Rust - Chapter 694



Only Krnovel

RUST [RUST]-694

The return of Dan Brown marked the end of the Empire’s troubles.

“Anyway, Mr. Den can breathe a sigh of relief.”

Ki-soon said, turning his head to the east, as if he could see New York in the distance. Ironically, it was the exact opposite of what Dan Brown had dreamed of, but it seemed like there would be no problem for the time being.

“Letting go of the sigh… It looks fine on the outside, but it’s half-dead.”

Kim Yang muttered bluntly. He was a shameless, risk-taking bastard. His goal was to revive the United States of America. How many lives would be lost?

Even if you look at it now, it was like that. If they had put things in an emergency situation from the beginning, cleaned up everything that needed to be sorted out, and normalized things first, this wouldn’t have happened.

“I just had a flustered mind.”

Freedom of the press is good, and fair elections are good, but shouldn’t we at least do that with human babies?

It’s stuck to the liver. It’s stuck to the gallbladder. What can we do with those who only care about their own interests? Are we supposed to dream of a utopia while leaving those who commit crimes and use democracy and market economic principles as excuses?

In her view, Dan Brown is the one who is contradicting himself.

“That’s a person who doesn’t know what he did wrong even if he keeps dying and getting killed.”

Look at the Holy Kingdom, how neat it is!

Media play? Insult to the highest dignity? Coup d’état?

It’s impossible for something like that to happen, but even if it did, it would either result in a hole being punched in the head or it being lightly torn to pieces.

If a bunch of useless kids start talking nonsense, we just ‘shoot and cut them down.’ Isn’t that the right country to live in?

‘What the heck are you talking about in these times? Are you just going to leave it like that?’

So, in Kim Yang’s eyes, the Empire, Dan Brown, and the set were all crippled.

huh.

[The Empire has contacted you. It’s a proposal regarding the nuclear umbrella.]

Diana uploaded the proposal from the Empire onto the monitor. The content was simple. It was a proposal for the Holy Kingdom to provide the Empire with a nuclear deterrent, much like the United States had provided nuclear weapons to NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization).

It was amazing in many ways. The Empire’s cores and nuclear facilities were completely destroyed by Naruzu, but instead of protesting, they offered to provide the Holy Kingdom with the cores.

Ki-soon’s eyes narrowed as he looked east towards New York.

“Winter is almost gone now.”

It won’t be long before the shipping routes that were frozen in the bitter cold reopen.

“Once the sea route opens, the news that the Empire has lost its nukes will reach the Mexican Union and the Confederacy. Then things will really get messy.”

Even though the Confederacy had lost its nukes and nuclear facilities, it still had cannibals and vampires. It was clear that the Empire’s new clones, which were still in short supply, would have difficulty stopping the Confederacy.

Since the Mexican Union was also trying to move north, it was expected that the southwestern region, including LA, would fall to the Mexican Union.

The analysis of PD and Hood continued.

“It seems likely that the Mexican coalition will push into southern California, southern Arizona, and southern New Mexico.”

With Texas, the linchpin of the Confederacy, destroyed, it was only natural that criminal organizations would exploit the power vacuum that resulted.

“The problem is that after a nuclear war with China, the psychological hurdle to using nuclear weapons has been greatly lowered.”

‘Seeing the US and China going at it together, I guess nuclear weapons are okay too?’

‘It’s not so bad as long as we minimize radioactive contamination.’

‘There were also Fukushima and Chernobyl accidents, so what?’

The nuclear war with China helped spread the idea that nuclear weapons were worth using if they were used in a way that minimized radioactive contamination.

By the way, there was information that the Middle East and Russia had also begun using tactical nuclear weapons.

“It is true that the Empire would be in danger if it were discovered that it does not have nukes. Unlike the Confederacy, which drew a line with the United States, the Empire has openly declared itself the political successor to the United States.”

It may seem odd to use the word succession when the dollar debt was eliminated, but it was true that the empire inherited the overall socioeconomic system of the United States.

And the story of inheriting the United States meant inheriting the tangible and intangible grudges that the United States had.

“How about providing a nuclear umbrella?”

The artificial intelligence Diana responded to the nurse’s opinion.

[Providing a nuclear umbrella does not bode well for simulation results.]

Artificial intelligence Diana presented simulation results.

The conclusion is that if the Holy Kingdom grants the nuclear umbrella as the Empire requests, it would be tantamount to forming a military alliance.

If the Empire were to suffer a nuclear attack or a Dirty Bomb attack, it would be drawn into the Empire’s ongoing conflict.

In addition, there were simulation results showing that the Holy Kingdom, which provided the Empire with a nuclear umbrella, became a terrorist target, although the probability was low.

[The simulation results showed that providing the Empire with a nuke equipped with a preventive device to prevent it from being used in the Holy Kingdom was the most effective.]

Artificial intelligence Diana rarely presents simulation results before issuing orders.

There were various opinions, but the discussion was settled on providing a nuclear weapon with a safety device.

“Let’s give the empire nukes.”

Due to Maru’s decision, a nuclear device equipped with a failsafe was delivered to the Empire.

I thought, please eat and then fall asleep.

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Even if there was chaos because of the coup, it was impossible to erase the fact that the nuclear base had been attacked.

This was especially true when a nuclear submarine was attacked while anchored in a frozen port.

How can you fake that when a nuclear submarine anchored in a coastal city harbor, including New York City, is attacked and sunk? There are more than one or two witnesses.

Naturally, the issue of the loss of a submarine-launched ballistic missile carrying a nuclear warhead was bound to arise, and it was natural that controversy would arise over which force attacked the nuclear submarine.

Dan Brown covered up the controversy by characterizing it as an act of hardliners among the coup forces to gain control of the nuclear warheads.

At the same time, the Holy Kingdom revealed the presence of a strategic hydrogen bomb of greater power than the famous ‘Tsar Bomba’ in the Empire.

[···The Empire declares that it will maintain stability and balance in North America based on its powerful nuclear deterrent and contribute to world peace.]

The Southern Confederacy, which had been half-assed by Dan Brown’s official response, was shocked. Having experienced a Tsar Bomba-class nuclear attack, they stopped their advances toward the Empire.

The same was true of the expansion of the Mexican Confederation. Cartels that had been openly attacking southern California and southern Arizona also chose to retreat.

The Holy Kingdom had blatantly detonated a hydrogen bomb, but there was no guarantee that the empire that had been hit by a coup wouldn’t coolly launch a nuke to divert attention from the outside world.

Thanks to Maru’s judgment and Dan Brown’s quick response, peace came to North America, which was on the verge of chaos.

At least that’s what it seemed like on the outside.

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Hood sighed softly as he sorted through the latest information.

“We avoided the worst.”

If Dan Brown had died, the Holy Kingdom and the Empire would have certainly crossed the river of no return. And if he had died, information like this would not have been available now.

Even though he guessed that they were going to hack from this side, he opened the door to some extent and allowed people in because of Dan Brown’s judgment.

‘I guess it means that we should exchange academic information appropriately.’

It seemed like they were suggesting a compromise along appropriate lines, as the Holy Kingdom, which had reached a singularity, would have been determined to poke around here and there, only causing each other to blush.

‘Really important data or information would have been stored in analog format or turned into a closed system.’

Still, this was a nobleman. If someone other than Dan Brown had taken power, he would have clearly used all his research capabilities to break through the singularity and develop weapons.

Dan Brown did not do that. He not only supported the Ivy League university research labs to study a variety of topics that they were studying.

He spared no effort in helping to unearth and re-experiment with research results that had been buried in the past and were too far ahead of their time.

As a result, even the Holy Kingdom, which had overcome the singularity through quantum computers, artificial intelligence, and grape clusters, was unable to keep up with the Empire in terms of the diversity of its research topics.

“I guess I need to check this out.”

[Study on ecological changes in ants due to climate change]

[The impact of disasters and climate change on sea level rise]

Hood presented the two research subjects to the researchers, and an emergency meeting was called.

The story began with a cockroach.

The mutant cockroaches first discovered in a secret Japanese laboratory were definitely different from regular cockroaches.

“It was a wheel that ran fine even through volcanic ash and snowstorms.”

It was Ms. Kim who recalled what had happened in Japan.

It was a wheel that dug through snow and ice to create a trap and moved smoothly even in the cold.

“The guys I met in Japan were definitely strange.”

Maru agreed. The way they attacked refugees and American soldiers, and the way they captured and dragged away their prey, were all the same.

If you look at each cockroach individually, it would be difficult to say that they are more intelligent than rats, but these were not the cockroaches I encountered in Japan.

Herd intelligence? Group intelligence? That was the feeling the wheel had.

And the research data Hood brought included information about insects more dangerous than cockroaches.

“The first discovery of ants behaving strangely was two years ago in the western part of the empire, in the Corn Belt.”

Ants are insects that stock up on food before winter comes and survive the winter. However, the sudden cold snap caused even the ant nests they built underground to freeze, and as winter became longer by more than six months, the ecology of the ants changed, which was the beginning of the research.

A huge number of ants froze to death or starved to death, but ants that survived the drastic environmental changes began to appear. They were ants that mutated and ate cockroaches that were active even in winter.

Ants that were at least 10 to 15 centimeters long, although not as large as cockroaches that can grow up to 30 centimeters, began to be found in the Corn Belt.

“The hypothesis that they are breeding cockroaches is dangerous, but what is even scarier is the hypothesis that the ants may be farming.”

The rats were breeding cockroaches and mushrooms, and now it was ants. What was even scarier was that the ants were expanding their territory by avoiding the borders of the Holy Kingdom.

“It appears that they have identified the area where the field mice and sacred rats are guarding and have intentionally avoided it.”

“It’s not just ants that are the problem.”

The Empire was building a new city on the highlands west of New York.

“The Empire predicted that there was a high probability that sea levels would rise.”

Based on the vast amount of data secured by the Empire, the simulation results showed that sea level rise was not the problem. If the results were ascertained with technology beyond the singularity, then the catastrophe and climate change were just beginning.

And when you run a simulation that includes mutant monsters, ants, and climate change, things get even worse. Sea levels rise and New York’s underground waterways are flooded with seawater, causing rats to burst through.

It is predicted that carnivorous monsters will come down to the city in search of prey as herbivorous monsters die in large numbers due to rapid climate change and the disappearance of prey.

The simulation results showed that ants that ruined crops would also head to cities where there was more food.

“Build the floating city as quickly as possible. And report the simulation results to the Empire.”

If the simulation were true, the empire’s construction of a new city on high ground would have been a waste of time.