After ending their call, Li Dong went to sleep as he still needed to meet with various business owners the next day to discuss deals.
Meanwhile, Li Tiang sat at his computer, using big data technology to collect and organize various online information, particularly news related to natural disasters.
He also gathered emergency survival methods, along with materials and technical knowledge required for constructing air-raid shelters and underground shelters.
Examples included:
How an Ordinary Person Can Survive or Self-Rescue During Extreme Cold Disasters
Survival Guidelines for Doomsday Catastrophes
The Critical Uses of Emergency Radios in an Apocalypse
What Supplies Are Needed to Build a Large Shelter?
How to Design and Construct a Large Shelter
What and How Should We Stockpile in Preparation for an Apocalyptic Disaster?
How to Choose the Right Location to Build an Underground Shelter in a Doomsday Scenario
And similar materials.
Additionally, over the past two days, Li Tiang had specifically joined several doomsday survival groups to ask enthusiasts various technical questions.
Of course, most of these so-called doomsday survival groups were primarily focused on selling products.
Li Tiang's questions stumped many group members—some could be answered, but most remained unresolved.
Moreover, the majority of these group admins didn't actually believe in an impending apocalypse; they were simply looking to make money off the pockets of doomsday enthusiasts.
Some admins owned factories specializing in canned food or compressed food.
A few admins, realizing Li Tiang wasn't there to buy their products but instead kept bombarding them with complex questions, grew so annoyed that they kicked him out of the group.
"Who even believes in doomsday nonsense these days?" they thought.
Besides, with current human technology, aside from a solar helium flash or an asteroid hitting Earth, even something like a zombie outbreak would be a minor issue.
What kind of zombie could withstand a metal storm?
Most carbon-based life forms wouldn't survive a single large-caliber metal bullet—unless it was just a graze.
"Yuanzhou, I joined a group. Take a look—is this the kind of chat group you were looking for?"
At that moment, Song Weiwei hurried over with her phone and handed it to Li Tiang.
He took it and saw the group name on the screen: "Doomsday Shelter." It was a small group with fewer than a hundred members.
Glancing at the members' locations, he noticed they were scattered across the country, mostly from different cities and even different provinces.
After browsing the chat history for a while, Li Tiang realized the group seemed to consist of high-quality members—many of whom appeared to be financially well-off.
Some members shared photos and videos of their underground shelters or safe houses.
Others posted about their doomsday food bases or vegetable planting bases.
One member even showcased their modified hexagonal doomsday base vehicle, designed to withstand extreme environments like heatwaves, floods, and freezing temperatures.
Another member flaunted their underground armory—boxes of bullets laid out on the floor, walls lined with various firearms.
Of course, judging by the interior decor, it was clear this wasn't located within the country.
In addition, they also posted some blueprints in the group, hoping members could point out errors for corrections.
These were true doomsday enthusiasts, firmly convinced that the apocalypse would come.
What they were doing now was merely preparing in advance.
Li Tiang then glanced at the group's creation date—eight years ago.
Meaning, eight years ago, people had already begun modifying shelters or safe houses.
Abroad, some doomsday enthusiasts started building doomsday shelters decades earlier.
The concept of doomsday shelters was also introduced from overseas.
Even before 2012 on the Western calendar, people had begun constructing doomsday shelters.
Some well-known tycoons also built underground doomsday shelters beneath their villas, ready to retreat there in case of nuclear war.
"Weiwei, how did you join this group?" Li Tiang asked while scrolling through the chat records.
"Yuanzhou, remember my good friend Zhang Yuyao? She's also a doomsday enthusiast, obsessed with this stuff. She invited me into the group," Song Weiwei explained.
Song Weiwei had met Zhang Yuyao during their freshman year. As their friendship deepened, she sometimes thought Zhang Yuyao might just have doomsday paranoia—actually believing all those online rumors about the apocalypse, convinced it would one day become reality.
But now, Li Tiang suddenly told her the apocalyptic disasters were real, not fake.
For a moment, Song Weiwei couldn't tell who the real fool was.
Of course, she didn't entirely believe Li Tiang's claims either. But after careful observation, he didn't seem to be having a psychotic episode or suffering from paranoid delusions.
Still, she wasn't a psychiatrist and couldn't diagnose anything. So she could only take his word for it and indulge his madness. If the apocalypse turned out fake, she'd have to send him to a mental hospital.
"Zhang Yuyao? She's in the group too?" Li Tiang was surprised and immediately checked the member list.
Zhang Yuyao was indeed there—even a group admin.
Searching his future memories, he found almost no information about her, practically none.
This wasn't surprising.
In those memories, he'd had almost no contact with Zhang Yuyao in the year before the apocalypse, and they lived in different cities.
Zhang Yuyao was from some mountainous city in the western regions, if he recalled correctly.
"Can you add me to the group?"
"I'll have to ask Yaoyao. I don't have invite permissions," Song Weiwei said, taking her phone and clicking Zhang Yuyao's profile to start a private chat. Her first message: "You awake?"
No immediate reply.
It was late—she might already be asleep.
After about three minutes:
"Still up. What's up?" came Zhang Yuyao's response.
"Can you add my fiancé to your doomsday group?" Song Weiwei typed back.
"Why does he want in? He never believed in this stuff. [/confused emoji]" Zhang Yuyao seemed puzzled.
She and Li Tiang had never clicked—they had nothing in common.
After all, one was a doomsday prepper and the other a high-IQ tech genius—under normal circumstances, their paths would never have crossed.
"[Laughing out loud with emoji], how do I explain this? He's currently obsessed with building some underground doomsday shelter for fun."
As for the real reason, Song Weiwei naturally couldn't tell Zhang Yuyao.
She didn't want her best friend to think she'd gone crazy too.
The two chatted for another ten minutes or so.
"Alright, she agreed."
"I got the invite. Weiwei, can you ask if my brother can join too? Just say he's a friend of mine."
"I'll try."
Song Weiwei nodded and continued talking with Zhang Yuyao.
Over the years, the climate on Blue Star had become extremely erratic, with extreme weather growing more frequent and severe.
The major powers were locked in fierce competition—short of direct military conflict, they waged relentless battles in propaganda, cyber warfare, tech rivalry, biological threats, financial manipulation, currency wars, and trade disputes.
Of course, there were exceptions.
A few years back, one of Blue Star's three superpowers, the Northern Bear Federation, had stepped in to discipline one of its own vassal states, incidentally roughing up a subordinate of the Europa Federation as well. The conflict was contained within a localized region, preventing the war from spreading.
And it was still ongoing.
Naturally, the Europa Federation, watching its ally get pummeled without daring to retaliate, was seething with humiliation.
They simply didn't dare intervene.
If the Europa Federation stepped in and things spiraled out of control, a world-ending nuclear war could erupt.
With today's hyperconnected world, news from remote regions or obscure nations could spread globally in an instant.
This directly or indirectly affected civilians in peaceful countries, many of whom grew terrified at the prospect of a global nuclear war plunging humanity into the nuclear wasteland era.
Thus, doomsday fanatics began to emerge.
After all, who knew if war would actually break out? What if someone decided to take the whole world down with them?
Who could survive that?
Better to prepare early—maybe they'd live through the nuclear fallout.