CHAPTER 301: CHAPTER 299 THE TRAGIC STATE OF THE LARGE SHELTER

Under the organization and planning of the city government, Chen Xin spent about a week completing the renovation of three large city shelters and six medium-sized ones, providing a faint warmth in the city amidst the ravages of the snowstorm.

Previously, Chen Xin did not have a direct sense of what this faint warmth meant. However, when he completed the boiler renovation for the hospital and went to the pedestrian street shelter to renovate the boiler for this large shelter, the survivors’ living conditions were shocking to him.

The pedestrian street shelter is a fairly large underground space, and because its structure is a double-layered underground pedestrian street with a sunken plaza, it was originally designed as a civil defense facility, so its ventilation is excellent.

Good ventilation is, of course, necessary for underground buildings, but it also means that heat loss is easier, especially since larger underground spaces require more vents, leading to more heat dissipation.

This resulted in the temperature of the pedestrian street shelter being lower than that of other medium-sized shelters.

Particularly, the open nature of the central sunken plaza of the pedestrian street, even after reinforcement and insulation measures during shelter renovation, remains a significant problem for reducing the shelter’s temperature.

Additionally, the linear structure of the pedestrian street leads to rapid air circulation within the entire shelter, which might not be noticeable during normal walks, but when the temperature drops below zero, the circulating air causes any bit of heat anywhere in the shelter to escape and dissipate quickly.

This has led to a particularly high number of people suffering from frostbite and hypothermia in the pedestrian street shelter. Many are unable to leave their rooms to seek treatment and can only lie in cold and cramped rooms, wrapped in blankets and quilts that have long since become icy, huddled near the radiator, shivering as their conditions worsen.

Although the shelter managers have arranged for patrol staff to help survivors in need, the sheer number of people and the vastness of the area make it difficult for patrol staff to provide timely assistance and treatment to everyone.

Many only reach a hospital for treatment when their conditions become severe, which is still fortunate. Some, due to weakness or other illnesses, simply perish in the cold.

When Chen Xin arrived at the pedestrian street shelter, at the entrance of the sunken plaza, he saw no fewer than twenty body bags, already containing bodies, lined up at the shelter entrance, waiting to be sent for cremation.

This was a heart-wrenching sight. Seeing the survivors cramped in small rooms, converted from the storefronts of the original underground pedestrian street, Chen Xin could deeply feel their helplessness and despair.

Apocalypse, disaster, cold... all of this leaves no hope in sight.

It must be said, the pedestrian street shelter indeed has the worst insulation of all the shelters in the city. Compared to it, the other two large shelters do not lose heat as easily.

In fact, even after Chen Xin completed the boiler renovation and replaced the heating pipeline with gas heating, the temperature inside the pedestrian street shelter did not rise above zero.

Fortunately, the temperature inside did receive a significant boost after the boiler renovation, rising from minus twenty-something degrees to minus a few degrees, just barely enough to prevent the residents from feeling no warmth even when wrapped in blankets near the radiator.

After Chen Xin renovated the boiler and heating pipeline, as long as residents kept their room doors closed, they could, with the aid of the heating, allow the temperature in a small local space to rise above zero.

However, compared to other shelters where the overall temperature rose above zero, conditions here were undoubtedly much harsher.

Luckily, the hot water coming out of the boiler room was still scalding, allowing people here to enjoy a warm shower, alleviating the pain they had endured for days due to continuous low temperatures.

After completing the renovations of three large and six medium-sized city shelters, Chen Xin could finally focus his energy on the isotope generator project.

After all, though Chen Xin had completed the boiler renovations for all large and medium-sized city shelters, saving tens of thousands from freezing to death in the snowstorm, over 99.99% of Flame Country’s population was still facing the same fate.

Moreover, they were not as fortunate to have someone like Chen Xin helping them; they could only rely on themselves to withstand the snowstorm.

Regarding this, Chen Xin truly had no confidence that they could manage to get through it.

For this reason, Chen Xin consulted researchers, asking if they had other methods to help those still suffering in the snowstorm, but the answers were disheartening.

Even the nation had no better strategies to cope with this dreadful snow disaster, other than increasing heating efforts to endure through it.

This only made Chen Xin pay more attention to the isotope generator project.

Theoretically, an isotope generator could supply all electricity needs for a shelter, and the equipment itself doesn’t take up much space. Once assembled, it could fit into a normal-sized bedroom.

If mass-produced and deployed to shelters nationwide, they could provide ample electricity for electric heating, complementing coal heating, which would enable people to endure this snow disaster, the end of which is unknown.

This is why, despite knowing the type approval and manufacturing of the isotope generator would take time, Chen Xin still devoted his energy to the project.

In the past, with weather systems’ regulation, even the fiercest snowstorm would last only a few days, and widespread cold weather wouldn’t persist for long.

But with weather systems now collapsed and the world frozen over, this snowstorm has already lasted over two weeks, and no one knows when it will end.

It could end tomorrow, next week, next month, or possibly last an entire year like storms on Mars.

Therefore, to prevent the situation from worsening further, Chen Xin felt that if he could, he should do whatever possible, at least to save more lives, rather than watch them freeze to death.