been unplugged before he was relieved, thinking that the safety education had not been in vain. He looked at the explosives, which seemed to be a little damp - probably because the humidity of the air here affected the sensitivity of the detonation.

The use of explosives is still not standardized. Panda thought that accelerated education was really prone to accidents. However, this is not a problem for the soldiers, and the explosives and firearms that can be provided by the crossing group are not very standardized. Some even have great security risks.

"Keep blasting." Panda said, "Don't use this pack of explosives, put it away and take it back." ”

The demolition team continued to work, and Panda was a little uneasy, so he went to the charging site to see in person, and the blast hole was played very standardly, completely in accordance with the practice of the blasting textbook. Several team members were loading the medicine, but there were many workers gathered under the hill to watch the excitement. Panda was shocked when he saw it—what was so good about this bustle? The minimum safety distance is gone. Just as he was about to find someone to drive the laborers away, he suddenly heard an exclamation, and when he looked up, his blood vessels were almost solidified, and when a team member was loading, a 75g standard package of explosives slipped from his hand and fell straight down.

Panda's first impression was that he was going to be blown apart. He remembered that ammonium nitrate explosives were used here, which would explode on a major impact before being passivated, and that the explosive packets that fell from the mountain would not explode immediately.

In an instant, the explosion scenes from film, television, and reality all poured into Panda's mind. He took a leap and fell to the ground with great agility. Whether this trick can save your life depends on luck - if the explosives fall close, you will not survive lying on the ground.

With a "pop", the explosives fell to the ground, and Panda was surprised - it didn't explode, and Panda just raised his head, only to see the laborers hula all surround him. Panda knew that there were always people in the crowd who liked to fiddle around, so he quickly jumped up, rushed to the front of the person with an arrow, picked up the explosive pillar and ran a few steps towards Tian Duhe, and he was a tiger lying on the ground again, his limbs tightly clasped to the ground, closing his eyes and opening his mouth.

When Panda was a soldier, he threw grenades more than the second in the company, and at the moment of crisis, his skills were fully activated, and a series of movements were so neat that the dynamite fell into the water before even the besieging laborers could react. The fire exploded in the river, and the high column of water shot into the sky, and the bustling laborers were all shaken to the ground by the shock wave.

Panda was also pushed to the ground like a leaf, and he felt a tightness in his chest, and he finally got up. He noticed his heart beating wildly and his legs shaking. I thought that this time I was lucky to finally pick up a small life, otherwise I would have to enter Cuigang in advance.

"Are there any casualties? Were there any casualties? He shouted.

"I'm fine." The Demolition Team leader staggered to his feet, and generally the Demolition Team was doing well, as soon as the explosives fell, everyone lay down instead of rushing over to watch.

As for the laborers who were knocked to the ground, a few of them broke their skin when they were knocked down by the shock wave, some felt chest tightness and discomfort, and many more were frightened - they had never seen such a violent explosion.

"Let's all go back to work." Panda said to the Demolition Captain, "You can rest for fifteen minutes before you do it." Be safe. ”

The demoman, who had accidentally dropped his explosives, was caught by nearby guards and descended from the hillside in despair.

Panda stopped the demolition captain who was going to send this unlucky guy to the command for disposal: "Forget it, he made a mistake for a while, but don't let him do the explosives thing, do some hard work first, and hold a meeting at night to conduct safety education." ”V