CHAPTER 64: CHAPTER 64: OXYGEN DEFICIENCY

In the garage of the city police station, Qin Lan and other special police are organizing their equipment. They have an outbound mission today to receive a batch of equipment transported to the city by rail at the train station.

"Li, what equipment are we going to receive today?" As Qin Lan was checking the gun in her hand, her teammate curiously asked their leader in charge of the team: "Usually, it’s the city government people receiving goods. Why are we, the special police team, receiving the equipment today?"

"Didn’t you listen carefully when Captain Ding and the political commissar were briefing just now? Didn’t they say, it’s a batch of vital supplies for the shelter, so it’s an armed escort this time, requiring our special police team to receive," the leader, referred to as Li, also in full field equipment, answered while checking ammunition.

Upon hearing Li’s explanation, Qin Lan, however, had some doubts. She asked Li, "Li, isn’t escorting and guarding supposed to be a job for the armed police? Why are we, the special police, doing it?"

In the Flame Country, the state’s armed forces are divided into three parts: the military, police, and armed police.

The military is responsible for external combat, maintaining national territorial sovereignty, the police maintain social order internally and fight crime, while the armed police are somewhere between the police and the military, not belonging to the police but organized according to military requirements and formations, mainly responsible for local defense and handling emergencies.

According to functionality, escorting important materials should indeed be the job of the armed police.

Li also had some doubts about this issue, but since the task had already been assigned, they couldn’t possibly say they’d figure it out before carrying it out.

So, Li could only say to Qin Lan, "Maybe the city government is up to some tricks again, now is different from before, some things may not be done by the rules."

Li’s words left Qin Lan unsure of what to say; she just wanted to ask why the armed police weren’t doing the escort, instead replaced by their special police, but Li’s words dragged into the small minds of some in the city government, inevitably leaving Qin Lan feeling helpless.

Although the nation still stood, and government functions were still operating normally, the apocalypse was just that; although many things seemed the same as before, they actually weren’t.

Li perhaps also felt that what he said was somewhat inappropriate, so he patted Qin Lan on the shoulder and said to her, "Don’t overthink it, maybe the armed police couldn’t spare any personnel. It’s not like this hasn’t happened before. Let’s complete the mission first and think about anything afterwards."

Hearing Li say so, Qin Lan also pressed down the chaotic thoughts in her mind, focusing her attention on the mission.

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The disaster brought by the meteor impact destroyed what was originally human civilization, now while survivors aren’t few, these humans have merely survived.

For these survivors, the most important thing is to continue living; as for rebuilding human civilization, although the nation is working on post-disaster reconstruction, progress has been very slow, and truly rebuilding human civilization remains a very long task.

This apocalypse disaster brought darkness and cold, although on the surface everything seems to be going fine and it looks like people can soon leave the shelters and begin post-disaster rebuilding.

In reality, the true test brought by the meteor impact has not yet arrived.

Any junior high school biology student knows that all growth depends on the sun, and without sunlight, the vast majority of life on Earth cannot survive.

Now, the dust raised by the meteor has obscured the sky, without sunlight, not only is the temperature dropping, but the ecosystem that could have gradually recovered is completely finished.

The previous global fire had already burned more than 90% of the Earth’s vegetation, releasing a vast amount of carbon dioxide into the air, which temporarily maintained the temperature drop, but without sunlight, the temperature would still soon cool down.

Many people might not grasp the concept, but just thinking about how Earth’s four seasons can create temperature fluctuations of dozens of degrees merely because of the movement of the point of direct sunlight can help understand what losing sunlight means for Earth.

Moreover, there is an even more crucial problem, without sunlight, photosynthesis can’t occur, and without photosynthesis, the carbon dioxide in the air can’t be converted into oxygen.

Oxygen is a crucial existence for life; the larger the organism, the more dependent it is on oxygen. On Earth, only some anaerobic bacteria can survive without oxygen, other creatures, whether plants or animals, need oxygen to sustain life.

A fire not only burned down forests and vegetation that could convert carbon dioxide into oxygen but also consumed a significant portion of oxygen, while releasing a large amount of carbon dioxide.

Although ocean ecology still exists, marine plants like algae can convert some carbon dioxide, but without sunlight, even algae can’t perform photosynthesis, and soon the ocean will fall into an oxygen shortage crisis before land.

Without oxygen, fish in the ocean will die en masse, and the marine ecosystem will collapse accordingly.

As for the land, the previous global fire already extinct a substantial portion of terrestrial life and burned most of the vegetation, so the land’s ecosystem already collapsed then.

After both ocean and terrestrial ecosystems collapse, the atmospheric oxygen cycle will no longer exist, and the oxygen content in the atmosphere will further decrease.

Under normal circumstances, the oxygen content in the atmosphere is 20.9%, but when it falls below 18%, the human body starts to experience hypoxia.

It’s like altitude sickness; at first, the only symptoms might be slightly faster breathing, elevated heart rate and blood pressure, feeling tired more easily, while physically stronger people might feel nothing at all.

But as the oxygen content continues to decrease, what follows will be evident fatigue, declining attention, confused thinking, even a loss of consciousness, leading to coma.

If the oxygen content keeps decreasing, the body will experience symptoms such as headache, tinnitus, dizziness, nausea, vomiting, and even death.

Originally, the vast amount of Earth’s plants performing photosynthesis maintained a relatively stable level of atmospheric oxygen.

But now, with the ecosystem collapsed, relying on ecological self-regulation to restore the oxygen content in the atmosphere before sunlight returns to the Earth is no longer possible.

But fortunately, before the disaster occurred, humans had three months to prepare. Even though during that time, the main focus of governments worldwide was on how to prevent the meteor from falling, this doesn’t mean there was no plan on how to respond to the disaster afterward.