This is apocalyptic

Chapter 82: Not an Enemy

"Revelers are already celebrating the end of the world, and those who live alone are waiting for death."

Bai Xiao looked at the middle-aged man with a radio and sighed, "This is a ruin that has been abandoned long ago, right? The safe zone doesn't trust those revelers, but you think more people means more strength."

"It's not giving up." Zhou Xu said, "At that time, the safe zone had to accommodate too many people and the capacity was insufficient. People kept arriving one after another, and it was a huge project to resettle so many people. Later, most of the survivors in the ruins had already moved away, and the population was concentrated there. Rebuilding a safe zone here... is no longer necessary, and it is not safe."

“So it was abandoned.”

This is a long-abandoned ruin. Now the people in the safe zone want to go in and find the place where the revelers gather to tell them that time is running out...

For some reason, Bai Xiao felt that everything was so absurd.

It was dark, Zhou Xu picked up his backpack and went to an overpass not far away with Bai Xiao. They picked up some dead branches and leaves and lit a bonfire.

"Having a safe zone and not having a safe zone are like two different worlds." Bai Xiao noticed his supplies.

"The safe zone represents order and productivity, which is the most important foundation for survival," Zhou Xu said.

"You said the safe zone can't accommodate so many people because of the ruins... Linchuan's safe zone is gone?"

Bai Xiao had already thought about it. They had originally arranged enough margins, but the destruction of the shelter next door caused a large number of survivors to gather there, so they were busy resettling a large number of people, until there were not many people left in Linchuan.

In terms of results, it was no different from the migration of the shelter, as it concentrated the number of survivors, but Linchuan became a ruin.

"The safe zone will radiate to the surrounding areas. Having a safe place in the apocalypse will attract all displaced survivors." Zhou Xu said, "Just like you, when you go there, you will know that the safe zone is completely different from the ruins."

"It seems that the safe zone must be very large." Bai Xiao said, "It is the opposite of Linchuan. Have you occupied the city?"

"City?"

Zhou Xu smiled and looked at the young man, "Do you think occupying a city means moving back, and that we just need to live in the buildings before the disaster?"

Bai Xiao was stunned for a moment.

"How do you handle the food, drink, and defecation of tens or hundreds of thousands of people in a city? In a few days, the city will become a cesspool, and a large number of people will flee. A city is a system that requires a lot of basic maintenance. Any damage will cause stagnation, rather than just living in a pile of reinforced concrete buildings. Reconstruction is a long process." Zhou Xu shook his head and said, "With a population, a city will appear only if it operates more efficiently. Maybe you will see cities rising from the ground in the future, but now, it may not be as good as you think."

He paused and continued: "But it's much better than that ruin."

Young people after a disaster always have some fantasies about safe zones from the ruins of high-rise buildings before the disaster.

“Let’s not talk about the agricultural infrastructure. Guess how many days it would take for a city to be paralyzed if there was a water and power outage?”

Zhou Xu's voice was low. He remembered when the apocalypse had just begun, the stagnant cities fell into chaos. From then on, people fled the cities, and many years later, they were still ruins.

"The best result doesn't even happen in the safe zone." Bai Xiao whispered.

The most optimistic development speculation in Lin Duoduo's father's notes did not happen after all, even in the safe zone.

"What?" Zhou Xu didn't hear clearly.

"Reconstruction is really a long process, but the situation is very serious." Bai Xiao said. The area near the safe zone should be extremely safe. There are no zombies or large animals, so there is no need to worry about being infected.

It's ironic that in the end, he was the only zombie who could resist infection that appeared in the ruins.

"There will always be someone who changes his mind. Not everyone is determined to die." Zhou Xu said, looking at the ruins.

"So this ruin...is it only like this in Linchuan, or is it everywhere?" Bai Xiao asked.

"Where there are safe zones, survivors will gather there. Where there are no safe zones, they will lose population and slowly become ruins."

Zhou Xu said slowly, "The chaos in Linchuan was caused by some mistakes at the time, which led to the destruction of Linchuan's safety zone. When we came to our senses... the situation had become very complicated."

Linchuan is the place with the most doomsday theorists and people who give up. They find that the world is just a huge makeshift team. They can survive by patching it up, but if they can't survive, they will die. There are too many revelers in that land. They refuse to accept asylum, and there have been times when conflicts have been triggered.

Thinking about the past in the ruins, Zhou Xu asked, "Have you ever been with the revelers?"

Bai Xiao said: "I traveled with a doomsday reveler for a while."

He understood everything. Why there was always a kind of dead silence along the way? Most of those who stayed there were people without hope. This was a place where there were no shelters after the apocalypse. The capable people had already left, and the population concentrated on shelters in other places.

"So you still want to go?" Bai Xiao asked.

"Revelers are not the enemy," Zhou Xu said.

"Ok?"

"Revelers will gather together. As long as they live in groups and stick together to survive, there will always be... some people who will have hope, and some people will have children. They will want their children to survive, and thus change their minds. The safe zone has accepted them." Zhou Xu said, his expression was a bit complicated. "I have been to other places, and the real trouble is those survivors who live alone."

"The survivors living alone are actually the enemies?" Bai Xiao thought of Yu Ming, the nerdy uncle.

"No, there are no enemies." Zhou Xu waved his hand.

"Your meaning is very clear, but you just didn't say it." Bai Xiao looked at his expression. Zhou Xu's expression just now had already given people a clue.

Compared to those who preach doomsday, Zhou Xu hates people like Yu Ming who live alone and wait for death more, because as long as those people live together, there will always be all kinds of accidents, someone will always change their mind, and someone will accidentally have a child, igniting hope.

I wonder what Yu Ming’s expression would be if he knew.

"This is the end of the world," Zhou Xu said. "Everyone in the safe zone is trying to survive. Even those who believe in the end of the world sometimes change their minds. Now is the calm before the storm. The disaster is not over yet. Every extra person brings a glimmer of hope for the future. Even if there is no vaccine, we can build underground shelters to isolate everything until a solution is found. Take it slow. There will always be a future. Humans will not die in this disaster."

"But there's no way out of the safe zone." Bai Xiao looked at his backpack, "Otherwise you probably wouldn't have come out."

"Many people in the safe zone are old." Zhou Xu sighed.

It has been twenty years since the end of the world, and the number of young people is disproportionate to that of the previous generation.

The disaster killed many people, but the biggest blow was to the new generation after the disaster.

(End of this chapter)