In the decades, or even centuries, following the meteor impact, the surface of the Blue Star will witness no sunlight, and temperatures will drop to tens of degrees below zero. In such an environment, it is obvious that no flora or fauna can survive, and farming and food production will naturally be out of the question.
In the face of material scarcity, things like cold-weather clothing, food to fill the stomach, fuel for warmth, and shelters to live in will become highly sought-after items. Killing for a bit of food… that truly isn't anything new.
Even before the meteor fell, millions of people on Blue Star died of hunger each year.
In those war-torn countries lacking food, people could become food just to fill their stomachs, let alone killing to rob grain.
If it wasn't for Yuan the Great Druid inventing hybrid rice, ensuring food production and enabling the vast majority of the population to eat their fill, Flame Country would also be troubled by food issues just like other countries around the world.
The food problem is a global issue, and with the loss of sunlight and an impending global cooling, any hope for the original global food production has gone up in smoke.
After losing the original food output, the majority of countries around the world will fall into a food crisis and soon face starvation.
This is because a substantial number of countries around the world have yet to solve their food problem, traditionally relying on imports, which no one can provide for them now.
In such conditions, the larger the population, the quicker the consumption of reserve materials, making any possibly existing external supplies highly coveted.
No one would complain about having more resources to secure their survival, but trying to obtain these resources…
In this end-of-the-world scenario, where morality and legal constraints are lost, it truly becomes who has the bigger fist that holds reason.
In fact, the question of what to eat in the coming days is a dilemma all humanity faces. Without grain from fields, relying solely on reserved materials cannot sustain the human race.
The already constructed national shelters should have some reserved materials, able to restore production to a certain extent. After all, Chen Xin himself managed to set up a growing greenhouse in a shelter. He doesn't believe the nation lacks such capability.
But the only things obtainable from the growing greenhouse would be very scarce amounts of vegetables and fruits. Large-scale greenhouse grain production is unrealistic.
At least in the first few years following the natural disaster, establishing a large-scale greenhouse growing system is not very feasible and not cost-effective either.
It's worth noting that while hybrid rice has high yield, it's still rice, and growing it consumes a large amount of water resources. In an apocalyptic world with temperatures tens of degrees below zero, obtaining enough water resources is itself a massive challenge.
In fact, the nation has no plans to construct a large-scale greenhouse for growing grain. According to previously published official shelter data, the national strategy for future food supply assurance revolves around growing mushrooms and raising rats.
Compared to traditional crops needing sunlight and consuming large volumes of freshwater, mushrooms are evidently easier to cultivate. As long as the dark room can maintain a temperature of around 18-20 degrees, with well-prepared substrate and a humid environment, mushroom growing conditions can be satisfied.
Mushrooms, although not as tasty as fruit and vegetables, are edible fungi rich in fats, proteins, carbohydrates, dietary fiber, and various vitamins, able to meet the body's survival needs.
As for raising rats, it's a method to obtain meat resources better than rearing other poultry or livestock. After all, everyone knows the resilience of rats; a bit of food can keep them alive.
As long as the breeding environment is kept clean and the subsequent processing is hygienic, stable meat resources can be obtained.
However, even with these two paths to ensure food supply, resources will still be tight.
When the country previously built shelters, these setups were only equipped in major cities' primary shelters. Some of the shelters converted from residential area's underground civil defense facilities may not have had time to install these facilities.
And even if they are equipped, it will take some time to scale up, so in the initial phase of the apocalypse, most shelters will likely still rely on pre-stockpiled materials to get by.
But... material reserves are limited.
With the arrival of the apocalypse, although the nation has indeed built many shelters and successfully sheltered most people to avoid losing lives in the first wave of disaster brought by the meteor impact,
this also brings another problem, which is that more people mean more consumption of materials.
Survival will undoubtedly consume food and water and generate various social issues as a result.
The various disasters brought by the meteor impact would destroy most of the original communication facilities on the Blue Star's surface. Human communication levels might regress back to the era of telegraphs and wired telephones, with mobile phones and wireless communication basically rendered useless.
With poor communication, and everyone staying within such enclosed and relatively independent environments like shelters, forming their own little circles beyond governmental reach is foreseeable.
Before the nation restores its ability to exercise control across the country, the exposure of chaos and some dark aspects of human nature will be inevitable.
No one can predict when the country will restore production, rebuild societal order, and should the most extreme situation occur, the level of external danger will sharply increase.
Much like the rescue teams in "Wandering Earth," equipped with exoskeleton armor and heavy firepower for operations on the surface, their firepower isn't just for breaking glass.
In such a scenario, if Chen Xin lacks self-protection ability and his shelter doesn't have the capacity to resist external threats, all he currently possesses may very well become a piece of fat meat in others' eyes.
For Chen Xin, the first thirty years of life were in an era of peace, living in one of the world's safest countries, never worrying about personal security.
But now with the advent of the apocalypse, it's a concern he must take seriously.
Fortunately, due to past experiences in outdoor survival, dealing with some potential dangers was part and parcel, and Chen Xin does have some items on hand to handle threats.
A samurai sword, a recurve bow, and two daggers, such items brought out in peaceful times would undoubtedly be confiscated by the police, but as wilderness survival tools or, in this apocalyptic age, as self-defense tools, they provide Chen Xin with a great sense of security.
Especially after discovering that these weapons, along with the cabinet they're stored in, can be seen as a whole for upgrading, his sense of security increased significantly.