There are no impenetrable walls in this world. Similar incidents were spreading through other social circles, though they hadn't yet reached the general public.
Once something is uploaded online, it will inevitably spread—it's only a matter of time.
And it can never be completely erased.
This was why the admin of the Doomsday Chat Group chose not to delete the videos this time.
If these videos of frenzied attacks were to spread widely across media platforms, even the Great Xia Nation—the most orderly country on Blue Star—would descend into chaos, disrupting social order and production.
Thus, these videos of people going mad and biting others would never appear on public media platforms. Any that surfaced would be immediately removed.
Or they wouldn't even make it past the upload stage.
They couldn't clear platform reviews, and even if they did, they'd be taken down.
"Things are getting more and more troublesome," Li Dong sighed as he set down his phone.
In the information age, people receive fragmented information faster and in greater quantities.
Fresh news from around the world constantly floods the internet.
Things people once ignored are now amplified on public media.
It wouldn't be long—just three more months—before this matter spread completely among the people of Blue Star. After all, everyone had at least one smartphone, if not several, along with computers and other devices.
People could post whatever they wanted on major media platforms. There was no way to stop it, and deleting everything was nearly impossible.
Once it spread, chaos was inevitable.
Li Dong had no idea how the authoritative media of various countries would handle the PR crisis when it happened.
The appearance of a Zombie virus in real life, like in the movies—though the infection rate wasn't high—would undoubtedly cause panic.
The zombie issue was minor compared to what humanity faced now.
The real catastrophe was the impending Meteorite impact.
If those planetary meteorites from space were to collide with Blue Star, it wouldn't just mean human extinction—it would set civilization back tens of thousands of years.
Compounded by the endless stream of current troubles, it would severely hamper the administrative efficiency of governments worldwide, bogging them down in a quagmire of crises.
"The mighty have their worries, and the humble have theirs. Best to focus on my own tasks."
Li Dong didn't dwell on it. After a shower, he turned off the lights and went to bed.
For the next ten-plus days, Li Dong worked from the villa, assigning tasks to employees who were also working remotely.
Time was too tight—there was no other way.
Of course, these remote employees were paid double their usual wages.
As long as the pay was good, they were happy to work.
These employees and managers were mainly responsible for liaising with major supply chains and manufacturers.
This included grain companies, compressed food factories, canned food factories, traditional Chinese medicine manufacturers, Western pharmaceutical companies, distilleries, tobacco companies, Arctic Equipment suppliers, and more.
They secured goods at wholesale prices, and in bulk.
They also coordinated with tech companies to purchase drones, smartphones, computers, and other devices.
In the post-apocalyptic world, especially after humanity lost its manufacturing capabilities, these technological products would become incredibly precious—each broken device irreplaceable.
After all, following the Extreme Cold Apocalypse, human industry had nearly ground to a halt, with no intact industrial chains remaining.
It was no longer possible to manufacture such perfect and cost-effective technological creations again.
Li Dong had also commissioned several military technology companies to help develop and produce several types of drones, with a deadline of six months.
In any case, there were already some large drone templates available domestically. Adapting them and tweaking the data wouldn't take much time.
Currently, the largest logistics company in the country used large drones for deliveries, with a maximum range spanning 10,000 kilometers.
Moreover, as long as there were enough parts and components, Li Tiang could even assemble a few drones by hand—though such efficiency was far too slow. It was better to leave the R&D and production to professional companies.
The drones Li Dong commissioned this time included: Emergency Communication Drones, Material Delivery Drones, Reconnaissance Drones, and others.
All of them were large, heavy-duty drones capable of operating in extreme cold environments.
Drones that couldn't function in extreme cold were useless!
The extreme cold would cause the batteries of some drones to degrade significantly. Ordinary drone batteries weren't equipped with heating systems.
If left outside for half an hour or an hour, they'd freeze and break down.
Who could tolerate that?
Large drones, on the other hand, generally used fuel as their power source, so at least their energy output wouldn't degrade as drastically as the batteries of ordinary camera drones.
In addition, Li Dong had connections with professional medicinal herb dealers across the country, instructing them to purchase large quantities of traditional Chinese herbs. No matter how much they could gather, he would take it all.
Under the conditions of the Extreme Cold Apocalypse, it would be nearly impossible to cultivate medicinal herbs again.
By now, Li Dong had stockpiled over a hundred thousand tons of various grains, hundreds of tons of medicinal herbs, and more—though these were still stored in rented warehouses and hadn't been moved to the Shelter Base yet.
He had also stockpiled a considerable amount of finished medicine, though only a few tons.
After all, pharmaceuticals were controlled goods, making large-scale purchases difficult. He could only accumulate them bit by bit.
To buy in bulk, one needed special permits—and obtaining those was no easy task.
It required the backing of a major hospital.
If not for the fact that Li Dong owned a supermarket and his brother had recruited a construction team of ten thousand workers—whose daily food consumption was staggering—along with various substantial investments, he wouldn't have even qualified to stockpile food on such a scale.
The headquarters of Great Qin Heavy Industries Technology Company (the Shelter Base) had officially resumed operations after a few days of suspension following the typhoon's landfall. Now, the progress couldn't afford any delays.
After all, the grain storage, Shelter control center, medicine warehouse, medical room, Strategic Food Warehouse, Armory, Mineral Water Warehouse, Water Purification Room, Mealworm Breeding Room, Aquaculture Room, Ecological Farm, Vegetable Growing Room, Power Generation Room, Energy Warehouse, and more were still not fully completed.
The progress was still too slow.
To accelerate the construction, the two brothers considered every possible method.
But in the end, the solutions boiled down to spending more money, hiring more workers, and increasing machinery and equipment.
Ultimately, they chose to do all three: increase funding, recruit more labor, and expand their machinery.
The current progress wasn't slow by any means. Tens of thousands of workers operated in three shifts, working around the clock. The land beneath Donghua Village had been hollowed out almost entirely, with the deepest excavation reaching over eighty meters.
Thousands of acres of land were excavated, with the dug-out soil piled into a small hill.
Of course, the soil would later be backfilled.
Boat after boat of construction materials were continuously transported along or against the East River to the Shelter Base.
Using river transport was far more efficient than land logistics—no number of Hundred-Ton Trucks could match the cargo capacity of a single ship.
Time quickly passed, and it was soon the end of October.
"What? It's arrived? Okay, yes, got it."
Li Dong answered a phone call before heading out.
The call was from an international trading company.
A representative had just informed him that his shipment had arrived at Pengcheng Port and requested him to bring people for inspection and signing.
The shipment was a shipload of grain—approximately forty thousand tons. With grain prices still low, he took the chance to buy several more shipments, knowing that such cheap grain wouldn't be available later.
The supplier was a private grain merchant from the Polar Bear Federation. Since they had more grain than they could consume, they naturally sold it cheaply for foreign currency, which they then used to purchase advanced technology products from the Great Xia Nation.
Some of the Great Xia Nation's civilian tech products were simply durable and reliable.