[Regain control of Wanghai from the mutants?]
Needless to say, it was a tempting proposal, and the current NAC certainly had the capability to do so.
Wanghai from before the war wasn't only the center of PAC's economy; it was the industrial base for technology. If NAC could regain control of Wanghai, the speed in which the pre-war technologies could be recovered would be much faster.
But then another problem had to be considered.
The mutants did indeed threaten the lives of the survivors, but the crystals they provided were the foundation to survivor industries. The Sixth Street's power station required crystals, the fuel rod used for everything from vehicles to power stations required crystals. Survivors unable to obtain Helium-4 to produce nuclear fusion batteries had to use crystals to produce fuel rods with the same specification to provide power to pre-war equipment.Fallout Shelter 027 was currently using this fuel rod.
The economy of the Sixth Street depended on Wanghai City as the hunting grounds. If the mutants inside the steel forest were wiped out, the hunters had to go further to hunt.
Jiang Chen only debated for two minutes before he made a decision.
Regain control of Wanghai.
The reason was simple - going from hunting to farming was a necessary step to go from brute to civilized peoples. And the first step toward civilization was a step NAC must take one day. Jiang Chen wouldn't be able to provide food for this place forever. The current population of NAC was five digits, but what if it became six digits? What if it even exceeded the million mark?
As to the farming problem, if he was willing to pay up, there were solutions available. It wasn't out of the realm of possibility to produce a closed biosphere through the Project Garden of Eden controlled by Lin Lin with NAC's resources.
Jiang Chen had a potential alternate source to obtain crystals, but to make it into a reality, he had to discuss it with the biologists in Fallout Shelter 027.After leaving the community center, Jiang Chen arrived at the empty plot of land belonging to the Aerospace Research Institute and managed to find Jiang Lin who just returned to the surface.
It was quite funny as the guy was standing beside the BM-21 rocket that Jiang Chen bought with a wrench. The picture looked like a 21st-century modern rocket scientist studying the " firing crow 1 " from the Ming dynasty.
A soldier standing nearby looked nervously at Jiang Lin, afraid he would take this thing apart.
He didn't care if it was for research or not. As the launcher for the rockets, he just knew that this thing destroyed half a city of mutants and zombies, and the powerful explosion was still clear in his memory even after two days.
"Did you figure something out?" Jiang Chen walked beside him and asked nonchalantly.
Jiang Lin nodded and exclaimed at the same time: "A straightforward design - primal, even - in both ignition and targeting system. The rocket has no guiding function, and it wipes out targets just by sheer strength. It damages creatures with the fuel and it proves that nothing is more effective than this against zombies and mutants. But to produce this, it must've been stressful for the logistics department."
Jiang Chen smiled mysteriously and didn't answer his question.
[Funny, are logistics even a problem for me?]
"There's certainly difficulty surrounding the logistics, but it's not unsolvable. I need you to design a rocket launcher that can launch multiple rockets simultaneously without impacting functionality. The only requirement is being able to send thirty kilograms of combat parts to a distance of thirty kilometers. It must have more power than this while having higher accuracy. Can you do that?"
"That's easy. All that needs to be done is redesigning the boosting fuel and the contents of the explosive. The problem is the material itself - there's nothing harder to find than oil on the wasteland. If we can secure the materials, it's not difficult to produce the weapon you want." Jiang Lin nodded, paused, then asked a question as if he just remembered something: "Do we still need to produce the Dolphin-10 Ballistic Missiles?"
"Of course. I have other uses for the nuclear missile." Jiang Chen smiled.
Jiang Lin scratched the back of his head. "Okay, if you insist."
After rocket production was assigned, crystal production was next on the agenda.
Starting from the end of the mutant wave, Wang Zhaowu began to prepare to take the Second Corp back to Fallout Shelter 027. When Jiang Chen came out from the Aerospace Technology Research Institute, the Second Corp fleet was lined up at the front door while waiting for Wang Zhaowu's order to mobilize.
"General." When Wang Zhaowu saw Jiang Chen, he saluted.
"No need. Are you planning to head to Fallout Shelter 027?"
"Yes, our soldiers are ready to mobilize."
"Take me along," Jiang Chen said.
"Yes, Sir!" Wang Zhaowu nodded and immediately went to arrange a spot for Jiang Chen.
After ten minutes, the Second Corp fleet finally finished loading the supplies. With the gate open and the survivors waving farewell, the fleet gradually started to move.
Burnt corpses were scattered along the road. When the fleet was halfway through the journey, Jiang Chen saw a Roshan kneeled in the middle of the road. Its face looked horrific, and its body was charcoal black. Its body was blocking the fleet, so the armored vehicle Jiang Chen was on turned its machine gun before a few shots broke the Roshan into charcoal blocks.
Crushing the "charcoal dust," the fleet continued to move. The horrific scene along the road agitated Jiang Chen's stomach, but to the hardened apocalypse survivors, this was a common scene.
Jiang Chen, inside the car, closed the observer screen before resting with his eyes closed.
It was an hour before the fleet finally arrived at the gate of the fallout shelter. When the rain of destruction was unleashed, the First Corp didn't leave this place pristine - the entire Camp 27 was stained black as if a blaze had swept through the place. But most of the supplies were moved underground, and the condition of the remaining concrete didn't matter much.
When the gate opened, it was havoc.
The zombies who smelled the scent of mutants didn't leave this place just because the Second Corp retreated. The ten-meter-high wall could tolerate a hill of hundreds of zombies.
The corpses blocked the entrance to the elevator. The soldiers jumped off the car, put on protective masks, and worked with their shovels for a while before they finally cleared the charcoal dust piled at the elevator gate.
"Damn, the First Corp really is ruthless." Wang Zhaowu got off the car with Jiang Chen as he cursed out while laughing.
"They had to be ruthless, otherwise we would've had to face a bunch of zombies who could climb over the wall," Jiang Chen joked.
"True. But the engineering soldiers in the front certainly will have a lot of fun." Wang Zhaowu scoffed before leaving Jiang Chen and heading to the truck in the back.
He needed to arrange for the redeployment of the fixed weapons. When they retreated, the machine guns and electromagnetic cannons were all moved into Fishbone base.
At the same time, considering how atrocious the environment was inside the base, a deep cleaning was necessary before anyone could enter.
Without disturbing the Second Corp's work, Jiang Chen headed in the direction of the fallout shelter elevator.
