Forty-nine rules of the end times

Chapter 51 The house leaks and it rains all night
"Teacher Feng? Teacher Feng!"

"Oh no! Teacher Feng is in critical condition! We need to get her to the hospital right away!"

On the morning of June 9th, at the Limei Hotel, many people were anxiously surrounding a man with a refined appearance.

Ms. Feng had been running a fever for several days. She thought that resting more, drinking hot water, and taking medicine would help her get better, but her condition worsened over the next few days.

This morning, someone checked on him and found that he was burning up with fever, unconscious, and in a coma. This was beyond the point where medication could solve the problem; he had to be taken to the hospital.

The problem is, how do we deliver it?
"We need the authorities to send a car to pick us up!" someone said. "We can't take them ourselves!"

"Call the emergency management department and the hospital!"

The people discussed calling the official department and explaining the situation once they got through.

"Hello! This is the Limei Hotel. Someone is very sick and needs to be taken to the hospital immediately!"

"Okay, we will coordinate and arrange it as soon as possible."

"Please hurry, the person has already fainted!"

After the call ended, everyone waited for more than half an hour, but no car came. When they called again, the reply was still the same: "There are too many people seeking help at the moment, we will coordinate and arrange it as soon as possible."

This was really worrying. Someone went to find the armed squad leader who was hiding in the corner, but the latter was also helpless about this problem.

"We are only responsible for handling public security issues; we are probably powerless to deal with other problems," the squad leader said.

He was telling the truth. In a situation like this, the gun in his hand couldn't save lives, nor could it summon a rescue vehicle out of thin air.

"If we delay any longer, he might not make it!" One of the men who was close to Teacher Feng couldn't sit still any longer. "I suggest we carry him to the hospital!"

As soon as the man said this, the people around him looked at him with extremely strange eyes.

"Carry him to the hospital? Are you kidding me? The nearest hospital is two kilometers away..."

"It's minus twenty degrees Celsius outside right now, and the blizzard is relentless. Going out is suicide!"

"Are we just going to stand by and watch people die from disease?!"

Someone walked to the door, pointed outside, and said to the man, "Come and see for yourself what it looks like outside!"

Looking out from the hotel entrance, only the main road has relatively little snow accumulation because officials clear it 24 hours a day. Outside the main road, it's completely a frozen wasteland.

Across the street, ice walls over four meters high have been piled up on the sidewalk. These ice walls stretch as far as the eye can see, like a small Great Wall of ice and snow, completely blocking out the shops along the street behind them.

Looking further into the distance, the relentless heavy snowfall severely reduced visibility. Nothing could be seen except for a vast expanse of white.

Even near the hotel entrance steps, despite dozens of people going out to clean every day, sweeping, shoveling, and salting, a lot of very slippery thin layers of ice still froze due to the continuous low temperature.

Yesterday, when the delivery truck came to pick up supplies, two people slipped and fell, almost breaking their bones.

In such dire circumstances, carrying someone to the hospital seems like a complete fantasy to most people.

Few people responded, and the man who had made the suggestion earlier had no choice but to give up and carry the person back to the guest room for accommodation.

Currently, over 50 of the hotel's 150 rooms are occupied by patients suffering from colds and fevers. This was decided by public vote, partly to allow them to rest peacefully, and partly as a form of isolation to prevent them from spreading the virus in public spaces like the lobby.

However, this approach hasn't been very effective; new patients are still appearing every day, and the conditions of some existing patients are worsening. If this continues, people will die before long.

"Boom!!!"

"Wow--"

Just as many people were feeling anxious about Teacher Feng's unconsciousness, a loud crash and the sound of shattering glass coming from the doorway startled everyone.

Everyone in the lobby looked over and saw that the large signboard with the four characters "Limei Hotel" had fallen down and smashed the hotel's glass door.

In an instant, shards of glass flew all over the floor, and with no thick glass door to block them, a large amount of cold air rushed into the hall from the outside, causing many people to shiver and startling the hundreds of people in the hall.

"The door is broken!"

"Oh no! The snow must have been too heavy and crushed the hotel sign!" "Quick! Block the door! Cold air is getting in!"

People hurriedly moved tables and grabbed blankets to block the door. However, some disagreed, arguing that if the door was blocked, how would they retrieve supplies later?
The hotel houses hundreds of people who consume a large amount of supplies every day, and the Bureau of Supplies has to send delivery trucks every seven or eight days. Now, with the entrance blocked, it's inconvenient to go out and clear the snow from the entrance every day. Otherwise, in three or four days, ice walls like those on a sidewalk will be erected at the entrance, trapping everyone inside the hotel!
"Hey! Hey!"

At that moment, shouts also came from the direction of the restaurant.

"The water isn't flowing! The water's been cut off!"

"what?!"

"Oh no, the pipes must be frozen! I knew it, with the outside temperature always so low, the pipes were bound to freeze sooner or later..."

"What do we do now? Do we have enough drinking water left? Should we contact the water supply department immediately to send some water?"

As if things weren't going to go wrong, a series of accidents threw the entire hotel into chaos. People were panicked, and fear was spreading rapidly.

"Calm down, everyone!" At this critical moment, the captain of the armed squad stepped forward and shouted, "Don't panic! Deal with any problems one by one!"

……

The post-apocalyptic rules and countermeasures research room, conference room.

Given the severe and volatile situation surrounding the rules, this is the third additional meeting to be held.

An analyst is standing in front of a large screen, explaining information gathered from all over the country.

"As of yesterday, June 8, this incident has caused six figures of casualties, with the main casualties concentrated in rural areas surrounding major cities. The primary cause of the casualties is the collapse of houses due to the accumulation of snow, which has buried a large number of people and made rescue impossible."

"Currently, among the ten megacities with populations exceeding ten million, the number of casualties that can be statistically recorded is not high. However, this number is rapidly increasing over time, which is related to supply problems with basic energy sources such as water and electricity."

"Take Wuming City, which has the highest number of countable casualties among megacities, as an example. For many years, the city has vigorously developed new energy sources, and some of its electricity is provided by wind and solar power."

After the regulations were implemented, cloud cover blocked direct sunlight, severely impacting the efficiency of solar panel power generation. Simultaneously, numerous wind turbines in the city were frozen by the blizzard, rendering them unable to operate and provide electricity, ultimately leading to a power shortage in the city.

"In areas where there was a power outage, people gathered quickly became chaotic because they could not use air conditioners, electric heaters, or other heating devices. Even with the suppression of armed squads, several clashes occurred, resulting in bloodshed and casualties."

"The city has already begun citywide power rationing, with different areas receiving power at different times. It is worth noting that other megacities may soon face similar crises."

The analyst paused, switched charts, and continued, "The persistently low temperatures have also caused numerous water pipes in cities to freeze and burst, leading to water supply problems. This is especially true in several major southern cities, where the lack of underground heating systems has resulted in widespread pipe freezing."

"Finally, there is the issue of transporting supplies. Warehouses in various places have stockpiled a large amount of daily necessities in advance, enough to meet people's survival needs. However, during the transportation process, the exits of many gathering points were not cleared in time, resulting in them being buried by snow and blocked by ice walls, making it impossible to deliver supplies to people smoothly."

"However, some cities have managed to solve this problem by deploying drilling rigs to create snow tunnels... According to our analysis, the greatest risk of casualties still lies in the risk of building collapse."

The analyst said solemnly, "It's not just rural brick and mud houses that are collapsing due to the weight of accumulated snow; shops in the city have also collapsed in large numbers in the past few days. Yesterday, a stadium in Fengnan City with more than a thousand people gathered also collapsed overnight under the weight of accumulated snow. The roof collapsed and fell, and blizzard snow poured in. Almost no one inside survived..."

"Damn this shoddy construction! They must have cut corners during construction!" a hot-tempered scientist cursed. "The people in charge of construction and supervision should all be arrested and executed!"

"The most urgent task now is to immediately notify the emergency management bureaus in various regions. They must coordinate resources and spare no effort to ensure the safety of buildings in areas where people are gathering!"

"That's right. We can't just clear the snow from the main roads; we also need to deal with the snow on the roofs of buildings in these settlements. The snowfall in these cities is just too heavy. The snowflakes may look light, but when they accumulate, they become incredibly heavy!"

"Based on density calculations, just one foot of snow on a 100-square-meter surface can accumulate to a total weight in the tons! And for the snowfall in a megacity, it only takes a day and a night to reach this level."

The person in charge, Gao Liangwei, said, "Immediately synchronize the relevant information with the emergency management bureaus in various regions so that they can handle it. And reiterate that ensuring the survival of personnel is the top priority, and no amount of resources is too much to ask for."

After Gao Liangwei finished speaking, he remembered something and asked a person in a white uniform representing the Public Security Bureau, "What is the current status of the investigation into the kidnapping case involving multiple people with high mental abilities?"

"The head of the public security bureau in Yunhua has identified a key figure, but due to Blizzard's rules, they haven't been able to conduct further investigations yet, and currently they only have witness testimonies, so the chain of evidence is not yet complete."

“My opinion is to arrest them now,” Gao Liangwei said without hesitation. “Given the current situation, there’s no time to think about it too much. Delay will only lead to complications. Evidence can be gathered later. Let’s first take them into custody, find out the purpose of the kidnapping, and whether there are any other accomplices.”

　Thank you so much to all the readers for your comments, favorites, votes, tips, and continued reading! I am truly grateful!

　　Because some readers have complained about the lack of updates, starting yesterday, the word count for each chapter has been increased from around 2,000 to around 3,000. I hope everyone is satisfied.

　　There are still some issues that appeared in the text. Because I don't have much writing experience, even with my best efforts, it's difficult to achieve perfection. So please be understanding and forgiving. Thank you again!
　　
　
(End of this chapter)