Nuke Miko: Chronicles of America

While the cables were melting in the heat wave, the high temperature caused a surge in demand for electricity, which required more power transmission, which was obviously a huge challenge for the already aging and fragile power system in the United States—— Throughout the west coast of the United States, the shortage of electricity supply has become more and more serious. Many towns have had to take turns to cut off power. Even in towns that still have power supply, the price of electricity is also soaring: the price of electricity has skyrocketed several times!

Then, the unprecedented heat wave also seriously affected the agriculture in Washington State, Idaho, Oregon and other places, and crops, vegetables and fruits were burned to death by the scorching sun everywhere.Or because of power outages, water cannot be pumped for irrigation, causing crops to wither due to lack of water, and a large number of livestock to die.

What factors are causing the abnormally high temperature in northwestern North America right now?

The answer is "hot domes".

To put it simply, the "hot dome" is an abnormal meteorological spectacle, known as a once-in-a-thousand-year phenomenon, which is much rarer than El Niño.

It is as if there is a "high-temperature lid" covering the sky. The inside of the "hot dome" is full of hot air. The hot air close to the ground will rise, but because there is also a high pressure above it, it will press the rising hot air back. When it reaches the ground, the temperature of the hot air on the ground continues to rise, and the hot air that continues to heat up will continue to rise, but it will be pressed back by the high pressure above, so that the surface temperature will be continuously heated.

This goes on and on, and the cycle goes on and on, and the temperature will get higher and higher.To lower the temperature, cold air from the outside needs to enter.

But the problem is that the "hot dome" is a natural "pump", and the cold air from the outside cannot enter the "hot dome" at all.

Therefore, as long as the area covered by the "hot dome" is like a cover, the cold air from outside cannot flow in at all.

Without the intervention of cold air, the temperature of the "hot dome" cannot drop, and the high temperature will continue forever, leaving the people inside in a steamer.

So, how should human beings manage the meteorological disasters brought about by the thermal dome phenomenon?As far as the current conditions are concerned, there is basically no way.

Because, like typhoons and blizzards, the hot dome phenomenon is a natural meteorological disaster, and humans have almost no means of intervention.

Personally, the only effective countermeasure is to stay in an air-conditioned house blowing cold air while waiting for the heat dome to die down.

But even sitting in an air-conditioned office, this heat wave still had a huge impact on those white-collar citizens who were blowing air-conditioning.

——To be specific, prices have just been flat for a few days, and a new round of skyrocketing, or inflation, has started again.

The reasons for this wave of inflation are, on the one hand, the flood of dollars from nuclear-powered money printing machines, and on the other hand, port congestion and poor logistics.

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Before, due to the earthquake, ghost disaster and nuclear explosion in Los Angeles, the [Los Angeles-Long Beach] port, which accounts for 40% of the container throughput in the United States, was paralyzed.

Then, because of the commotion and chaos in Seattle, the Port of Seattle, the second largest container port on the U.S. Pacific Coast, also ceased operations.

The U.S. officials have managed to use both soft and hard methods to barely settle the chaos in Seattle. They are trying to repair the roads and docks and restore the operation of the port.

Unexpectedly, the entire "Vancouver-Seattle" area was suddenly shrouded in the once-in-a-thousand-year "heat dome" and became the focus of this North American heat wave. Therefore, the resumption of operation of the Seattle Port Container Terminal became more and more difficult in the heat wave. It's nowhere in sight.

——With a high temperature above 45 degrees Celsius, water and power supply cannot be guaranteed. If this container port is to operate, it must go to great lengths.

Even the operation and scheduling of the Vancouver port have been stagnant and chaotic due to the once-in-a-thousand-year "hot dome".

Moreover, it is not only the failure of the container port that makes it difficult for the United States to import overseas goods, but even the land transportation in the United States has gone wrong, causing domestic logistics to be equally unsmooth—except for the aftermath of the riots of the "Black Lives Matter" movement In addition, this unprecedented high temperature and heat wave is also a very huge ordeal for the roads and railways that have been built for many years in the northwestern United States and western Canada:

Cement roads are cracked due to high temperature, asphalt roads are baked in high temperature, signal lights are baked by heat waves and become ineffective, cars are directly exposed to high temperature and their paint is peeled off, rubber tires are deformed and melted, and car windows are overheated and burst.The rails of the railway were deformed by the sun, causing the train to derail easily.

Some of the long-established steel girder railway bridges have been baked and deformed by the high temperature far exceeding the design limit, and collapsed!

Just on the day Akiyama Megumi left Washington State, there were six train derailments a day in the United States, plus the collapse of a railway bridge. In addition, there were two antique railway bridges that were said to be built in the [-]th century, which were in serious danger. The railway department had to shut down for emergency repairs.

As for all kinds of serial car accidents, there are too many to count—after all, the drivers have also been weakened by the COVID-19 virus!

On the one hand, the logistics are not smooth, the transportation capacity is insufficient, the roads are interrupted, and various commodities cannot be transported into the big cities that are the consumer markets in time; Once in and out, prices are naturally skyrocketing.

Don't be too expensive!For places with inconvenient transportation, waiting until the supermarket shelves are empty and you can't buy things with a credit card, that would be a tragedy!

So, when Megumi Akiyama was bored sitting in the stretched Lincoln sedan and playing games, he started to use his mobile phone to conduct video communication with Qiuhan Chen, the "Flying Noodle Master" who was far away in San Francisco, and wanted to find out about the current situation in California. I just listened to his complaints about the current "difficult life".

"...The dollar is becoming less and less valuable nowadays! Cans of Coca-Cola have risen to five dollars a can! Burgers cost ten dollars each! Going to a decent restaurant for a meal is not worth a thousand dollars. I can't stop it. The PPI in July may break through 100%!"

In the video communication, Chen Qiuhan, a rich second-generation international student whose family is engaged in the underworld industry, muttered annoyedly, "...Because Los Angeles is in ruins now, and the old campus is the epicenter and suffered a nuclear explosion. It can't be repaired for a while, so the South The UC Film School is moving to a branch campus in Irvine.

There is nothing wrong with moving to Irvine, as it happens to be quite close to my family’s villa—although all classes are online now, it’s always better to be closer.

But can you believe it?The school actually informed me that the tuition fee for the next academic year will directly increase by ten times!There is no such way to rob money..."

"...Recently, prices in the United States have risen so much? Tsk tsk, for the poor, this is indeed a bit embarrassing. But, I said, Lao Chen, you have a factory at home, a villa in the United States, and you have connections in the underworld. The rich second generation, do you still need to worry about this little expense?"

Looking at the frowning Chen Qiuhan in the video, Akiyama Hui curled her lips disapprovingly, "...Aspiring poor students get scholarships, rich second generations like you pay more, isn't the university always operating like this? Your nearest The Mingchao business is so booming, the tuition fee is just a little bit!"

"... The rich second generation? What happened to the rich second generation? Please, my family's money is also hard earned, not by the wind!"

Chen Qiuhan repeatedly called out, "...Besides, my family didn't make a lot of money in the recent wave of money market..."

"...how did you not make any money?" Qiu Shanhui asked, "...before, you were trying your best to sell it under the name of the flying noodle master!"

"...Hey, the market has indeed opened up. The problem is that there is a lack of stock in North America! My family's printed ghost notes are all stored in China, and I can't transport them for a while! I don't dare to ship cheap commodities like ghost notes by air. If it is shipped by ship, most of the ports on the west coast are paralyzed, and my goods have to be unloaded in New York, and then loaded on trucks to be sold all over the United States. To this day, this shop has not yet been paved!"

Chen Qiuhan complained, "...but competitors in the United States have already appeared! After all, Mingchao has no technical content..."

"The Americans print their own banknotes? Can this labor cost compete with China's?" Qiu Shanhui was a little curious.

"...Let the prisoners in prison print money, plus the shipping cost of Chinese goods around half the world, they can compete in the US market."

Chen Qiuhan replied, "... Now that the law on arresting homeless people has been promulgated, private prisons everywhere are overcrowded..."

PS: Sorry, I called Idaho the state of Idaho before, and I will correct it later.

But in fact, there are not many plots that happened in Idaho, the main thing is to explain that there is the largest concentration of Japanese Americans in the United States.

Why are there Chinatowns and Koreatowns in major cities in the United States, but few Japantowns?Because they were all arrested and sent to concentration camps in Idaho during World War II.

Chapter 190: Sweatshop lost to Death Factory

There is a saying that the cost of labor in the United States is so high that it is uncompetitive in many low-end industries.

Therefore, if the United States must want to re-industrialize, the only way is to make accusations, put workers in prison, and beat them into prisoners to do slave labor. Only then can there be any hope of success.

——In order to restore the competitiveness of American industry, the cost of labor must be reduced to the level of Vietnam and Bangladesh.

How to reduce it?Put everyone in prison, eat the cheapest soybeans and corn for three meals a day, and set up a prison factory?

However, the scene and process of doing so is probably no less than the "sheep cannibalism" enclosure movement on the eve of the British Industrial Revolution.

The terrible turbulence and bad influence that will inevitably be brought about during this period have also deterred American politicians, preferring to live a miserable life.

Even the Golden Retriever understands the king, who looks crazy like a clown, he didn't have the courage to engage in "prison rejuvenation" in the past few years.

And now, with the "Corona" plague having a great impact on the entire American society, and the mandatory shelter of all homeless people, the law of "no vagrancy, and those who violate it must be arrested" has been passed and implemented... The above-mentioned "prisons set up factories, revive The delusion of "industry" has finally moved from paper to reality.

——A large number of sealed handcuffs and shackles were taken out of the strategic material reserve. The scale of private prisons expanded dozens of times in a very short period of time. Parks, green spaces, parking lots, gymnasiums, and abandoned schools were all surrounded by barbed wire. Watchtowers were erected to detain homeless people.

Then, there were prisoner loggers in prison uniforms on forest farms in Montana; prisoner butchers in slaughterhouses in Virginia, prison laborers in chains in fruit orchards in California, and hotel laundry rooms in many cities. Female prison laundry workers appeared, prison construction workers appeared on construction sites, and prison laborers on the production line of automobile windshield factories appeared on the production line of the car windshield factory for only [-] cents an hour...

Next, in the ruins of Los Angeles, many prison laborers wearing shackles also appeared, responsible for cleaning up the wreckage and rebuilding.

Even in the smoke of wildfires outside Los Angeles and San Francisco, there have been chained prisoner firefighters (this has been around for a long time).

The happiest ones are the Christian churches and the red-neck farmers in the Midwest—in the past, there have been rural churches that have set up slave labor farms, and missionaries under the banner of "God loves people" catch homeless people and addicts When a gentleman works on a farm for free, he is euphemistically called "the Lamb of the Savior".

Well, in a sense, this is really "the lamb of the savior" - those drug addicts who are drunk and sleepy on the streets, if they can be stuffed into the farm, they will be "educated" with whips and sticks After all, the end is at least better than being "falling on the road" with needle holes all over your arms on the street, right?At most, it is equivalent to compulsory drug rehabilitation and vocational training with a certain risk of death (being beaten to death by a supervisor or dying from overwork).

But the life of these homeless people outside is tantamount to slow suicide. What is the difference between dying in a slave labor farm and dying in a garbage dump?

On the streets, they would only waste food and make bread expensive; but in slave labor farms, they could at least turn into labor and become "people useful to society."

As for being brainwashed by the pastor all day long on the church farm, and turned into a devout Christian... this should be considered a good thing, right?

Although most devout Christians are a bit of a godsend, but it is better to be a tramp on the street and disturb the law and order than to be unsightly!

Just like the habitual offenders in China, after being sent to prison for reform, they can often become more decent when they come out.

(Some ex-prisoners work in private companies complaining every day, saying that the treatment is worse than in prison, and they can't expect to pick up girls, and it's easier to go to jail.)

The red-neck farmers in the agricultural states of the Midwest are even more excited because they have been longing for cheap human resources for a long time.

——The cost of labor in the United States has always been very expensive. For this reason, modern American agriculture is heavily mechanized to save manpower as much as possible.

Since the beginning of the new century, American agricultural machinery manufacturers and scientific research departments have applied high-tech technologies such as satellite communications, remote sensing technology, and electronic computers to tractors and other large-scale agricultural machinery to realize unmanned driving, automatic operation, and automatic monitoring of tractors and other agricultural machinery. .

As long as you walk into a modern American farm, you will see various steel monster-like combine harvesters, automatic seeders, and automatic tractors running back and forth in the fields, and biplanes and large drones fly around in the sky to spray pesticides , and intelligent sensors measure soil moisture and PH value.

That scene is really very sci-fi!

Not to mention staple foods such as corn, wheat, and barley, even common vegetables and fruits such as tomatoes, apples, peppers, and potatoes have already realized fully mechanized and intelligent operations such as sowing, fertilizing, weeding, pest control, and harvesting. You can have a good harvest without getting muddy, and the warehouse is full of fruits and vegetables!

In today's highly intelligent American farms, American agricultural machinery companies not only provide machinery and equipment, but also provide planting methods and reminders.Farmers only need to download the John Deere App or log in to the John Deere website that provides services to users, and they can use their mobile phones or tablets to study farmland data at any time. The App will remind farmers when to visit the farmland, when to fertilize or harvest .

Every modern tractor is equipped with sensors, which are used to draw farmland maps and collect real-time data on the farmland, which will be uploaded to the server.Self-driving tractors are equipped with GPS and satellite navigation systems, making tractor harvesting more precise.

Therefore, American farmers only need to sit in a self-driving tractor every day and press two buttons to watch the news while drinking coffee, and let the tractor start harvesting crops according to the set route.For them, it is more necessary to study data such as humidity, soil quality, and crop conditions at home, so that they can manage the farmland more easily-in short, it has already made farming the same as QQ Farm .

If you are not afraid of any accidents, even if farmers sit at home and remote-control tractors to cultivate the land, it is completely achievable.

Therefore, with the world's number one mechanized and automatic production, an average American farm labor force can cultivate 450 acres of land; or take care of 10 chickens; or take care of 100 head of cattle; or produce more than [-] kilograms of grain, enough to feed a full More than [-] non-agricultural population!

But the problem is, just because the planting and harvesting of bulk crops has mature routines and has been made too intelligent, anyone with a piece of land can easily get started, so under the fierce competition, the profits of bulk agricultural products in the United States are also low. become very meager.

If red-necked farmers want to make more money, they have to grow some high-value-added crops, such as rare fruit and spices.

And this requires fine management, and employs a large number of seasonal laborers in the links of seedling raising, transplanting, and harvesting.

——You can’t let the harvester pick shallots, basil, thyme, etc.?

As a result, farmers have to spend a lot of money to hire temporary agricultural workers, but because of low income, high labor intensity, and poor working conditions, they often can only hire illegal immigrants. Lazy and unreliable, leaving farmers scratching their heads.

Especially those guys who are addicted to drugs in private, whoever is not careful, God knows what catastrophe it will cause!

Well now, with cheaper and drug-free prison labor, there is no need to hire illegal immigrants from Mexico who are suspected of taking drugs during the busy farming season!

Of course, there are indeed some supernatural prisoners who still take drugs and play with women even in prison.

However, those big bosses who can still rely on money to live well in prison will be sent to the Red Neck Farm to pick fruits?

The large-scale introduction of prison labor into the job market like this will definitely arouse opposition and protests from American trade union organizations in normal times.

But the problem is that now is the period when the "Corona" plague is raging, and all labor-intensive industries in the United States are hardest hit by the COVID-19 virus infection. The average age of blue-collar workers is dying and getting sick , Even life is almost gone, who else cares about work and unemployment?

Besides, the vacancies caused by the sudden death of so many people must be filled by someone, right?

Now that the economy is in a downturn, the boss can't afford high wages. What else can he do except let the prisoners do hard work?

As for the remaining blue-collar workers, if they suspect that prisoners have lowered their wages, they can change to more lucrative jobs!

For example, there is a shortage of drivers who drive large trucks right now, but prisoners cannot be allowed to drive trucks for long distances, so the salaries of truck drivers have increased seven or eight times in less than half a year. Free man, you can drive a truck!

Anyway, everyone in the United States has a driver's license and can drive. It is not difficult to practice driving a large truck.Even famous Hollywood directors like Cameron can drive large trucks. If ordinary workers want to change their posts to become truck drivers, it should not be too difficult.

Even if you really don't like driving big trucks, there are still many high-paying jobs that are lacking after all, after all, so many strong laborers have died of plague.

For example, the burner of the crematorium is a new job that is in high demand-those who line up for burning corpses have to give tips and bribes to jump in line!

In addition, in the United States today, even the police died due to the plague in the first half of the year, and the supply of police school graduates is in short supply. They have to re-employ retired police officers and arrange for retired veterans withdrawn from the Afghan battlefield to fill in. post.

As these murderous battlefield veterans join the police force, the American police are becoming more precise and hardworking when they shoot black uncles...

May wish to guess, will the police "raise their guns an inch" when facing workers who are on strike and making trouble?

You know, 48 of the [-] states in the United States have declared a state of emergency!

Therefore, just as the American industrial workers in the past failed to interfere with the deindustrialization of the United States, and failed to prevent the decline of Detroit Motor City and the formation of the rust belt; "It soared into the sky, booming and in a trance.

Therefore, after Mingchao or "ancestor money" became popular in the United States, before Chen Qiuhan transferred the Mingchao produced by his company from China to enter the American market, there were already many new stores in the United States. The prison factory in the city was quickly transformed into a Mingchao printing factory.

——Who made such a thing as printing ghost money really have no technical content, and the prices of paper and energy in the United States are very cheap?

Since the other party is a native American, he understands American culture better, and knows how to design ghost money patterns to be more in line with the preferences of ordinary Americans. As a result, he quickly regained the American underworld financial market and forced Chen Qiuhan's imported goods to be excluded. Not many sales

"...You don't know how fierce the arrest of homeless people is in California nowadays. There are even many unkempt and sloppy-dressed college students, artists, actors, and even programmers, etc., who are misunderstood as homeless and arrested. "

Chen Qiuhan complained in the video communication, "...those guys who run private prisons have arrested so many people, so they naturally want to find new growth points for industrial profits, so that they can make full use of these slave labor--in the end, I managed to open up The dark banknote market is being targeted!"

"...Wait, even if the prisoners don't need to pay much wages, can those drug addicts and homeless people really work hard?" Akiyama Hui asked suspiciously.

"...Of course I can! There have never been lazy slaves in this world! No matter how bad the black uncles in the United States are today, their ancestors were very diligent in the plantations—because the black slaves who were not diligent, But it will really die!"

Chen Qiuhan said so, but Qiu Shanhui could hear the implication in his words.

"...you mean...the bums and drug addicts who get caught in prison, if they don't behave well, they die there too?"

"...Generally speaking, there is no need for death threats at all, and the supervisors have plenty of ways to make these rotten people work hard.

Of course, if this group of people really lost their labor force, even if they were beaten to death, they would lie flat and be salted fish, then there are more drastic measures to deal with it-isn't the American hospital practicing "forced euthanasia" now?Although these temporary prisons for homeless people are as simple as concentration camps, there are still prison hospitals.Although there is probably no doctor or medicine in it, the 'one key to heaven' death capsule is definitely enough..."

"...Well, from this point of view, the old continent's sweatshops are indeed unable to compete with the New World's death factories. But don't be too sad, at least the ghost money business is so hot in June, your ghost money and money in the United States The inventory of paper men, cars, and houses has all been emptied."

Akiyama Hui sighed, and comforted Chen Qiuhan, "... contentment is the most important thing in a person. If you can have a hot business for a month, it will be very good."

But Chen Qiuhan's face was still as ugly as the bottom of a pot.

"...Last month? Last month, my company didn't make any money in the Mingchao business!