Chapter 126: A Difficult Year Without Summer

September 15, 1947, White House, Washington, USA

In this "year without summer" when the climate is changing, the weather in the United States is simply chilling cold and terrifying. The calendar on the wall of the www.biquge.info of the Pen "Fun" Pavilion has just flipped to September, and a thin layer of snow has accumulated on the south lawn of the White House, and a few crystal clear ice cubes have hung outside the window eaves of the elliptical office. Looking out the window at the snowstormy scene, President Truman couldn't help but feel exhausted.

-- Has the United States of America just survived one of the coolest summers, and then the coldest winters?

Although the United States was in the midst of World War III at this time, since the U.S. military successfully bombed the Soviet Union on Valentine's Day, there has been no large-scale war between the two sides, whether on the Atlantic front or the Pacific front.

So, in President Truman's view, the affairs of war are very quiet today.

In Europe, the U.S. military has abandoned its last few footholds, even Iceland and the Azores in the Atlantic, and has completely withdrawn its forces to the North American mainland and Canada, facing off against the Red camp across the vast Atlantic. At present, although the US military is unable to make another expedition to Europe, it is even more impossible for the Soviets to cross the Atlantic Ocean and go straight to the hinterland of the United States.

In the African theater, the U.S. military also completely retreated to the south of the Sahara Desert, detached from ground contact with the Soviet Red Army and its allies -- in fact, even after the U.S. military abandoned North Africa and the Middle East for half a year, the Soviet army did not really gain a foothold in this chaotic land of constant conflict, and could only be satisfied with the control of several port strongholds on the Mediterranean coast, and allowed the various sectarian and tribal forces of the Arabs to fight each other in the interior.

In the face of such an unstable and chaotic situation, the Soviets did not have the strength to launch an expedition across the desert except for occasionally organizing a few long-range bombers from the front-line air bases on the Mediterranean coast to harass the US troops stationed south of the Sahara Desert -- but the Soviet Air Force's harassment methods were rather vigorous, often by dropping atomic bombs, and had already killed more than 10,000 US troops and more than 2 million blacks......

In the Middle East theater, the Soviet army, which was moving southward on a large scale, had in fact fallen into the quagmire of war and was overwhelmed by the guerrillas everywhere. In the Asia Minor battlefield, even with the Kurds as allies and the use of saturation nuclear explosion tactics to wipe out half of Turkey's population, the Soviet Red Army was unable to suppress the desperate resistance of the remaining half of the Turks in a short period of time. On the battlefield in Iraq, the Soviet army only entered the front line of Mosul and could not move again, and so far there is no sign of advancing into Baghdad. And in Iran and Afghanistan, the Iranians fell on the Caspian coast, and after Tehran was bombed, they retreated to the Persian Gulf coast and continued to resist relying on plateaus and mountains. The Afghans also established a government-in-exile in the city of Peshawar in northwestern India, and with the assistance of the Muslim League led by Jinnah, they continued to resist through guerrilla warfare. Although Stalin's Cheka fighters had always been a monopoly on all kinds of disobedience, and had arrested more than two million terrorists and suspected terrorists in labor camps -- there was no law to speak of these days, and if you looked like a terrorist, you could go to the concentration camps and work to death. But resistance movements of all kinds continued to emerge one after another.

According to the Pentagon's projections, for at least a few years, the ironclad torrent of the Soviet Red Army will be firmly trapped in the Middle East and cannot be put into other theaters.

On the battlefield in India, the US troops have also basically withdrawn, and the Indians have been fighting indiscriminately -- since the assassination of Gandhi and the great decline of the conservative power of the Congress party, because the common enemy from outside has disappeared, the Muslim League led by Jinnah has also turned against the radical wing of the Congress party led by Chandra. The whole of India presents a three-kingdom pattern of Nehru, Chandra and Jinnah, the three giants facing each other, and dozens of Indian princes and more tribes are armed to divide the king, fight each other, and even ambitiously want to get their hands on the throne of Delhi.

For such a scalp-numbing quagmire involving three or four billion people, neither the red camp nor the white camp seems to have any intention of interfering too much, just waiting patiently for the Indians to decide a final victor on their own, or to collapse into countless small states like the Roman Empire.

In East Asia, large-scale military operations came to an end as the combined Japanese naval fleet swept south across the Polynesian islands to Easter Island, and the last Allied forces that landed on the Japanese archipelago fell last Christmas. In particular, after the Pentagon took the initiative to abandon the Philippines and recall MacArthur, the military forces of the United States and Japan have once again completely disengaged from frontal contact and have become a situation of confrontation across the Pacific Ocean.

According to the latest information, the main force of the combined fleet of the Japanese Navy, headed by the battleship Yamato, has now moved westward into the Indian Ocean, first chasing down the remnants of the British Royal Navy's Eastern Fleet, and then wandering around the Indian Ocean, wantonly hunting and killing all the merchant ships active in this area -- because of the destruction of the Suez Canal, the merchant ships of the European socialist bloc countries have so far been unable to enter the Red Sea, let alone the Indian Ocean. The occasional shelling of coastal ports seemed to be an attempt to completely destroy the entire Indian Ocean shipping routes, and indeed caused logistical supply difficulties for the US troops under Eisenhower, who were stranded in East Africa: Africa's rail and road transportation was basically a tragedy, and the army's logistical supply lines could only be maintained by sea.

However, the Pentagon, which has already decided to abandon the Indian Ocean, said that it basically did not care about this, and also ordered General Eisenhower, who is currently stationed in Mombasa, the largest port in East Africa, that if the Japanese army attacks from the other side of the Indian Ocean, or cuts off the sea supply lines of the US military in East Africa, and it is really impossible to continue to hold on, then it can retreat to Liberia or Congo in West Africa at any time, and then let South Africa be at the forefront and fight with the Japanese who have come from afar...... In the current difficult situation, it would have been a great success to be able to maintain a few footholds on the Old World.

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All in all, although the earth is still in the midst of a world war, the smoke and gunfire around the world are still continuous. However, between the United States and the Soviet Union, the two most critical heavyweights, there was a temporary shift from the hot war to the cold war, and entered a period of relative relaxation.

For Truman, the wartime president, the real biggest headache for him at the moment was actually the problem of a nationwide natural disaster that broke out on his own soil.

-- With the eruption of the Icelandic volcano in the North Atlantic, a huge cloud of ash obscuring sunlight and rapidly lowering the ground temperature, most of Europe is now in the midst of a summer cold disaster. And across the Atlantic, in North America, the situation is naturally not optimistic.

For Americans, this year's winter and spring have been exceptionally cold, with heavy snowfall in Maine and other places, widespread ice in the waters of the Great Lakes, and even the port of Detroit paralyzed for a time. finally waited until the spring flowers bloomed, and it seemed that summer was about to begin, but who knew that it was followed by several inexplicable super cold waves, which suppressed the temperature again. Three unusually cold snaps before and after caused the streets of Manhattan in New York to snow in June. During the cold spell in early June, Wall Street was covered with snow as thick as three inches, leaving pedestrians both amazed and frightened.

-- Anyone with even a little insight can know what a terrible nightmare this abnormal weather that reverses hot and cold will bring to agricultural production!

In late July and early August, the northeastern region of New England (the coastal states north of New York, the oldest part of the United States) was hit by frosts, killing most of the crops except for a few of the most hardy grains and vegetables, such as wheat and onions. According to the agricultural department's estimates, at least 15 states in the United States will fail to harvest corn this year, and hay production will also plummet, which will inevitably lead to the mass death of herds, and the production of dairy products and meat will naturally plummet, so that the people of the whole country can survive a year of famine......

Unlike the Great Depression, when coffee and beans were used in boilers, fruits and vegetables rotted in the ground, and cows were dumped into the Mississippi River, while citizens starved and ate garbage in the city...... This time there is a real food shortage in the United States.

In Canada, the consequences of the unusually summer season were even worse, and the cold spell was even more severe, even for wheat. During the peacetime years before World War II, Canada exported millions of tons of food and feed to Europe every year. And now, in this terrible "year without summer", Canadians find themselves with neither bread nor milk, and they are already thankful to God for being able to eat potatoes.

-- In this year, the whole of Canada experienced the bloody storm of the civil war, which led to the abandonment of a large amount of arable land in the war, and the government's strategic material reserve warehouse was also burned down because of the civil war. Then, because of the summer cold spell, all crops in Canada were almost wiped out, and the prices of wheat and hay skyrocketed. In the autumn, which was supposed to be the harvest season, the food shortage situation became even more severe. Especially in the cities of Quebec, Canada, where street fighting has been fought, the ration of bread has been reduced from 200 grams to 150 grams a day, which is not enough for even a small child. Everything they could eat was stuffed into the mouths of hungry citizens, such as berries, lichens and cat meat, and some people wrote articles in newspapers about survival in the wilderness to guide residents in identifying non-poisonous plants. Desperate, the Canadian authorities had no choice but to reach out to their southern neighbors for help, and the trains carrying grain from the United States to Canada had to be escorted by military and police, because every station was crowded with hungry people who came to shoot food.

Compared to Canada, which is struggling with hunger and cold, agricultural production in the United States is slightly better. The total crop failure was concentrated in New England and the Great Lakes in the northeast, and the Mississippi River basin in the further south was also a grain failure, with the total value of agricultural output falling by 50 percent compared with last year, and the total output of wheat, barley, maize, vegetables and fruits generally declined...... But there are still some harvests. Without the need for large-scale exports of surplus grain overseas, this year's harvest can barely feed every citizen of the United States of America.

After all, American farmers in these days no longer have to feed their British relatives across the Atlantic. But on the other hand, they had to lend a helping hand to Canada and the affected areas in the north of their country...... As a result, the food supply of the American people still seems to be stretched.

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In response to the increasingly severe situation, the U.S. federal government drastically lowered the food ration standards of ordinary citizens three times, and the American people soon found themselves sadly discovering that eggs, butter, chocolate, and meat were gradually disappearing from store shelves. The meat ration per person was reduced to 100 grams per day, which was equivalent to a few thin slices, and there was very little fresh meat, almost only canned Spam luncheon meat. The butter ration turned into white lard, which was later downgraded to granulated sugar. The bread ration for American citizens was also reduced to 400 grams per person per day, and the federal government also required bakers who produced rationed bread to add at least 10 percent rye flour to white bread, and rye bread to at least 5 percent potato flour, known as "war bread." And ordinary people can generally only buy brown bread in ration stores to make full use of the bran and bran in the grain.

From the point of view of calorific value, this dietary standard is still in line with science, because a healthy adult consumes 1,800 calories a day without doing intense exercise, and if a certain degree of physical labor is required, then it will increase to 2,400 calories. Thus, theoretically, the daily caloric ration of American civilians is sufficient to sustain the basic survival needs of people without starvation.

However, eating well is not the same as eating well, and if you want to eat pure refined white bread and tender and juicy steaks, or get some refined flour and egg powder to cook your own pastries, citizens can only pay several times to more than ten times the price, risk being caught, and go to the black market to buy ...... In some places, people in the cities often trek dozens of kilometers on foot to the countryside to exchange their possessions for food from the peasants.

Then, local governments and legislatures in the states introduced a series of wartime restrictions aimed at curtailing food consumption - California stipulated that meals in hotels and restaurants were limited to two courses, only one of which could be a meat dish. New York State mandates that alcohol is not only purchased with a ration ticket, but is sold only two days a week. Washington State prohibits bakeries from making cakes and puffs during wartime. Texas mandates that the average person can only buy skim milk, and only pregnant women and children can buy more nutritious whole milk. New Jersey declared it illegal to feed pets with ordinary food during wartime, and as a result, many citizens were fined for feeding birds with bread. The state of Maine, where the famine was at its worst, mandated that potatoes should be served only with the skin on, and potato peelers were not allowed in all restaurants and restaurants. The state of Louisiana, a grain-producing state, has mandated that calcium and vitamins be added to the flour used to bake ration bread in order to ensure national health, although this is difficult to do in practice.

Despite all the wartime measures that have been introduced to restrict food consumption, the actual effect is quite dubious, in addition to adding all kinds of problems to the lives of ordinary people. As a federal state with a high degree of local autonomy, the power of the central government in the United States was far inferior to that of the German, Italian, and Japanese fascist regimes that were reckless in wartime, so the control and supervision of agriculture was very unsuccessful. No matter what the authorities tried to stop, the black market for food continued to flourish, just like the bootlegging business during the Prohibition era – the huge profits of the black market made farmers more willing to sell their produce to black marketeers who were willing to pay high prices, and as a result, limited food could not enter the legal circulation, and at least one-third of the country's butter, eggs, and pork production went to the black market instead of government ration stores, making life even more difficult for ordinary people. While heavy laborers who had spent the day in the arsenal munched on fishy black bread with lots of potato flour and fish meal, upper-class gentlemen still feasted and drank in luxurious restaurants.

In order to educate the people to cope with the crisis of food shortages, President Truman, at the unanimous request of his aides, reverted to the Roosevelt-era "fireside chats" by promoting various frugal measures on radio programs, persuading city dwellers to grow vegetables instead of flowers in their gardens and balconies, and persuading farmers to pull out corn that needs to be warmer to grow properly and to plant more high-yielding and hardy potatoes...... The president's wife advised housewives to use substitutes, such as yogurt instead of cheese, mashed potatoes instead of flour, vegetable powder instead of fruit, and vanilla and margarine instead of cream.

In addition, scientists and entrepreneurs have begun to study how to use cultivated yeast to produce protein in order to solve the shortage of meat supply, the basic method of which is simply to convert wood and paper wastewater into sugar, which is said to taste like pork and beef, so it is called "artificial meat", but consumers generally believe that the taste is even far inferior to that of canned Spam luncheon meat......

As the world's leading developed agricultural country, even after so many years of war consumption, the federal government still has enough grain and sugar for the people of the whole country to eat for more than a year, 250,000 tons of lard, cured meat and butter, as well as a large amount of oats and corn for feed, in addition to hoarding a lot of leather, cloth and silk. As for the production of coal and oil, which are not affected by climate change, it is more than enough to meet the maximum demand of the country.

However, Iceland's volcanoes erupt from spring to autumn showing no signs of stopping, and huge clouds of ash not only cover the whole of Iceland, but are also being pushed in all directions by the wind...... So no one knows how long this catastrophe for global agriculture will last, let alone how many "summerless years" will follow, so it is necessary to prepare for this early and take measures to save money in advance.

However, even under such a dire situation and tremendous pressure, President Truman did not consider the possibility of an armistice and peace in the slightest......

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ps: Taiwan has really raised donations from mainland fruit fans! The party-state bigwigs themselves did not pull out a dime, but they called on mainland fruit fans to donate 200 yuan each to pay their party comrades. However, only 20 percent of the regular party members in Taiwan pay their party dues on time -- looking at the face that "I will give you face by asking you inferior mainlanders to send money," I think that only masochists and those who have a deep love for the party-state will give generously, right? (To be continued.) )