Deep Space Wandering Fleet-Chapter 221 - Weapon Production Plan
Chapter 221: Chapter 221: Weapon Production Plan
Chapter 221: Chapter 221: Weapon Production Plan
Several minutes later, more of civilization’s upper echelon gathered in the Captain’s Room to discuss related issues.
Although humans were very fortunate to have intercepted the first batch of missiles, who knew if there would be a second or third batch to follow.
Plus, the incident had blown up so much that even the common people had some faint guesses. Many had seen the nuclear flash from the bombs, and the nuclear fusion engines had been urgently activated, with Earth Era time now in motion. These traces were impossible to cover up artificially.
The Mother Ship was slowly accelerating, no longer a fixed target as before, but the consequence was that it had temporarily lost contact with the underground bases on the planet. The long carbon nanowires had been retracted, so there was no way to continue material and personnel exchanges.
The activation of the nuclear engine was rapidly depleting the not-so-abundant reserves of Helium-3, which made Zhang Yuan’s heart ache terribly. Fortunately, humans had already found uranium mines on the surface; otherwise, there might have been an energy crisis, leading to death on this planet.
After a brief meeting concluded, Captain Zhao stood gravely in front of the television, delivering a war speech. As for the possible war, there was no use in hiding it; they were about to go to war, so surely they couldn’t keep the enemy’s identity secret from the public?
“I formally declare, we are entering an emergency wartime state!”
“…We must maintain sufficient vigilance against this unknown enemy, and even carry out equivalent retaliation!”
“To seek peace through struggle, peace will prevail; to seek peace through compromise, peace will be lost!”
Zhang Yuan stood below the stage, texting to comfort his wife.
“Yes, no one was hurt, just a hole made by a high-dimensional fragment in the spaceship, nothing else… I’m fine too. There’s no significant loss, you can rest assured, no more missiles are coming for now.”
“I don’t need to go to battle, so don’t worry.”
Yet, when it came back to it, people really did not know what this enemy was!
They didn’t even know what the enemy looked like.
Some said that an unknown technological civilization lay hidden beneath the ground, while others thought it was an out-of-control Artificial Intelligence that had already wiped out other civilizations!
Everyone knew that they could not retreat one bit, for to do so would be hell—even now with scarcely any weapons and without any ability to resist.
Humans were simply incapable of leaving this star system, and surrendering was not an option.
The uproar among the agitated populace continued, with some still in a state of total confusion. Such a major unexpected event had occurred so suddenly that they had no time to react.
After the speech concluded, Captain Zhao stepped down from the platform and convened a second emergency meeting.
The senior officials just sat in their seats, silent, as various reporters who wanted to interview them were temporarily driven out by the soldiers.
After the commotion, there was silence.
“Now the common people also know about this. Mobilizing for war will still require the efforts of the Propaganda Department, both to maintain public morale and to ensure their fighting spirit remains high… especially since our industrial capacity is insufficient, the production of weapons and equipment may have to sacrifice the current quality of life.”
“There’s no problem with that; everyone should be able to understand,” nodded a leader from the Propaganda Department.
Seeing everyone’s mood stabilize slightly, Zhao Qingfeng spoke with a solemn face, “First, let me ask you all, how long will it take to produce space weapons, including nuclear bombs, if we deviate most of our resources and compress the majority of the public’s quality of life?”
In the face of a life-and-death crisis, all plans for industrial development could only be temporarily put on hold.
An engineer clenched his teeth, “We have found a relatively good uranium mine on the surface. If we allocate a huge portion of our resources, we can produce six thousand centrifuges within half a year…”
“Within a year, we will be able to detonate an atomic bomb, and within two years, a hydrogen bomb! Technically, it’s not a major challenge, but there are still some difficulties on the industrial side.”
“At the absolute minimum, it will still take nine months.”
Hearing that it would take more than nine months, the meeting room immediately became lively again.
Nine months was indeed too long, and even excessively so—no one knew when the enemy might unleash their major weapons!
Perhaps in a few days, another batch of nuclear bombs would be launched!
However, in this universal war, nuclear bombs had become the most conventional weapon, and stuff like high explosive bombs and TNT were downright laughable when brought out.
According to interstellar wars that have erupted within human civilization, there are three most conventional weapons: missiles, lasers, and electromagnetic guns.
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Needless to say about missiles, they’re basically nuclear warheads, hydrogen bombs, Helium-3 bombs, with tremendous power but slow speed, suitable for close quarters combat, but easily intercepted.
Lasers lean more towards defense, the smaller ones can defend against small drones, medium ones against artillery shells and missiles, and the larger ones can be deployed in space to attack boost rockets and anti-missile. But given the current industrial capability of the new civilization, it’s unlikely that they could produce laser weapons in the short term. This is because laser weapons require some special crystals that are products of condensed matter physics, not easy to preserve for long periods, impossible to bring over from Earth.
Making similar crystals is not something that can be achieved overnight.
Manufacturing electromagnetic guns is slightly easier than lasers, but the power of an electromagnetic gun is directly proportional to the velocity of its projectiles. The faster the projectile, the higher the demands on the entire weaponry system, especially requiring a long acceleration tube, several kilometers or even tens of kilometers won’t be considered too much!
Therefore, electromagnetic guns are often very large in tonnage and volume… which is one of the reasons why the Earth Era did not carry these space weapons.
A military expert said, “I think we can aim to manufacture missiles and small electromagnetic guns as our first target… First, we need sufficient defense measures to counter these ultra-high-speed missiles from the enemy. The velocity of the electromagnetic cannon shells must reach at least one hundred kilometers per second to have an adequate interception success rate.”
Zhang Yuan nodded, “Understood… Research on nuclear bombs and electromagnetic guns will be my responsibility.”
“What about poison gas bombs? What about biochemical weapons?” Captain Zhao inquired.
“It’s not possible, the feasibility is too low.”
The speaker was a biologist, “We have absolutely no research on the life forms of this planet, and we don’t know what gases they are afraid of… Some of the gases in the atmosphere are toxic gases that can kill most Earth bacteria and react chemically with poison gases, neutralizing them directly.”
“Moreover, there’s a vast planet below, it’s not the size of our spaceship… Natural phenomena like typhoons already have strong dilution capabilities. How much poison gas would we need to produce to kill creatures hiding in burrows? With the current productive capacity, even if we produced poison gas for a hundred years, it would not be feasible.”
Hearing this, everyone found themselves at a complete loss, even Zhang Yuan was devoid of good ideas.
His fingers lightly tapped the tabletop, his brow furrowed, the current strength of humanity was truly too pitiful. A skilled woman can’t cook without rice, no matter how clever, it was impossible to think of any good solutions.
He sighed softly, “If we were given another eight to ten years, the situation would greatly improve, but this world just doesn’t have any ‘ifs’…”
