Chapter 123: A resilient biosphere and a fragile civilization (Part 2)
Judging from the fact that the earth is still full of vitality after experiencing five mass extinctions, there is no doubt about the resilience of the earth's biosphere. However, judging from the ruins of ancient human civilizations such as the ancient Maya and ancient India, there is no doubt about the fragility of human civilization.
To sum up, humans may not be able to destroy the earth, but they can definitely destroy themselves.
The volcanic eruption in Iceland had a minimal impact on the entire earth's biosphere, and it could not even cause a small-scale extinction of species. But for the fragile human civilized society, it has already been a devastating disaster caused by landslides and earthquakes.
——Especially when the human civilization society on the European continent has been torn by wars before and is on the verge of disintegration, and is only missing the final blow: As of now, Europe, once the center of world civilization, is now ravaged by war. Countries are still basically in a desolate state of ruins. Even excluding the United Kingdom, which is currently in a state of anarchy, there are about 50 to 80 million people in continental European countries such as Germany, France, Italy, Greece, the Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, and Spain alone, because cities have been Destroyed and homeless. These people live in cellars, ruins, and caves, as long as they have a roof over their heads. There are tens of millions of people who do not even have such a shelter and can only sleep in the wilderness.
Obviously, such poor living conditions cannot withstand the extremely cold weather of minus 40 degrees Celsius. It is only a trivial matter to freeze to death millions.
Even those urban residents who were lucky enough to keep their houses were living miserable lives. Because the urban infrastructure was destroyed by the war, they were completely deprived of the most basic public services, such as drinking water, gas, and electricity. There are such miserable people all over Europe.
For example, the Port of Marseille in France, which has been undergoing a bloody tug-of-war for more than half a year, found only two street lights in the city after the ceasefire, and 80% of the houses were reduced to rubble. In Vienna, the capital of music, due to Austria's new government's low governance ability, frequent internal strife, and lack of interest in restoring the economy, running water and electricity have never been restored. Citizens can only obtain drinking water from the turbid Danube River, which has to be drilled in winter. Ice melt water, even for high-ranking officials visiting the place, only one bottle of water is used for washing every day. People are sitting in the middle of the shabby machines of the twentieth century and living a medieval life.
Even in the Soviet Union, which had initially completed post-war reconstruction, due to the nuclear explosion, there were still a large number of homeless war refugees who could only live in one room in temporary shelters arranged by the Soviet government. It houses forty people and is packed like a sardine can.
Although European cities are in ruins, life in European rural areas is also equally difficult. As a result of the war, the cultivated land on the European continent was either over-cultivated, burned, flooded, or abandoned. Mussolini had gone to great lengths to drain the swamps in southern Italy, but in the ensuing melee, the Allies deliberately flooded the area, triggering a severe malaria epidemic. During the battle between the Soviet Army and the British Army for the Netherlands, the British Army deliberately opened the Dutch sea dam, causing more than 300,000 hectares of pasture and cultivated land to be inundated by sea water.
When the war was about to end, the victorious Stalin looked over Europe and found that due to the scorched earth policy adopted by all parties during the war, the orchards and vineyards in the countryside were burned down, the poultry and livestock were slaughtered, and even the water conservancy facilities were maliciously destroyed. Destroy, such as blowing up reservoir dams and the like - the defeat of Nazi Germany During the process, Himmler explicitly ordered the SS commanders on the front line to completely destroy everything in the occupied areas and even the lost territory: "After we leave, leave no prisoners, no livestock, no food, no railroad tracks... The enemy will only find a country completely burned and destroyed.”
Of course, compared with villages and pastures, industrial and mining enterprises were the first targets to be destroyed. For example, in Hungary, more than 90% of the factories were deliberately burned by the Germans, and almost all coal mines were flooded or collapsed. In Yugoslavia, where the war was even worse, it was simply relegated to an agricultural country.
Under such circumstances, the situation of European agriculture was naturally extremely bleak. Even if the surviving farmers escaped the direct killings of the war, when they returned to their hometowns, they found themselves in such a desperate situation: no fertilizer, no Pesticides, lack of seeds, no farm machinery - and even if there was any, the fuel needed to run them could not be found. Even if they dig out the old wooden plows used by their ancestors, they can't find the animals to pull the plows. They can only dig the ground with their own hands and hoes. Even the reservoirs used for irrigation have been blown up, and agricultural water has to rely on rain.
Well, in addition, there are countless landmines buried in many reservoirs, channels and fields. If you want to farm, you have to risk being killed at any time.
Obviously, under such circumstances, the food production in most parts of Europe immediately fell back to the medieval level... What's even worse is that with the eruption of the Icelandic volcano, Europe ushered in a "year without summer" "European villages no longer even have the medieval level of food production.
Moreover, according to expert assessments, this situation of basically no agricultural harvests may continue for as short as two years or as long as five years...
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Under such circumstances, the European countries that were in desperate situation, especially those in Western and Southern Europe where the war had just subsided, could only kneel down and beg for help from the Soviet Big Brother. But then I discovered even more despairingly that traffic across Europe is currently generally paralyzed, and even aid supplies cannot be sent in!
——Roads throughout Europe are covered with mines, telephone lines have been cut off, and bridges of all sizes have been blown up. Except for a few main lines carrying military tasks, traffic throughout Europe is paralyzed. In France and Italy, 80% of the railway and 60% of the road network are unusable. In Greece, three-quarters of the pre-war ships were destroyed, and even the port facilities were basically in ruins. The only mode of transportation generally available to Europeans is walking.
To make matters worse, as the Third World War is still going on, millions of anti-government guerrillas are active in European countries. They obey the radio remote instructions of the White House and the Pentagon and are constantly blowing up bridges, tearing up railways, and destroying railways. Digging dams, burning warehouses... The repair speed of infrastructure in many areas often cannot keep up with the speed of their destruction. In the face of super cold waves, abnormal climate and famine, it is naturally more miserable.
Under this situation, the capitals and big cities of various countries can only maintain the minimum standard of wartime food rationing system, while in most remote or severely damaged areas, the local government-if still If there is such a thing as the government, it can no longer even maintain the rationing system. It can only ignore everything and let the people fend for themselves: this is the current situation in Spain, Switzerland and the Netherlands.
The Soviet Union had no choice but to shrink its forces and let go. Except for retaining a few port strongholds that could be supplied by sea, the main force of the Red Army originally stationed in Western Europe had basically withdrawn in the summer of 1947. To the west of the "Berlin-Geneva" line, Eastern Europe, which has retreated relatively well, has left France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Spain to "self-reliance" and solve domestic people's livelihood problems alone.
As a result, no Western European country could solve its own people's livelihood problems and could only continue to ask for aid supplies from the Soviet Union - but even if the aid supplies were obtained, they could not be distributed due to traffic paralysis and could only be hoarded at the port and slowly consumed. At the same time, it also triggered an unprecedented refugee flow. More than 20 million hungry and cold French, Italians, Spanish, Belgians, Dutch, Germans and people from Eastern Europe struggled to escape to the legendary place where milk and In the Soviet Union of bread, more than half of them died on the way, and less than 10 million people were able to enter the Soviet Union alive.
After the refugees entered the country, in accordance with the Kremlin's highest instructions, except for some technical personnel and their families, all refugees were not allowed to stay in the European territory of the Soviet Union and were quickly sent to Siberia to open up wasteland for farming, cut wood and put them in mines. Naturally, the refugees reacted strongly to this, and no one was willing to go to a place like Siberia. But the problem is that if they are determined not to go to Siberia, then Stalin will let them go to hell.
——The Red Army in the Stalin era was not the soft-hearted Red Army later. The power of the political commissar and the prestige of the Cheka were still more terrifying than Satan in hell. The Soviets naturally took the same approach to deal with the European refugees who were pouring into the country. Under the iron-blood policy, any refugee who dared to cause trouble was a counter-revolutionary and would be shot directly... The Cheka soldiers responsible for the execution originally thought that at least 200,000 to 300,000 people would have to be shot to have a deterrent effect. Unexpectedly, more than 100,000 people were shot and killed, and the remaining refugees were basically honest. This shows that these Europeans are really cowardly.
On the other hand, for Siberia, which has always been short of labor, the bad news for Europe is good news for Siberia - with the rapid influx of nearly 10 million European refugees, Siberia's human resources are now so abundant that they are almost overflowing. And they are not those in Central Asia who are only willing to Illiterate people who chant scriptures and are unwilling to go to school are high-quality talents from Europe, including engineers, senior workers, university professors, and agricultural experts. As long as they survive the temporarily chaotic and difficult initial stage, the Siberian University The prospect of successful development is certainly just around the corner!
——Just as the formation of fertile deltas at the mouths of large rivers must come at the expense of soil erosion on both sides of the river's upper reaches. The dawn of civilization that suddenly appears in the Siberian wilderness naturally needs to use the darkness of the entire Europe as a stepping stone...
"...French newspapers these days have been lamenting one after another, saying that the whole of Europe is entering another dark age after the collapse of the Roman Empire. Comrade Stalin's evaluation of this is, you literati who can only use pens, While newspapers are still being published, publish more fallacies! The real dark age is yet to come! By then, I’m afraid even paper, ink and newspapers will have disappeared!”
Sophie, the ship girl, talked about topics that would make most people's hair stand on end in such a plain way, as if she was just telling an ordinary cold joke.
"... Such words are really cruel... but it is indeed the truth."
Wang Qiu shook his head, "...So, what are the views of Stalin and the Kremlin on the current nightmare life of Europeans? For the European continent that is heading towards darkness, even if the big brother of the Soviet Union cannot be the savior, he still has to shoulder some responsibility. Take some responsibility?”
"... Regarding this question, Stalin's reply was: Under the current circumstances, I cannot make Europeans live a better life than Africans. I can only work hard to lower the living standards of the enemy's people so that they can not even live the same life as Africans. Even if you can’t live up to it, you can use this to enhance the happiness of the European people..."
——Okay, this answer is really gross and steely... full of the cruel and violent aesthetics of Uncle Steel and the Slavic nation.
"...Eh? The whole world is already in such a bad situation. In the next two years, those Europeans who stay in their hometowns can still have the living standards of Africans? I thought they would fall directly to the What about the living standards of the cannibals in Papua New Guinea? ”
In response, Ma Tong blinked curiously, said with an "innocent" expression, and tilted his head cutely.
However, what she described in her words was so...yuck, so disgusting!
Fortunately, everyone here is an extraordinary person who is used to seeing the big world, so naturally everyone can deal with this small scene calmly.
But by the same token, they have no sympathy or compassion for the various tragedies that happened in Europe.
What's more, not to mention the time-travelers who stayed away from the incident, even the leaders of the Soviet Union, in this period of life-and-death all-out war, threw all compassion and justice out of the sky, leaving only a cold and stone heart.
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In fact, for the Soviets, sitting back and watching the destruction of European civilization may be the real plan for long-term stability and foresight.
Since the birth of Russian civilization, it has been in a serious geopolitical dilemma - geographically speaking, Russia is a country that is difficult to defend. Most countries have certain geographical barriers in their core areas to establish defense lines. The core area of Russia has continued from the Grand Duchy of Moscow in the Middle Ages to this day. There are no mountains, rivers, oceans, etc. to protect it. Its national defense strategy mainly relies not on terrain obstacles, but on the harsh climate to exhaust the enemy's strength. This kind of The scorched-earth strategic defense method that caused great damage to itself has caused Russia to suffer all kinds of sufferings in history.
Historically, the invasion of Russia mainly came from two directions: the Eurasian steppe and the Pod Plain, the former such as the Mongols and earlier Huns, and the latter such as the Teutonic Knights, Napoleon, the First German Empire, and the Nazi Empire ——The invasion and expulsion of the Mongols allowed Russian civilization to gradually take shape in the training of blood and fire. The defense against European enemy countries relied on large-scale retreats and scorched-earth policies, which ultimately ended in tragic victory.
In order to make up for its own defensive weaknesses, for Russia, expansion is the best defense-it must expand all the way to the foot of the mountains and the coast. At any period in history, it was difficult for the Russian country to rely on natural barriers to protect itself. Although the north was protected by the Arctic ice sea, and the south had the Black Sea and the Caucasus as its defense line, the east and west sides of the country were open, with smooth roads and no roads. Danger can be defended.
Faced with military pressure from the east and west, Russia needs to continuously expand its buffer zones and rely on attrition and time to win. However, occupying a large buffer zone requires garrison troops, internal police, and intelligence agencies to maintain its rule, forcing Russia to continue to expand outwards. , while needing to centralize power internally and even implement a policy of terror... After paying a huge price, the Russians finally expanded eastward to the Pacific coast, ensuring the security of the eastern front in their core hinterland. But on the Western Front, it only pushed it as far as Poland, and could no longer push it - according to absolute safety standards, it needed to conquer all the way to France!
Although the Russians have been pushing their borders westward as much as possible to compress their opponents' space. But this is too difficult, because the west is the hinterland of the European powers, and you may not be able to win if you break your head. Moreover, even if the Russians are lucky enough to conquer all of Europe, fight all the way to France, and wash their military boots in the Strait of Dover, Russia does not have enough population to digest such a huge territory. Even within the existing territory, the Russian nation The proportion of the country barely exceeds half of the total population. Religious and ethnic issues are a mess. The internal pressure to maintain stability is much stronger than in other countries.
It can be seen that Russia's political center of gravity is separated from its economic center of gravity, and the economic center of gravity is occupied by other nationalities. Russia can only be ruled by a centralized and high-pressure system. The economic center of gravity is close to the war front line and there is no natural danger to defend. As a result, once Defeat could easily lead to economic collapse and national disintegration.
——The core problem of Russia’s geostrategy is that because the hinterland is open and there are no dangerous passes to defend, it must rely on large-scale expansion offensives to maintain the security of the empire. However, excessive expansion will lead to indigestion, which will lead to internal security problems and disintegration. The risk is that a strong political system is needed to maintain the existence of the empire, and when the system collapses or a powerful enemy invades, internal regional disintegration and national security problems will erupt at the same time.
However, against the background of the outbreak of World War III and global nuclear explosions, the Kremlin discovered that there was a solution to this geostrategic dilemma: if the European continent west of the national border was as ignorant and backward as Black Africa, and as sparsely populated as Siberia, So what happens?
——In this case, the Soviet Union can build a super empire with only a small hinterland just like the Romans conquered the Mediterranean world!
When the ancient Roman Empire was established, the population of Rome was not that large, and its level of civilization was not as good as that of the Carthaginians and Greeks. However, with its not-so-large Italian peninsula, it attacked from all directions and was unfavorable. While learning civilization and technology from the Greeks, they used barbarian peoples as targets for practice. At the same time, with their relatively high level of civilization, they integrated various surrounding peoples and eventually ruled the West for five hundred years.
The current situation in the Soviet Union is somewhat similar to when the Roman Empire was founded - the Soviet Union itself has stood on top of the world and no longer needs to absorb nutrients from the civilizations of advanced European countries to develop itself. It only needs to successfully integrate them. You can reach the sky in one step: For this reason, it is necessary to make other European countries even poorer, backward and ignorant than the Soviet Union, and they can only lie down. On the ground, I look up at the prosperity and wealth of the great Soviet Union and drool (the life of the Soviet people is naturally not rich, but wealth is always relative. As long as other countries are made poorer, there will be no problem). In order to compete for a place to become to break the quota for Soviet citizens, and then provide a steady stream of high-quality human resources to the labor-deficient Soviet Union...
In short, it is the Soviet version of the American Dream... But because the hardware conditions of the Soviet Union are not as good as those of the United States, in order to make the life of Soviet citizens widely attractive, it is necessary to appropriately lower the living standards of people in other countries so that they can It would have been worse...
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On the other side, even while they were scrambling to deal with the disaster in Europe, the Soviets never stopped carrying out nuclear strikes against the areas south of the Sahara Desert and the Arabian Desert. The Soviet Union's strategic nuclear strike long-range bomber force has been dropping atomic bombs at a frequency of sometimes two and sometimes three atomic bombs a day for more than six months, effectively and rapidly lowering the living standards of enemy civilians across the front, mainly Arabs.
——At the beginning of the retreat south along the east coast of the Red Sea with 300,000 American and British Allied troops from Jerusalem, General Eisenhower originally planned to set up his headquarters in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, so as to facilitate close contact and coordination with the Saudi Arabian government, from this barren land Collect as many supplies as possible from the land.
Unexpectedly, while the headquarters was still in the process of being relocated, Riyadh was already dropped by the crazed Soviets with an atomic bomb, and Saudi Arabia was destroyed... Looking at the mushroom cloud rising at the end of the horizon ahead, General Eisenhower in the desert reluctantly ordered the convoy After turning around and heading back to Jeddah Port, only a few hours later, Jeddah Port, where a large number of American and British allied forces gathered, was also hit by a Soviet atomic bomb, killing 30,000 US troops and 10,000 citizens.
Seeing that the port of Jeddah was in ruins, Eisenhower had no choice but to move the headquarters to the holy city of Medina despite the protests and riots of the locals. He thought that with the religious status of this place, the Soviets would not dare to mess around anymore. Dropped the atomic bomb? I never thought that Comrade Stalin, who did not believe in evil, had already gone crazy after the nuclear bombing of Leningrad. He could not care about the pagan holy cities. He continued to treat Mecca and Medina with atomic bombs. Just like in the Bible, God sent down fire from heaven to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, destroying these two religious holy cities with ease.
——As the saying goes, "All living beings are equal under nuclear bombs." In the face of deadly high temperatures, radiation and shock waves, no city is more noble.
Despite this, General Eisenhower was lucky enough to escape the catastrophe again. But the Soviet nuclear bombs continued to fall like hailstones one after another... After a few days, there was no city in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia that had not been hit by nuclear bombs, and few places that had not been hit by nuclear bombs. The water source was polluted, so Eisenhower had to move long distances again. Following the troops that continued to retreat south, he moved his headquarters to the Port of Aden in Yemen... Only three days after settling down, another atomic bomb hit the top of the Port of Aden. More than 10,000 US troops and more citizens were sent to the sky.
In this way, in the next few months, Eisenhower moved around the Arabian Peninsula, playing hide and seek with the Soviet nuclear bombs, while watching cities turn into radioactive wastelands... Finally, in the summer, given the reality of the Arabian Peninsula, It was so unsafe that Eisenhower had to He completely moved his headquarters out of Asia and continued to retreat south to the port of Mombasa in Kenya, East Africa, so that he could be considered stable - it was too far from the southernmost frontline air force base of the Soviet Union and beyond the Soviet strategic nuclear strike bomber formation. The combat radius is no longer reachable.
The Americans who came from afar could certainly leave, but those Arabs who were battered by the explosion, looking at the cities and oases swallowed by the mushroom cloud, could only lament in despair: "Wherever Eisenhower goes, the atomic bomb follows." !" - Lament, lament, but facing the Soviet atomic bombs everywhere and the American and British Allied Forces that refused to leave, the indigenous Arabs really had no choice but to sit and wait for death.
In fact, it was not only the Soviets who dropped nuclear bombs all over the Arab world, but the Americans also dropped the last two atomic bombs they had. The first was the nuclear explosion at Port Said at the northern end of the Suez Canal, which more completely destroyed the Suez Canal and blocked the possibility of the Soviet Red Navy rushing out of the Mediterranean Sea and entering the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean. Another atomic bomb was used to atomically explode Cairo, successfully creating millions of refugees and turning Egypt into an anarchic mess, making it difficult for the Soviet Red Army to move up the Nile River and attack the Allies from the east to the south. Military controlled black Africa.
As time went by, more Soviet atomic bombs continued to fall on the edges of the Sahara and Arabian Deserts, turning cities and ports into radioactive dust. If this situation continues, the next stage of the three wars is likely to become a mushroom-growing competition between the two camps across the desert. As for how many Arabs and black African uncles will die at the front of the nuclear explosion, it is just a secondary issue that no one cares about.
——Even if everyone is dead, they can only admit that they are unlucky... In an era when power is truth and cannonballs are justice, this is the sorrow of being a weak person.
Not only do the two camps not care about their lives, they even plan to increase their efforts to plunder them to cope with the food crisis and war consumption.
In addition to Africa and West Asia, before the Soviets withdrew their troops from Western Europe on a large scale, they also dropped dozens of atomic bombs on the Azores, Madeira and Canary Islands isolated in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. This completely eliminated the possibility of the US military counterattacking Europe from the Atlantic direction. At the same time, on the other side of the earth, the Japanese Navy's Combined Fleet, which had been dormant for a long time since it successfully ended the South Pacific Island Seizing War and planted its flag on Easter Island, also rose again in the spring of 1947. Raising the battle flag, pulling anchor and heading out to sea, we launched a new big battle...