Chapter 135: This World That Kills and Doesn't Bury (I)

The New Year's bell of 1948 rang leisurely, making this war-torn world tremble into the new year. Pen & Fun & Pavilion www.biquge.info

At the same time, almost the entire northern hemisphere of humanity is trembling, shivering, and freezing in the midst of a super cold snap that has not been seen in a century.

-- The eruption of the Icelandic volcano, which has lasted for more than half a year, is still a plume of smoke and shows no sign of subsiding. Millions of tons of volcanic ash enter the atmosphere, forming a huge cloud of smoke that spreads from North America and Western Europe to the globe, centered in the North Atlantic.

This volcanic ash first caused various meteorological wonders in the sky. From the spring and summer of 1947 onwards, Europeans were often able to see a long-lasting dark red twilight and dawn. In the northeastern United States, there is a constant "dry fog" that cannot be dispersed by wind and rain. In Norway, where the aurora was shining, the bewildered Norsemen found in the polar night that, although the sky above them was clear and cloudless, the lower part of the sky was inexplicably hazy, and the stars that could be observed with the naked eye according to old experience required a very painstaking search.

What's worse is that these volcanic ash entering the atmosphere isolates the light and heat projected from the sun to the surface to a considerable extent, bringing a great cooling to the entire earth, and also making people all over the world freeze this winter - most of Europe has a super low temperature of minus 40 degrees Celsius to minus 50 degrees Celsius, and it lasted for more than 60 days, so that the Rhine and Danube rivers were frozen tightly. In the deserts of Morocco in North Africa, there was even a miraculous light snowfall. New York in the United States is shivering in the bitter cold, the sea around Manhattan Island is frozen into an ice rink, and people can ride dog sleds to New Jersey. In Washington, a heavy snowstorm nearly buried the White House with a full three meters of snow.

Prior to this, the unusually low summer had led to a general reduction in agricultural production in Europe and North America, and food supplies were extremely tight.

The situation in North America is a little better, as crop yields have plummeted, but coal and oil extraction has not been severely affected by climate change, and infrastructure has remained intact. Although food rations have been lowered again and again, and the supply of high-calorie foods such as butter, eggs, meat, and sugar has become less and less, the city's heating and electricity supply can still ensure that the average American citizen is just a little hungry this winter, but not too cold.

As for the situation on the European continent, it is a bit miserable. After two consecutive world wars, roads, railways, reservoirs, mines, and power plants were bombed, not to mention the collapse of industry, and several of the most prosperous ancient capitals were even hit by nuclear bombings. Agricultural production is also in shambles, with large tracts of arable land abandoned, farmers lacking fertilizers, seeds, livestock, agricultural machinery and fuel oil, and even irrigation water is generally problematic due to the massive destruction of water conservancy facilities. Compounded by natural disasters, the agricultural output of European countries in 1947 was much more tragic than that of North America, and there was an extreme shortage of coal, oil, and electricity on the European continent -- strictly speaking, it was not that the whole of Europe was really devoid of coal and oil, but because of the destruction of transportation, even if there were large quantities of goods in hand. Even if it was shipped in, it would not be too late to repair the power plant and restore the power supply.

As a result, the European civilized people, who were once arrogant and overlooking the world, were now completely plunged into real hunger and cold, and their daily life suddenly fell to the level of the Middle Ages, with a lack of water and electricity, lack of food and clothing, lack of medical treatment, and the mortality rate quickly exceeded the average level of the Middle Ages.

Romania, Poland and Bulgaria in Eastern Europe are all large agricultural countries, and in times of peace, they used to export large quantities of grain to the developed countries of Western Europe every year. As a result, with the advent of the "year without summer", the volume of grain exports suddenly fell to zero. Even if they had the advantage of being close to the water, and had access to a large amount of aid from the Soviet Union, they would have been able to provide their citizens with a food ration of 1,400 calories per person per day. And due to the chaos of transportation and the imperfection of the distribution system, it is far from meeting this standard, in other words, most people are already hungry every day.

Norway, Sweden, and Denmark in Northern Europe managed to manage their food ration of 1,200 calories per person per day, relying on herring from their North Atlantic fisheries, aid from the Soviet Union, and a sparsely populated area and a small population. This amount was just over half of the pre-war average, and it was mixed with a lot of "food substitutes" such as potato flour residue and crude fish meal, which caused many people to suffer from indigestion and dysentery...... But the people were able to get a minimum food supply, or at least to avoid the unrest.

In this chilling "year without summer", Germany's food ration was also cut repeatedly, and in the end it was reduced to 1,000 calories per person per day. Staples have been relegated from bread to potatoes, and butter, cheese and ham have disappeared from store shelves. In order to solve the food crisis, the government and nutrition experts have called on people to chew their food repeatedly and carefully to fully absorb the nutrients, but to put it bluntly, they are still only deceiving themselves. Hungry people hopped on trains to Russia and traveled to Siberia for a job that would have enough to eat.

The Czech, Hungarian and Austrian food rations in this "summerless year" were even more tragic than those in Germany, with only 950 calories per person per day, barely starving. In addition, almost all the food that can be supplied to the citizens is potatoes, meat and fat, and even vegetables are not harvested in large areas due to the abnormal weather, and the citizens who have opened up their gardens into vegetable gardens have shed tears. Many Austrians and Czechs suffered from night blindness and slump, and some fell headlong while walking in the streets, never able to get up again.

The Netherlands and Belgium, on the other hand, were densely populated and had too much pressure on their food supply, which was even more severely damaged by the war, and the per capita daily food ration was only an extremely pitiful 500 calories -- if they only ate such a small amount of food every day, it was no longer possible to maintain the basic survival needs of the human body, let alone in the cold winter of minus tens of degrees. Without access to additional food from the black market, ordinary Dutch and Belgians simply wouldn't have survived the year. However, the local black market was staggeringly expensive, with salted fish being fifty times more expensive, potatoes than seventy times higher, and bread two hundred times higher. However, due to the shutdown of ports, shipping, and trade, the local unemployment rate exceeds 60 percent, and the vast majority of the unemployed are penniless and cannot afford such expensive black market food...... As a result, in Rotterdam alone, 65,000 people died of starvation in the "Year Without Summer", more than 3,000 were hanged for stealing and looting food, and almost all the remaining living people suffered from edema.

In addition to food, the supply of other daily necessities is scarce in the major cities of these countries - because there is no soap, housewives have to use lye as detergent. The few cars that survived the world war were largely idle because they ran out of gasoline. In the terrible winter of minus 40 degrees Celsius, the coal supply was stopped due to the interruption of the railway, and the urban heating system was not initially restored until five years later, so many elderly people were frozen to death in their beds at night, and some unlucky eggs froze into popsicles on the way to pick up dead branches. In parks where trees have been cut down for firewood, there are striking signs everywhere: "No suicide." Because there are people everywhere who can't survive.

As for France, Spain, Switzerland, Portugal, and Italy, because the war ended in these countries at the latest, they did not have time to carry out post-war reconstruction or establish national strategic material reserves, and they were caught up in the low-temperature famine of the "year without summer", and the rationing system could not be established at all, and the banknotes issued by the government were equivalent to waste paper from the very beginning, and the economic operation was basically out of control. The little food and fuel provided by the Soviet Union must be given priority to the army, and the people can only be left to fend for themselves, and even the leading cadres of local governments often starve to death and freeze to death

What's even more terrifying is that when hunger overrides everything, all the human ethics and shame in human society are forgotten by the hungry people who only live for their stomachs. They set their hungry eyes on their own kind and began to kill each other! Newspaper pages were flooded with horrific news of cannibalism, such as the discovery of an abandoned body with their thighs cut off on a street, rumors of nuns cooking abandoned babies in a monastery, and the discovery of objects resembling children's fingers in sausages by citizens buying high-priced food on the black market...... When these brutal and rebellious bloody cases gradually evolved into the norm of life, more and more people began to have mental breakdowns, various mass suicides emerged one after another, and officials went crazy because they had seen too many cannibalistic tragedy scenes.

All in all, in this bleak "year without summer", according to incomplete statistics, at least two million people in Germany froze to death and starved to death. Another 10 million Germans were forced to leave their homeland with tears in their eyes and emigrate to Siberia to open up the frontier for the Russians. France's industry was completely shut down, agricultural and livestock production was reduced by three-quarters, and some 4.8 million French people died in the year from nuclear explosions, radiation sickness, starvation, cold and malnutrition. Two million people died of starvation and disease in Spain, and 1.5 million people starved to death in Italy. Switzerland, already unself-sufficient, was bombed with nuclear bombs and the country plunged into anarchy, with local journalists reporting that "swarms of beggars" blocked roads in the Alps, begging passers-by for a piece of bread or looting homes with any shotguns, farm implements, clubs and knives they could find.

Fortunately, Egypt's population had not yet exploded, and it had suffered relatively few nuclear bombs in the war, and the fertile and fertile Nile Valley was still able to become the bread basket of the entire Mediterranean world, as it had been in ancient Roman times, exporting a considerable amount of surplus grain to the countries around the Mediterranean - relying on the grain looted from Egypt and Syria, as well as the small amount of relief food provided by the Soviets, the countries of southern Europe finally managed to survive the year, although there were starving people and starving everywhere, and people were starving to death everywhere in the wilderness, and no corpses were leftBut at least the government is still maintaining a minimum of order.

However, on the island of Great Britain, which had suffered a large number of atomic bombs in high density, and was subsequently abandoned by the United States and the Soviet Union at the same time, and had fallen into the Dark Ages the previous year, even such a tragic life was a pure luxury—the British, who survived the atomic bombing, survived a bleak winter after endless chaos and slaughter. Finally, when the spring flowers bloomed, he picked up a hoe and planted seeds in the ground, but the next thing was a climate change, and the crops were almost no crops. By this time, the food reserves of every household had been exhausted, and they could no longer endure it.

Thus, in this miserable "year without summer", the British found themselves without food, fuel, shelter and clothing, not even the most basic security, and the last of their treasured reserves were exhausted, and no one knew how to survive until the next year...... Faced with the terrible fate of starving to death and freezing to death, the inhabitants of southern England sought out boats, tied up rafts, and tried to cross the Channel and make a way to the European continent.

On the other side of the Channel, however, the people of France and the Low Countries were themselves on the verge of starvation and freezing, and there was no room left to help the British islanders on the other side of the Channel. What's more, Paris and Amsterdam were also smashed with nuclear bombs, millions of people died, and this blood feud was recorded on the heads of the American and British allies. Naturally, they grabbed their weapons and shouted to kill, and every day they had to lynch hundreds of hungry British people who had crossed the sea.

But in spite of this, the British, who were desperate for hunger, continued to cross the sea in batches, and armed themselves as best they could, forming a variety of sea robbery gangs, waiting for an opportunity to land on the shores of the European continent from time to time, looting food and fuel from those remaining settlements, with the only goal of keeping themselves alive...... Everything is like the old days when Vikings were forced by hunger and cold to attack the continent in a pirate ship.

In the northern part of the island of Great Britain, the British had no way to flee because they were so far away from the European continent that they could only starve to death in the desperate thousands, or struggle to survive, constantly breaking through the lower limits and doing all sorts of jaw-dropping actions - the birds and beasts of the Scottish Highlands were almost killed in the year, and even the rats in the sewers became a delicacy on people's plates...... Eventually, all sorts of cannibalistic horrors began to circulate, and the evidence did suggest that there were quite a few cannibals in Scotland at that time:

In November 1947, the first anniversary of the outbreak of World War III, the Scottish government in Edinburgh was destroyed by riots and fires, and since then it has ceased to transmit radio signals forever...... No one can really say what happened in Edinburgh that day. It was only after the end of the war that the Soviets tentatively sent a team of marines into the abandoned city, and then searched the entire city, and found not a single living person, but found several cauldrons erected in several churches and palaces, and the corners of the walls were littered with boiled human bones......

Ireland fared slightly better than the British, and although the grain harvest was also largely gone, there was at least one government of the IRA, which was trying to maintain a minimum of social order, in addition to organizing people to go to the sea to fish, collect edible bark and grass roots, and rush to cultivate the more hardy crops in season, and managed to secure a small amount of relief aid from the Soviet Union for food and fuel

But even so, the scene of the "Year Without Summer" on the island of Ireland has become like a purgatory on earth. According to a field interview with a Soviet journalist: "...... Beggars, who were already numerous, have skyrocketed further. In each town, crowds of women, children, and the elderly gather around the station. They crowded the roads, like an army, and everyone's eyes were filled with despair, and their cheeks were filled with the paleness of the dead...... In the wilderness, young children carry baskets and climb dead trees to pluck leaves to satisfy their hunger, which are almost already gone; Everywhere you look, hungry people with bellies bulging like balloons, starving to death in the wilderness, with no one to collect and bury, but the flesh on their thighs has been cut off......"

In short, when the New Year's bell rang in 1948, all Europeans silently thanked God and fate for surviving this arduous "year without summer...... But they don't know that in the future, they will usher in an even colder and more bitter "ice age......

※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※

ps: Regarding the new book, some editors suggested that I write "Social and Economic Problems in the Martial Arts World", complaining about the unscientific traffic speed, unscientific information circulation level, strange prices, forgotten dialect communication barriers, and the weak sense of existence of the imperial court, etc., are you interested in this?

For example, Ye Gucheng in the South China Sea and Ximen in Saibei are talking about snow and swords, according to common sense, chickens and ducks on both sides should talk to each other, and it is normal to not understand each other.

As for the price of up to eight taels of gold for each sugar gourd in Sword Net 3 - well, let's just think that the gold of Datang is cheaper than iron in the online game world! (To be continued.) )