Chapter 136: This world that only kills but not buries (Part 2)
As a global abnormal climate catastrophe, when Europe and North America are groaning in the "year without summer" suffering from hunger and cold, those living in other corners of the earth are naturally not spared and can watch the fire from the other side. Luck, but "don't share the blessings, but share the difficulties"...
As a close neighbor to Europe across the sea, North Africa also suffered heavy losses from the abnormal climate of the "Year without Summer", with its main crop production reduced by a quarter. Fortunately, this place has a small population to begin with - in the first half of the 20th century Ye, the population of North Africa has not yet experienced a big explosion like half a century later, and several nuclear explosions killed many urban populations. After such additions and subtractions, there is not a big gap in North Africa's food supply. In Egypt, because the urban population was wiped out by nuclear explosions and wars, rural areas were not much harassed. As a result, food exports increased greatly.
Of course, the extremely chaotic and poor public security and bloody and cruel tribal conflicts still caused the population of North Africa to plummet this year. If we include the previous atomic bomb explosions and the fighting between the US and Soviet armies, the entire North Africa will have a population decline around this year. Approximately two million people were lost.
On the other side of the Sahara Desert, the situation in West Africa was worse than in North Africa, because during the period when the US and Soviet armies were confronting each other across the desert, taking advantage of the fact that the US military's nuclear arsenal was temporarily exhausted and could only be beaten on one side, the Soviet Strategic Air Force More than two hundred atomic bombs were dropped on this area one after another, completely destroying some of the port cities left over from the colonial era. White expatriates who could escape abandoned their belongings and fled to South Africa. Black people took off their pants and carried spears and returned to the tropical rainforest, allowing this land where the light of civilization was extinguished to return to the rule of chief tribes before the Age of Discovery. . As for the number of deaths during this period, it is basically impossible to count. Some say two million, others say 20 million...
Further south, South Africa, located at the southernmost tip of Africa, became a super winner in this nuclear war catastrophe. Not only did it successfully get rid of the colonial rule of the British Empire and become the master of its own country, but it also took advantage of the destruction of the United Kingdom, the acquiescence of the Soviet Union, and the helplessness of the United States to forcibly seize the British Empire's legacy in Africa, under the banner of the "Southern African Community". It took the small half of Africa south of Angola and made it its own exclusive sphere of influence. In addition, it even directly poached a considerable part of the Allied troops in Africa, which really made a lot of money.
Even more fortunately, while establishing an independent country, South Africa also successfully withdrew from the war and established diplomatic relations with both the United States and the Soviet Union, becoming the only real country in the ongoing Third World War. Neutral country - In the foreseeable future, South Africa can not only use its status as a neutral country to resell in-demand materials to make huge profits, but can also mediate peace talks and share various benefits.
In addition, with the destruction of Europe, North Africa and West Africa, millions of white immigrants hurried south, giving a sudden boost to the South African regime that had been suffering from insufficient population (here specifically refers to white people, in South Africa at that time, black people were not considered human beings). The arrival of a large number of high-quality human resources, as well as a large amount of capital and technology, made the newly independent South African Union overjoyed, thinking that they must have been blessed by God and destiny. Some of the most radical, confident, or arrogant South African politicians have even begun to shout the slogan "Africa is for Africans."
The fly in the ointment is that most of South Africa is located on the plateau and has a savanna climate with insufficient rainfall. Most of the land is not suitable for farming. The land available for reclamation only accounts for about one-eighth of the country's total area. Even the Boers back then were Animal husbandry is the main industry, and agriculture has never been a strong point. When the population was sparse in the past, South Africa was self-sufficient in agricultural products and could even export a small amount of surplus food.
However, now, on the one hand, a large number of white refugees are coming from the north, and on the other hand, crop yields have been reduced due to climate variability. As a result, South Africa's food supply situation has also become tight. Although South Africa is famous for being rich in gold and diamonds and has never been short of hard currency, the world is now struggling with climate change and famine. Even if South Africa is willing to spend gold, it is still very difficult for South Africa to import food from abroad. difficulty.
For this reason, although South Africa did not participate in the world war, it still implemented a food rationing system at the beginning of the founding of the country to reduce food consumption and waste. At the same time, regardless of the fact that tropical Africa was also suffering from famine, it instead intensified its efforts to plunder these areas, plundering large amounts of sorghum, corn, cassava flour and dried bananas from the mouths of black people in East and West Africa. This ensured that white South African citizens received a food ration of 2,500 calories per person per day. As for how many black uncles in Congo, Mozambique, Rhodesia and Nigeria will starve to death as a result, no one cares.
At the same time, the Middle East became the main combat direction for the Soviet Red Army to show off its power this year. Since the Kremlin decided to abandon Western Europe, more than two million Red Army troops have been thrown into the battlefields of Asia Minor and Iran, setting off endless bloody storms in this dry and rugged land—similar to those of later generations who were called "democracy, freedom, human rights, Unlike the American soldiers whose hands are bound by the name of "the rule of law", in the face of Comrade Stalin, the iron tyrant who shows no mercy, and the "Cheka" soldiers who specialize in all kinds of dissatisfaction, even if they are replaced by al-Qaeda to carry out the resistance movement, they will still be the same. The mantis' arm is like a chariot.
In general, after experiencing the simultaneous detonation of more than 20 nuclear bombs, continuous carpet bombing, and several urban offensive and defensive battles that seriously violated the spirit of humanitarianism, the Turks living in Europe have basically become extinct. The number of Turks in Asia Minor has also decreased to less than 8 million, of which 2 million Turks are being prosecuted as terrorists or "suspected terrorists". They were imprisoned in various labor camps and worked hard day and night under the whips of "Cheka" soldiers - without having to consider any public opinion issues or whether the cost was too high, relying on modern It is actually not very difficult to suppress the resistance of the people in the occupied areas by means of killing. Any method of sowing discord and killing chickens to scare monkeys is a bad trick. Otherwise, how could the Europeans colonize the world in the past? As an ally of the Soviet Union and enemies of the Turks, the Kurds happily took over their fields and houses, and even took in their wives and daughters - truly "the stone must be overheated, and the population must be rekindled"...< br>
In fact, in secret meetings of high-level Kremlin officials, someone once proposed a "final solution" to the Turkish problem, which was to ensure the absolute security of the Bosporus and Constantinople. It could be imitated. The way the Chechens were treated in the past was to move the entire Turkish nation out of Asia Minor and into Iran and Ethiopia. Or go to other more distant places, such as going to the Alaska Peninsula to hunt bears... However, after further discussion, most committee members considered that if the Turks in Asia Minor were cleared too thoroughly, the Kurds might become too powerful. , so that the front door rejects the wolf and the back door allows the tiger to enter, so this proposal is still on hold for the time being.
The Iranians also enjoyed similar treatment in front of the Soviet Red Army. However, the Soviet army's interest in the Iranian plateau was obviously not as high as that of Constantinople. After occupying a small lowland plain on the southern coast of the Caspian Sea and destroying the Iranian Kingdom in Tehran After the government, the Soviet Red Army sent to Iran temporarily stopped continuing its offensive, and instead sat back and watched the remaining Iranians kill each other in chaos and famine.
As for the Arabs further south, except for a period of time when they were bombed by nuclear bombs, poison gas bombs, incendiary bombs and high-explosive bombs every three days, killing more than 10 million people, they are currently not within the direct attack range of the Soviet Red Army. Within - after South Africa announced its withdrawal from the war and disarmed General Eisenhower and his troops and expelled them from East Africa, the Soviets' nuclear and conventional bombing of the Middle East basically stopped.
But this does not mean that the Arabs will be able to enjoy peace from now on, because before this, more than two hundred atomic bombs have destroyed most of the cities of some size in the entire Middle East. The destruction of various governments has re-fragmented the entire Arab world, returning to the era of tribal rule, and warlord wars have quickly broken out everywhere. The Soviet Union took the opportunity to maintain a certain degree of trade with the Arab world through several ports along the coast of Syria, using the arms eliminated by the Red Army in exchange for the food that the Arabs picked out of their mouths - because the urban population that originally consumed these food was in a mushroom cloud. disappeared, so the Middle East actually became a food exporting place again after thousands of years.
Looking further east from Iran, the densely populated Indian subcontinent is still desperately struggling in the whirlpool of endless wars. The "year without summer" caused a significant reduction in food production, amidst the background of war and division, resulting in The consequences are far more tragic than in peacetime - in previous peacetimes, whenever there was a sign of famine, India's rulers would reduce taxes and provide some relief measures to assist the victims. However, during the war, the limited resources were exhausted and destroyed by the military. No matter which force it was, no disaster relief measures were taken seriously.
On the contrary, Nehru, who ruled the most densely populated Ganges River Basin, in order to reverse the losing battle in the previous stage, raised the tax standard and took away the last bit of rice from farmers to raise funds to import arms. , the result was an unprecedented tragedy - in the upper reaches of the Ganges, according to a reporter's description: "The bones of hundreds of thousands of starving people covered the plains outside Delhi, and countless corpses of starved people were floating on the entire Ganges River." In Bangladesh, downstream of the Ganges River, ten million people starved to death that year. Large areas of farmland were abandoned and the fields were overgrown with weeds, turning them into unfathomable jungles. The few survivors had to subsist on herbivory or even cannibalism. However, almost all of the warlords fighting each other on the Indian subcontinent showed no mercy for the deaths of the common people at the bottom, and even publicly said: "...The famine is the poor's own fault. Who allows them to breed like rabbits?"< br>
According to incomplete statistics, in 1947, the "year without a summer," 20 million people died in war and starvation in India. This is really a sad figure. What is even more sad is that in the next year when the climate is even weirder, more people will starve to death in India...
With the withdrawal of British troops, there was a temporary power vacuum in Southeast Asian countries. The Japanese navy, which has returned to Southeast Asia, seems to have little interest in other places except occupying the tiny territory of Singapore. Therefore, after being colonized for many years, the people of various countries in Southeast Asia finally ushered in a good time to be the masters of their own country. However, whether it is the Communist Party of Burma, the Communist Party of Vietnam, the Communist Party of the Philippines, the Communist Party of Malaya, or the Thai Republican Government after expelling the king, they only have the name of a central government, and are temporarily unable to suppress the national territory, and are still fighting endlessly with various separatist forces. guerrilla warfare and counter-guerrilla warfare. As for Indonesia, a vast country with a thousand islands, after the nuclear explosion in Jakarta, it fell into a state of anarchy with warlords and chiefs fighting. More than a hundred chiefs, sultans and military governments, large and small, were fighting each other. It is conservatively estimated that they would be divided. It would be enough to form twenty or thirty small countries.
However, since the Icelandic volcano that erupted volcanic ash was far away on the other side of the earth, at least in 1947, the disasters in the entire Southeast Asia region were not significant, and life was relatively easy - if you do not take into account various A messy armed conflict.
In the same way, the new Chinese government, which has initially completed the great cause of national liberation, is still carrying out a vigorous campaign of suppressing banditry and advancing into ethnic minority border areas. In the face of land reform and trials, the armed feudal landlords in various places continued to fight to the death even though they had no foreign aid. In just one year, four million people died on the battlefield. The intensity of the resistance was much stronger than that of Chairman Chiang Kai-shek, but it was still of no use against the ruthless Red Army.
Of course, compared to other continents where people are dying by the tens of millions, the Chinese people this year have been considered peaceful and happy. At least the climate anomalies caused by the volcanic eruption in Iceland did not have a significant impact until the autumn harvest in East Asia. But if we wait until next year, it will be hard to say...
Finally, after briefly becoming the focus of the world's attention and the center of competition between the two camps, South America was first hit with more than a hundred atomic bombs in one breath, and suddenly died in less than two months. About 20 million people. Next, as the US military, Soviet army, and Japanese The troops withdrew one after another, and South America, which returned to the Dark Ages, once again pitifully became a corner forgotten by everyone - except for Chile, the only survivor, other countries either lost their central government in the nuclear explosion, or lost their central government in the nuclear explosion. It fell directly into a civil war, which was really terrible.
However, amid the reduction in agricultural production caused by the abnormal global climate, there are no obvious signs of famine in South America, because the big cities that originally consumed the surplus food in the countryside have been almost destroyed by the atomic bombs of the United States and the Soviet Union, and the export channels have also been destroyed. All blocked by world war.
In this way, the farmers on the Pampas Plains found that their crops suddenly had no sales market. Although they had reduced production a lot, they still could not sell them. Put it into the warehouse and stock up, and prepare to see the situation... Of course, it is also possible that unfortunately you encounter bandits and robbers or an army that is more brutal than the bandits and robbers, and even the food and money are plundered.
The Chilean government, which was originally extremely underprepared for war, was able to purchase huge amounts of grain from neighboring countries at extremely low prices, and then hoarded it as a national strategic reserve... However, although it became the great chaos in South America, number one among Winner, but the whole country of Chile is still extremely panicked. The vast majority of wealthy people are busy hoarding supplies in remote countryside to secretly build shelters, and the poor in the city are also preparing to flee at any time - this Chile avoided the nuclear explosion. But the next wave of nuclear explosions may not bring such good luck.
In this way, when the entire human civilization is making great strides towards the dark abyss, the red and white camps, which are just killing and not burying, still have no idea of sacrificing themselves to save the world, but continue to use all their energy to inflict pain on each other. More damage - ever since the B-36 The "Peacemaker" is a big toy that can achieve transoceanic bombing. The Americans use Newfoundland as a base, and from time to time they go to Europe with nuclear bombs to increase their presence: first, they nuked the Portuguese capital Lisbon on Christmas Eve, and gave the Iberian Peninsula The people sent a warm Christmas gift. Then on the last day of 1947, they bombed Bordeaux and Brest in France as a New Year's gift to the French people...
All in all, as the bells ring for New Year's Day, people all over the world bid farewell to the old year that was like purgatory and will usher in an even more miserable New Year.
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PS: The U.S. Imperial Army has a tradition of forcing veterans to rebel against them. The Department of Defense actually asked California veterans to return their war allowances from ten years ago!
Ten years ago, in the face of the long-term wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, in order to fill the vacancies in the military, the Pentagon used huge bonuses to encourage retired soldiers to re-enlist in the army. Unexpectedly, after they returned home scarred after six years of hard fighting, the Department of Defense would have to They handed over the money and had to pay interest. The reason was that they were too hasty when signing the contract, and many people came to the front line without meeting the standards - such as being too old, not having enough education, etc...
Moreover, many of these veterans have become disabled and have financial difficulties. In order to pay out the money, they have to sell their houses - it is really a loss of money and life! And how much is the bonus collected? All added up, it was enough to buy an F-15 fighter jet, but it cost nearly 10,000 retired soldiers and made at least hundreds of thousands of soldiers feel disappointed. In addition, the US military also stipulates that soldiers must conduct a collective review before leaving the battlefield. If they are found to be mentally ill, they will be forced to retire, and there will be no retirement pension or retirement security. Then more than 20,000 people were found in Iraq - well, for the sake of the motherland He took drugs and went to war and became mentally ill, and he was still played like this before he was discharged from the army. The American soldiers were really miserable. If they were any worse, they would become the military households of the guards in the late Ming Dynasty.