Chapter 135: In this world where we only kill but not bury The New Year's bell of 1948 AD rang leisurely, allowing this war-torn world to enter the new year tremblingly.
At the same time, almost all humans in the northern hemisphere are chattering, shivering, and freezing in the midst of a super cold wave that has not been seen in a century.
The Icelandic volcanic eruption that has lasted for more than half a year is still sending plumes of smoke into the sky and shows no sign of subside.
Millions of tons of volcanic ash entered the atmosphere, forming a huge smoke cloud, centered in the North Atlantic, and gradually spread from North America and Western Europe to the world.
These volcanic ash first caused various meteorological wonders in the sky.
Starting in the spring and summer of 1947, Europeans could often see dark red dusk and dawn that lasted for a long time.
In the northeastern United States, there is a continuous "dry fog" that cannot be dispersed by wind and rain.
In Norway, where the aurora shines, confused Nordic people discovered during the polar night that although the sky above their heads was clear and cloudless, the lower half of the sky was inexplicably hazy.
Generally, it can be observed with the naked eye according to old experience.
The stars have to be searched very hard to see.
What's even more terrible is that the volcanic ash entering the atmosphere has to a considerable extent isolated the light and heat projected from the sun to the earth's surface, causing a major cooling of the entire earth and freezing people all over the world this winter.
It was so cold that most parts of Europe experienced super low temperatures ranging from minus 40 degrees Celsius to minus 50 degrees Celsius, which lasted for more than 60 days, so much so that the Rhine and Danube rivers were completely frozen.
Miraculously, light snow even fell on the desert in Morocco, North Africa.
New York in the United States is also shivering in the severe cold.
The sea around Manhattan Island has been frozen into an ice rink, and people can ride dog sleds to New Jersey.
There was a heavy snowstorm in Washington, and three meters of snow almost buried the White House.
The unusually low temperatures in the summer before this led to a significant reduction in agricultural production in Europe and North America, and the food supply was extremely tight.
The situation in North America is a little better.
After all, although crop production has plummeted, the extraction of coal and oil has not been seriously affected by climate change, and various infrastructures have remained intact.
Although food ration quotas have been repeatedly reduced, and the supply of high-calorie foods such as butter, eggs, meat, and sugar is getting less and less, the heating and power supply in cities can still be guaranteed.
Ordinary American citizens only feel a little hungry this winter, but they are still okay.
Not too cold.
As for the situation on the European continent, it is a bit disastrous.
After two consecutive world wars, roads, railways, reservoirs, mines, and power plants were all bombed to pieces.
Not to mention the collapse of industry, several of the most prosperous ancient cities and capitals were also hit by nuclear explosions.
Agricultural production is also in a mess, with large tracts of cultivated land abandoned and farmers lacking fertilizers, seeds, livestock, agricultural machinery and fuel.
Even irrigation water has widespread problems due to the large-scale destruction of water conservancy facilities.
Coupled with the natural disasters, the agricultural output of European countries in 1947 was much more tragic than that of North America.
Not only that, coal, fuel and electricity were also in extreme shortage on the European continent.
Strictly speaking, the whole of Europe was not really The country does not have resources such as coal and oil, but because the transportation is destroyed, even if it has large quantities of materials in hand, it cannot be transported in.
Even if it is transported in, there will be no time to repair the power plant and restore power.
As a result, the once arrogant and civilized Europeans who looked down on the world were now completely trapped in real hunger and cold.
Their daily lives suddenly dropped to the level of the Middle Ages.
There was a lack of water, electricity, clothing, food, and medical care everywhere.
With little medicine, the death rate quickly exceeded the medieval average.
Romania, Poland and Bulgaria in Eastern Europe are all major agricultural countries.
During peacetime, they used to export large amounts of food to developed countries in Western Europe every year.
As a result, with the advent of the "year without summer", grain exports suddenly fell to zero.
Even if they had the first-come-first-served advantage and were able to obtain a large amount of aid supplies from the Soviet Union nearby, they would still be able to provide their respective citizens with food rations of 1,400 calories per person per day.
And due to the chaotic transportation and imperfect distribution system, the reality is far from meeting this standard.
In other words, most people are already hungry every day.
The three Nordic countries of Norway, Sweden and Denmark, relying on herring from the North Atlantic fishing grounds, aid supplies provided by the Soviet Union, and their vast territory and sparse population, were able to barely maintain a living of 1,200 per person per day.
Calorie food ration share.
This amount is only equivalent to more than half of the average level before the war, and it is also mixed with a lot of "food substitutes" such as potato flour residue and crude fish meal, causing many people to suffer from indigestion and dysentery, but the people still get it.
The minimum food supply was provided, at least to avoid commotion.
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In this frightening "year without a summer", Germany's food ration quota was also repeatedly reduced, and finally only 1,000 calories per person per day was left.
And staples were downgraded from bread to potatoes, with butter, cheese and ham disappearing from store shelves.
In order to solve the food crisis, the government and nutrition experts call on people to chew food repeatedly and carefully to fully absorb nutrients.
But to put it bluntly, they are still just deceiving themselves.
Hungry people boarded trains to Russia one after another, rushing to Siberia for a job that would provide them with enough food.
The level of food rationing in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Austria in this "year without summer" was even more tragic than that in Germany, with only 950 calories per person per day, barely enough to survive starvation.
Moreover, almost all the food that can be supplied to the citizens is potatoes, meat and fats.
Even vegetables have failed to harvest in large areas due to abnormal weather.
Those citizens who opened their gardens into vegetable gardens shed tears.
Many Austrians and Czechs suffered from night blindness and rickets, and some fell down while walking in the streets and never got up again.
In the Netherlands and Belgium, due to their dense population, the pressure on food supply is too great, and they have been even more severely damaged by war.
The per capita daily food ration is only an extremely pitiful 500 calories.
If you only eat such a small amount of food every day, you can no longer maintain the basic requirements of the human body.
Necessary for survival, let alone in the cold winter with dozens of degrees below zero.
Ordinary Dutch and Belgians simply couldn't survive the year without access to extra food from the black market.
However, things on the local black market are incredibly expensive.
Salted fish is fifty times higher than the official price, potatoes are seventy times higher than the official price, and bread is two hundred times higher than the official price.
However, because ports, shipping, and trade have been suspended, the local unemployment rate exceeds 60%.
The vast majority of the unemployed are already penniless and cannot afford such expensive black market food.
As a result, this is just a city in Rotterdam. , 65,000 people died of cold and starvation during the "Year Without Summer", more than 3,000 people were hanged for stealing and robbing food, and almost everyone who was left alive suffered from the disease.
Dropsy disease.
In addition to food, the supply of other daily necessities was also very scarce in major cities in these countries.
Because there was no soap, housewives could only use lye as a detergent.
The few cars that survived the world war basically sat idle because they ran out of gas.
In the terrifying winter of minus 40 degrees Celsius, the supply of coal stopped due to railway interruptions, and the urban heating system did not recover until five years later.
As a result, many elderly people froze to death in their beds at night.
There were also some unlucky ones who froze into popsicles while picking up dead branches.
In the park where trees have been cut down for firewood, eye-catching slogans are hung everywhere: "No suicide."
Because there are people everywhere who have no way to survive.
As for France, Spain, Switzerland, Portugal and Italy, because the war ended the latest in these countries, they did not have time to carry out post-war reconstruction or establish national strategic material reserves, so they were involved in the "Year Without Summer".
Due to the low temperature famine, even the rationing system could not be established.
The banknotes issued by the government were equivalent to waste paper from the 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, while the civilian population is left to fend for itself.
Even local government leaders often starve to death and freeze to death.
What’s even more frightening is that when hunger overwhelms everything, all human ethics and shame in human society are thrown away 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.
All kinds of horrifying news about cannibalism began to fill the pages of newspapers.
For example, an abandoned corpse with thigh meat cut off was found on a certain street, and rumors were spread from a certain monastery.
Rumors of nuns cooking abandoned babies and citizens buying overpriced food on the black market Objects resembling children's fingers were found in the sausages.
When these horrific and cruel murders that violated human ethics gradually became the norm in daily life, more and more people began to suffer from mental breakdown.
Various mass suicides occurred one after another, and some officials were arrested for watching too much.
He went crazy after witnessing many cannibalistic tragedies.
All in all, in this gloomy "year without summer", according to incomplete statistics, at least two million people froze to death and starved to death in Germany.
There were also 10 million Germans who were forced to bid farewell to their homeland with tears in their eyes and immigrate to Siberia to open up frontiers for the Russians.
France's industry was completely shut down, agricultural and livestock production was reduced by three-quarters, and approximately 4.8 million French people died from nuclear explosions, radiation sickness, hunger, severe cold, and malnutrition that year.
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Two million people died of starvation and disease in Spain, and 1.5 million people died of starvation in Italy.
Switzerland, which was not self-sufficient in food, suffered a bunch of nuclear bombs, and the entire country fell into anarchy.
According to local reporters, "swarms of beggars" blocked the roads in the Alps, begging passers-by for a piece of bread, or Use any shotguns, farm tools, sticks, and knives you can find to rob homes.
Fortunately, Egypt's population has not exploded at this time, and it has suffered relatively few nuclear bombs in the war.
The fertile and fertile Nile River Basin can still become the bread basket of the entire Mediterranean world, exporting to countries around the Mediterranean, just like in ancient Roman times.
Considerable surpluses of grain remain Relying on the food plundered from Egypt and Syria, as well as a small amount of relief food provided by the Soviets, the southern European countries finally managed to survive the year.
Although there were hungry people and starving people everywhere, people could be seen starving to death in the wilderness and deserted areas.
The corpses were buried, but at least the government was still maintaining the minimum order.
However, on the island of Great Britain, which was hit by a large number of atomic bombs at a high density, was subsequently abandoned by the United States and the Soviet Union, and fell into the Dark Ages a year ago, even such a tragic life has become a luxury after the nuclear explosion.
The remaining British survived another bleak winter after experiencing endless chaos and attacks.
After finally looking forward to the warmth of spring and the flowers blooming, I picked up a hoe and sowed seeds in the ground.
But what happened next was a sudden change in the climate, and almost no crops were harvested.
By this time, every household's food reserves had been exhausted and they could no longer survive.
So, in this miserable "year without a summer", the British found themselves without food, without fuel, lacking shelter and clothing, without even the most basic safety, and the last of their treasured reserves was 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, residents in southern England searched for boats and bundled rafts in an attempt to cross the channel and find a way to survive on the European continent.
However, on the other side of the strait, the people in France and the Low Countries were also on the verge of starving to death and freezing to death, and there was nowhere left to help the British islanders on the other side of the strait.
What's more, Paris and Amsterdam were also hit with nuclear bombs, killing millions.
The blood feud was all blamed on the American and British Allies.
Seeing that these British people had the audacity to come to snatch things from their own territory.
To eat, the French and Dutch had no good looks.
Naturally, they grabbed weapons and shouted to kill.
They lynched hundreds of hungry British people who came across the sea every day.
But despite this, the British, who were driven by hunger, continued to cross the sea in batches, and tried their best to arm themselves, forming a variety of maritime robbery gangs, waiting for opportunities to land on the coast of the European continent from time to time, and from those remaining The only goal of plundering food and fuel in the settlements is to survive.
Everything is like a replay of the past when Viking pirates were forced by hunger and cold and drove pirate ships to attack the European continent.
In the northern part of the island of Great Britain, because it is too far away from the European continent, the British there do not even have a way to escape.
They can only die in despair of thousands of people freezing and starving, or struggling to survive, constantly Breaking through the lower limit and making all kinds of jaw-dropping actions Almost all the birds and beasts in the wilderness of the Scottish Highlands were hunted down this year, and even the rats in the sewers became delicacies on people's dinner plates.
Finally, various horrific rumors of cannibalism began to spread everywhere, and various evidences It does show that there were many 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 in riots and fires, and it stopped sending radio signals to the outside world forever.
No one can really say clearly that day.
What really happened in Edinburgh.
It was not until the end of the war that the Soviets tentatively sent a marine force into the abandoned city.
They then searched the entire city and found no living people.
Instead, they found several churches and palaces that had been erected.
There are some large pots with boiled human bones piled in the corners.
Compared with the United Kingdom, the situation in Ireland is slightly better.
Although the food harvest is basically impossible, at least there is a government formed by the Irish Republican Army, which is trying to maintain the minimum social order.
In addition, it also organizes people to go fishing in the sea to collect edible food. bark grass roots, and rushed to cultivate the relatively cold-resistant crops in season, and managed to obtain a small amount of relief aid from the Soviet Union in food, fuel and other living materials.
But even so, the scene of the "year without summer" on the island of Ireland is already like a purgatory on earth.
According to an on-the-spot interview report by a Soviet reporter: "There were already a lot of beggars in Ireland, and now the number has increased sharply.
Every time they go to a town, there are groups of women, children and elderly people gathering around the station.
They are crowded The road, like an army, everyone's eyes are full of In the pale wilderness with despair and the dead on their cheeks, young children carrying baskets climbed up dead trees to pick leaves to satisfy their hunger regardless of the danger, but the leaves had almost been plucked out; everywhere you could see hungry people with stomachs as bloated as balloons.
Dead in the wilderness, uncollected and buried, but the flesh from the thighs was cut off.”
In short, when the New Year's bell rang in 1948, Europeans still silently thanked God and fate for allowing them to survive this arduous "year without summer" without knowing what would happen next.
There will be an even colder and more miserable "Year of the Ice" s: Regarding the new book, an editor suggested that I write about the social and economic issues in the martial arts world, complaining about the unscientific traffic speed, unscientific information circulation level, weird prices, forgotten dialect communication barriers, and the weak existence of the imperial court in the martial arts world.
Wait, is anyone interested in this?
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For example, when Ye Gucheng from Nanhai competed with Ximen Chuixue from Saibei, it would be normal for both sides to speak like ducks and not understand each other.
As for the maximum selling price of each candied haws in Jian Wang 3, which is eighty taels of gold, just think that gold in the Tang Dynasty is cheaper than iron in the online game world oshow7: