Arctic survival, starting in hell at minus fifty degrees Celsius

Upon learning that Sun Chengwu would not be leaving today, the crowd gradually dispersed and returned to their posts.

After everyone left, Darss reported to Sun Chengwu on the progress made over the past month: "After we took over this place, we first carried out housing renovations, and then redistributed the properties."

Using the food you left behind, we survived the most difficult time. The main problem was the tools; we didn't have enough manpower, and we didn't have many fish and shrimp traps.

Those foreign tools are usable, but not very good. After discussing it with Richard, we decided that they needed to be refurbished.

Although the food we produce now is not enough for our monthly consumption, with the increasing availability of tools, we should be able to achieve self-sufficiency in about two weeks.

Next month, we'll have a surplus.

Sun Chengwu said, "You don't need to be under too much pressure. Just maintain a basic standard of living. Store food slowly, there's no rush."

Also, how are those foreigners doing?

Did everyone listen?

When the topic of foreigners came up, Dals paused for a moment before saying, "At first I was quite optimistic. With Lando gone and Hancock dead, these people should be obedient."

But I found that these people are quite different from the Chinese.

Chinese people are accustomed to being obedient and following the crowd from a young age.

But our education abroad is different; we value freedom, and everyone is independent.

Even when Lando was around, she only controlled them with food, making them serve Lando, rather than forcing them to do anything.

When I made them work fourteen hours a day, they showed obvious protest.

We don't have many people, and I'm worried they might riot, so I can only try to control them with food, but it's not very effective.

Later I came up with a solution: since they hate being constrained, I won't make them do any work.

The amount of work you do determines the amount of food you receive.

This way, at least they can be motivated to work voluntarily for ten hours a day, even if the efficiency is not high.

"If the boss can send women over next, maybe I can find a way to double their work efficiency and hours."

Sun Chengwu guessed what he wanted to do. "The woman has been sent over. You are in charge of making arrangements. Whether she is treated as a human being or not, you have full authority to decide."

These women are prisoners of war who have harmed our people…

Sun Chengwu briefly recounted how Zhou Jie and her men had attacked their convoy.

He then continued, "These people deserve to die; there is no need to feel any pity for them."

Even if they try to gain sympathy and cry, don't be soft-hearted.

Otherwise, I'm afraid you'll repeat the mistakes of Xu Hui's camp.

After hearing this, Darss nodded and said, "Okay, I understand. I will definitely be wary of them."

After discussing the important matters, Sun Chengwu and Richard led the bald man and the others on a two-round tour of the camp.

The purpose was to familiarize the bald man with the initial setup of the camp, the use of some tools, and how to obtain food.

These Russians, aside from their dabbling in iron forging, were utterly incompetent at hunting and gathering food.

Even after seeing the fish traps and shrimp traps with his own eyes, Baldy still couldn't believe that they could retrieve food from the sea.

It wasn't until they worked together to pull a hemp rope, about three fingers thick, from the sea, with a wooden cage hanging below, inside which two salmon were thrashing about, that they opened their mouths in surprise, repeatedly touching his smooth, egg-like head and letting out a series of exclamations.

"Wow, how did you make this cage so sturdy and robust?"

We also tried tying it with rope, but when we threw it into the water, the rope would corrode from the seawater and fall apart in just a few days.

No, how did you make your rope? It's so thick.

"Wow, this cage is designed so you can only get in but not out! And there's a ring of wooden spikes inside—are they meant to trap the fish?"

Today, Baldy has truly broadened his horizons.

Shrimp traps are different from fish traps. Through generations of improvements, both fish traps and shrimp traps have been updated five or six times.

The earliest fish traps were just cages with bait inside; sometimes fish would go in and then escape.

Modern fish traps not only disguise themselves as funnel-shaped barbs, but also have wooden spikes inside. When fish try to get out, they struggle and their scales and fins are scraped off by the wooden spikes, which can even pierce their abdomens.

They don't care whether the fish they catch are live or dead, as long as they can be eaten.

There are also shrimp traps.

The earliest shrimp traps were just smaller than fish traps, and krill could easily squeeze out through the gaps.

However, if the gaps are too small, it will increase the weight of the shrimp trap, making it difficult to retrieve and potentially causing the rope to break.

At the time, someone suggested that the rope could be made thicker.

However, the rope absorbs water and is too thick, making it even more difficult for them to pull it up. It might take more than a dozen people to pull up a single shrimp trap.

Later, they reduced the weight of the wood.

However, the reduced weight can also cause the wooden trap to break when there are too many krill, rendering the entire project useless.

Wood is also prone to rotting when soaked in seawater.

Until the advent of the gillnet.

The first gillnet was made by Zhao Na after the seawater thawed, when she dragged fishing nets out of the ocean and improved upon them.

They hadn't originally planned to use nets to catch krill.

Because nets are used for fishing, they are obviously more efficient.

In addition, their camp area had more fish than shrimp, so many people were in the dark.

Later, attempts to improve the shrimp traps repeatedly failed, so Zhao Na boldly dismantled the fishing nets, which caused dissatisfaction among many people at the time.

She rewove desire, making the gaps smaller, and tied needle-shaped ceramic shards to each node of the net.

Although the ceramic fragments added weight, they were still much lighter than the wooden cage.

These ceramic fragments supported the structure of the net, transforming it from a flimsy, limp net into a cage-like shape.

Gillnets can be used to catch not only shrimp, but also fish.

When you cast your net, you often catch fish and shrimp together, and if you're lucky, you can catch seventy or eighty pounds at a time.

The net doesn't absorb water; it can be pulled by three strong men.

However, there is only one fishing net.

So Zhao Na tried using hemp rope to weave fishing nets.

The fishing net was made smaller, only two square meters in size, to prevent the rope from becoming heavy due to absorbing water and causing the net to break.

Gillnets need to be retrieved every two hours, which is much more troublesome compared to fish traps that can be left out for a whole day and night.

Therefore, the fish trap remains irreplaceable.

Gillnets, also known as shrimp nets.

It can be said that the improvement of the gillnet was a milestone in their use of tools.

After the appearance of the barbed wire, they put their minds to work and created even more things.

And the shrimp traps behind it.

Shrimp traps are also made of hemp rope, but the rope is thicker, and some key joints are reinforced with ceramic fasteners, forming a structure similar to a ceramic jar.

Shrimp traps were thus born.