Chapter 342: Must achieve three to one

After a moment of silence inside the FJ Cruiser, Zhang Su turned off the radio and said, "No wonder the signal wasn't great; it turns out it's over in Tang Cheng. What do you all think about this?"

Wu Lue gave a silly laugh and was the first to speak, "Hehe, this beauty's voice is actually quite nice..."

His point was met with a collective eye-roll from the others. Damn, the perspective of a lovesick fool is truly unique!

"Whether it sounds nice or not, let's put that aside. Her pronunciation is indeed that of a professional announcer; her Mandarin is standard, articulate, resonant, and clear. It's quite difficult to find a professionally trained announcer in these times."

Chen Hanzhou nodded and said.

"That's a pretty big claim, 'hundreds of kilometers around.' Does that include Jingcheng and Jincheng? I don't believe there aren't larger survivor camps over there!"

Lu Yubo's geography knowledge wasn't great, but he knew Jingcheng was right next to Tang Cheng.

"That's true... I'm not sure about Jincheng, but doesn't Jingcheng have a permanent population of over twenty million? Even if only one percent of survivors remain, that's still two hundred thousand. And that's the heart of the country; there might be some emergency plans. If there's any official safety camp, Jingcheng is the most likely place..."

In order to redeem himself from his previous lovesickness, Wu Lue spoke eloquently for a while.

Zhang Su shook his head slightly and said, "Luezi, a large permanent population also means high population density. Have you forgotten what the situation was like when the disaster broke out? The difficulty of escaping from a residential complex in Jingcheng was way, way higher than ours!"

The population of Qingcheng's urban area was only one-twentieth of Jingcheng's. The group quickly imagined the possible scenes in Jingcheng, and couldn't help but shudder...

"Hey, right, have you noticed? They've also created a new calendar, called... the Calamity Era! I thought we were the only ones who thought of this!"

Wang Xin shrugged and said.

"It seems everyone has their own ideas."

Zhang Su nodded secretly. Previously, he felt Yu Wen's proposal to change the calendar was a bit superfluous, but now he felt it was increasingly necessary, especially as the population grew, making it even more necessary to have a unique culture to unite people's hearts!

Thinking further into the distant future, if one day a massive city were truly built, in this current era, that would be a nation unto itself...

"Damn!" Wu Lue said with a strange expression, "Then if in the future, every large camp has its own calendar, wouldn't it be very difficult to unify?"

"Difficult my ass, whoever is strong, you listen to them."

Lu Yubo answered very naturally.

"That's right, history is written by the victors. Isn't history in the past the same? Only the victors have the right to write it, and they can write it however they want. They can depict themselves however they want future generations to know them."

Wang Xin also agreed with Lu Yubo's view.

"Let's not study those useless things. What percentage of the news in the broadcast do you think is true?"

Zhang Su took out a cigarette pack, passed them around, and asked.

"It's definitely all nonsense. Referencing the Green Dragon Legion, when the person scouting the path came to our camp, they said they had thousands of people, but in the end? Only three hundred. Calculating by this ratio, the Zhengdao Society might only have a thousand people. Yo..."

Wu Lue said, then paused, feeling awkward, "If they really have a thousand people, that's still quite a lot."

"Did you notice a detail!" Chen Hanzhou gently stroked his mechanical prosthetic limb and pondered, "When they reported the number of people earlier, it was precise to the single digit, which made me feel it was very credible. Of course, one cannot rule out that they fabricated the false number on purpose to make others believe it, playing that psychological game!"

"Tang Cheng is much larger than Qingcheng. Before the disaster, it was considered a second-tier city in the country. It seems the permanent population was... according to the survival ratio we've studied, theoretically, there are about one hundred thousand survivors in the Tang Cheng area. Even after being washed over these past few months, there should still be thirty or forty thousand left. Looking at it this way, three thousand people isn't an exaggeration."

Zhang Su analyzed very rationally. One must never be afraid to imagine the situation in a large, populous city just because one is in an area with a relatively small population.

The group nodded one after another. The other party claimed to be the most perfect community within hundreds of kilometers. They must have the confidence to broadcast like this, because the world today is a dark forest. Many survivor camps have turned into hunters competing for resources. Hunters who dare to expose their location are either extremely stupid or possess extremely strong strength.

Not only are they not afraid of hunters coming to rob them, but they are also hoping someone will do so, so they can counter-rob them in one go... wouldn't that be wonderful...

"The map... I forgot to bring the map. Whose phone has an offline map?"

Zhang Su asked.

"Me. Here, Brother Su."

Electronic product enthusiast Wu Lue took his phone out of his pocket and handed it to Zhang Su.

"Kaiping District... here, on the east side of Tang Cheng, on our side. Kaiyue Road... got it, let me check the distance."

Zhang Su used the distance tool to roughly measure it and found that the straight-line distance was only about 130 kilometers. If taking the highway, it wouldn't exceed 160 kilometers!

"This distance... it's not far!"

"Yeah, it's over a hundred kilometers from Qingxian to Changli. Damn, they won't expand toward us, will they?"

"Probably not." Zhang Su shook his head, denying Wu Lue's conjecture, and said, "Now is not the past. There's too much land to defend; it's useless. Alright, this trip today wasn't in vain; we've learned that there's such a massive force next to us."

"Having that many people isn't necessarily a good thing. Look at the Green Dragon Legion; they only had three hundred people and attracted an attack from a zombie horde of one hundred thousand. If this Zhengdao Society really has over three thousand people, wouldn't they attract a million-level zombie horde? Oh my god, that's too terrifying."

Wang Xin said, unable to help curling his lip and shaking his head. The terrifying conjecture scared himself.

"In the past, I felt three thousand people were nothing. The residential complex I lived in had more people than that. Now, hearing it, why does it feel so scary..."

Wu Lue had the same view.

Zhang Su didn't offer a different opinion this time, nodded slightly, and said, "As the number of people increases, the corresponding defensive strength must increase proportionally. If we can achieve a 'nation in arms,' that would be best. But as you've all seen, as the population increases, there will always be survivors with weak combat abilities entering the camp, and there are also some special ability users. They all need to divert strength to protect them."

"According to the concept of the military-to-civilian ratio in the past, I think at the very minimum, we must ensure a three-to-one ratio. That is, only when there are thirty combat forces can we allow ten members without combat ability to exist!"

As the camp developed, Zhang Su began to need to consider more issues.

"Damn, a three-to-one military-to-civilian ratio... that difficulty is not small."

Wu Lue rolled his eyes, calculated, and grinned, "Brother Su, the country with the highest military-to-civilian ratio before the disaster was only one to six. Is your three-to-one plan too harsh?"

"One to six?" Zhang Su was startled by this ratio, frowned, and asked, "Which country has such a high military-to-civilian ratio?"

According to his memory, A-Jin was the country with the most exaggerated military-to-civilian ratio, with a population of about 26 million and over 1 million soldiers, reaching a ratio of one to twenty-five, the highest in the world. Where did a one-to-six country come from?

Wu Lue smiled with a face full of showing off and said, "You don't know, hehe, that country is the Vatican, with a population of one thousand..."

"One your spicy head, get out!"

Zhang Su didn't even wait for Wu Lue to finish showing off before slapping him on the back of the head. A religious country with a land area of less than half a square kilometer is also being brought up.

The rest of the group also gave Wu Lue the middle finger one after another.

Even Su Xiaoya, who had only studied junior high geography, secretly rolled her eyes, feeling that this little brother was too full of nonsense!

"Don't talk about that nonsense. In short, when the population is under one thousand, we must ensure this three-to-one military-to-civilian ratio. Currently, we haven't reached this level. Once the reserve team gets on the right track, there will be no problem!"

Zhang Su said slowly, feeling a sense of urgency in his heart, but not too anxious. It's not that picking up a weapon counts as "military," but rather that these "military" people can become civilians when they put down their weapons. This is a gradually advancing process that cannot be rushed.

(End of chapter) ===== CHAPTER 343 =====