Chapter 355: Supreme Command (I)
It was still January 28th of the 23rd year.
Deep under the vast and sparsely visited Southern Ocean, in an area called the Astronaut Sea, five submarines are sailing silently.
These five nuclear submarines are the Pacific-class battleship - No. 5 Southern Ocean; the Super Luzon-class - Madagascar; and the Orca-class No. 34, No. 35, and No. 36.
Captain Carlos Don Quixote of the Southern Ocean also serves as the commander of this task force, the fleet's internal affairs officer is Li Xin, and the fleet's psychological counselor is Wu Yongxing.
Carlos looked at the nautical chart. They were now in the Astronaut Sea in the Southern Ocean, less than 172 kilometers away from Enderby Land in Antarctica.
After being resupplied from a secret submarine base on the south side of Sumatra Island in Southeast Asia, they have been in submerged mode.
"Report, the Penguin Station in Casey Bay has sent us an inquiry signal." The signalman interrupted Carlos' thoughts.
"Reply to them and tell them we will arrive at Casey Bay in five hours."
"yes."
On the magnetic field radar, you can see various magnetic field signals around, which are integrated by the supercomputer's magnetic field radar imaging system to form a three-dimensional image.
Apart from their five submarines, there were not many signals of man-made objects on the surrounding seabed, but there were many fishing boats catching krill on the sea surface.
Since it is summer in the southern hemisphere, Australia and New Zealand, which are close to Antarctica, will catch seafood in the Southern Ocean.
Of course, for the vast Southern Ocean, a few dozen fishing boats would make it seem deserted.
Sapiens has two research stations in Antarctica, one is the penguin station in Casey Bay in Enderby Land, and the other is the blue whale station on Mill Island near Queen Mary Land.
After five and a half hours of diving, they finally entered Casey Bay.
However, the task force did not surface, but instead followed a hidden small trench and entered a huge underwater tunnel.
The radius of this underwater tunnel is 240 meters. It was a huge underwater tunnel that was completed by the employees of Penguin Station using bacterial corrosion technology and eroding the strata for more than half a year.
In order to prevent the cave entrance from being discovered, a special combination of genetically recombinant seaweed was used to form a rock-like mimicry layer at the cave entrance.
At this time, the seaweed mimicry layer had been opened, and the huge Southern Ocean slowly sailed in.
The channel is on the continental shelf, with an average water depth of 350 to 400 meters. There is also a thick layer of glaciers on it, which basically blocks the entry of ordinary civilian ships.
Passing through a 6.3-kilometer-long underwater tunnel, the Southern Ocean finally arrived at its destination, a large submarine port.
The port has 20 berths, two of which can accommodate 100,000-ton class vessels.
After surfacing, the Southern Ocean carefully adjusted its hull on the surface of the harbor so that it could sink quickly when leaving.
More than an hour later, the other four submarines also surfaced and anchored at their respective berths.
The base is located on the dock.
"Carlos, welcome to the Antarctic."
Carlos saluted , then smiled and shook his head: "It's my honor."
Li Xin, who was transferred to serve as the director of the Internal Affairs Department of the Antarctic Region, and Wu Yongxing, the district psychological counselor, also greeted Fang Zhan.
Suddenly they all fell silent, staring solemnly at the cargo hold door of the Southern Ocean.
A specially made life support capsule was being carefully carried down by the soldiers, and the glass windows of the capsule were also covered.
Fang Zhan turned his head and asked quietly: "Is this the thing in the mission?"
"Yes." Carlos nodded.
"Then I'll go over and set up this life support capsule first."
Psychological counselor Wu Yongxing followed.
Soon, the life support capsule, escorted by Fang Zhan, Wu Yongxing and his party, arrived at a special room deep in the base.
Several technicians checked the lines and various backup equipment.
Wu Yongxing asked: "What is the security level here?"
"Level A1. As long as we are not hit directly by a ground-penetrating hydrogen bomb, we can rest assured even if a full-scale nuclear war breaks out outside." Fang Zhan replied directly.
But Wu Yongxing shook his head: "We need to prepare several more backup power supplies and backup life support cabins. Another safe house is not enough. This is the key to whether the company can continue."
"One isn't enough? But even if we build a few more, we can still only use one."
Wu Yongxing expressed his idea: "We can do this. During the expansion of the base, we need to arrange safe houses along the subway line so that if a problem occurs in one of the safe houses, we can quickly transfer the life support capsule to other safe houses."
"Is that so?..." Fang Zhan thought for a while, and finally nodded: "Okay, I will arrange a design team in a few days to adjust the construction plans for each area."
Wu Yongxing reminded: "Remember, the purpose of this base is to serve that life support capsule. Everything else must give way to this."
"Yes, I will definitely urge the design team to make corrections."
Wu Yongxing turned his head and looked at the life support cabin that had been connected to the power supply of the safe house. His eyes were full of fanaticism. He then clasped his hands together and bowed slightly.
After a final check, the group left the safe house.
The super alloy door of the safe house slowly closed.
Fang Zhan, Wu Yongxing , and the leader of the maintenance team are the only ones who have the authority to open the safe house.
Inside the base commander's meeting room.
Fang Zhan briefly introduced the situation of the base to everyone: "Currently our base has three 50-megawatt thorium-based molten salt nuclear reactors, two in operation and one in standby."
"The base has a population of 3,827 people, mostly families made up of young people, and the base's food can sustain the daily needs of 20,000 people."
"In terms of weapons, we are equipped with 5,000 sets of exoskeleton armor and 3,000 sets of working exoskeletons. We can produce light weapons and ammunition ourselves."
"In terms of people's livelihood, hospitals and schools have been built here, as well as various entertainment facilities..."
Carlos looked through the introduction of the base. "Our task force will also be stationed in the Antarctic region in the future, so we will need to add our 7,252 people and increase the food production line."
Li Xin, who is in charge of internal affairs, made some calculations: "Taking into account the future increase in population and just in case, the base's food production line must reach the level of 100,000 people."
He then said: "In addition, various facilities must have safety backups and be dispersed to prevent problems in one area from causing the entire base to shut down."
Carlos also added: "We need to reserve a few more emergency escape routes. No one can predict what will happen in the future."
No one else had any objection to this.
After all, the base in Antarctica was established to restart human civilization after the world is destroyed.
Otherwise, Sapiens would not have gone to so much trouble to build such a huge underground base in such a remote area as Antarctica.
Those who were chosen were all married young people, and they were all carefully selected to ensure that even if there was only this one base left, these people could still reproduce a healthy population.
All the facilities in the entire base are capable of being quickly replicated.
At the same time, it is also necessary to ensure a high degree of self-sustainability and not require the input of materials from the outside.
This is due to a series of practices that the Sapiens Company had previously carried out in the Assam region, which perfected various underground survival techniques and the technology to achieve material self-sufficiency in an isolated environment.
