Chapter 153: Deep Well Stethoscope
On assembly lines in one massive factory after another that had been urgently modified to possess standardized monitoring station production capacity, intelligent robotic arms, conveyor tracks, installation robots, human engineers and workers, and so on were working tensely.
Parts from all over the world converged here, underwent processing by people, and finally became one standardized monitoring station after another, about two meters high, with length and width both around 60 centimeters, internally integrating battery, radio communication module, automatic sampling and detection analysis module.
Under the full efforts of modern assembly line technology and engineers, this kind of assembly line could completely assemble one monitoring station in just one minute.
And in this factory, there were fully 10 such assembly lines. This meant that every hour, 600 monitoring stations would come off the line, and a day would see over 14,000.
At this moment, two similar factories had already been put into operation. The rest included over 100 large and small factories that were undergoing emergency modification or waiting for raw materials.
In at most ten days, production capacity would reach its peak. At that time, it would be possible to achieve a daily production level of 200,000 standardized monitoring stations.
From an overall perspective, this production capacity was undoubtedly somewhat wasteful. Because this detection mission only required a total of 2.59 million units.
After completing these production missions, these factories would be left idle.
But it didn’t matter. In order to complete production as quickly as possible and install them in various places around the world, so as to start data collection tasks as early as possible, a little waste was tolerable, even encouraged.
These monitoring stations were immediately packed, secured for transportation, and then placed onto large trucks that had been waiting for a long time at the fastest speed.
One large truck after another formed a long dragon, fully hundreds of vehicles, and many more trucks were rushing in from afar under the unified dispatch of the Apocalypse Project Command.
Under the night sky, on the roads, one large truck after another set off on its journey. Even some standardized monitoring stations rode trains directly in large batches to the dock.
They were not being transported to other continents.
Under the unified dispatch of the World Government, every continent had some manufacturers, fully capable of shipping locally to save time.
They would board research vessels here, not cargo ships.
One research vessel after another set sail, and upon reaching the predetermined sea area, would directly throw these standardized monitoring stations into the sea.
They would slowly sink to the bottom under gravity, autonomously complete helium isotope content measurement work on the seabed, transmit data back to surface buoys via cables, and then uniformly transmit to Earth No. 1 Supercomputer via the satellite system for processing.
On land, these standardized monitoring stations arrived at one provincial capital city after another, and after distribution here, went to one prefecture-level city after another.
Installation personnel who had been waiting for a long time finally received the cargo, so one all-terrain vehicle after another carried these monitoring stations and quickly set off to the monitoring station installation locations belonging to their own cities.
Valleys, peaks, gorges, plains, rivers, forests, grasslands, and so on—wherever geological activity was relatively active, there would always be one or more teams of installation personnel arriving to install one self-powered monitoring station after another.
After some debugging to confirm normal operation and successful connection to the communication network, people hurriedly left for the next location.
A large net was quietly being spread across Earth.
In the suburbs of a tropical city, in a massive launch site, a medium-sized rocket with a total mass of over 500 tons was already in position.
“Countdown 3, 2, 1, 0… Ignition!”
Accompanying the instruction, the huge and heavy rocket carrying fully 16 Earth exploration satellites inside suddenly lifted off.
After a moment of flight, it quietly opened its payload like a flower in breeding season, releasing the 16 satellites one by one.
Under self-provided power, these satellites quickly adjusted their flight direction and speed, preparing for orbital insertion.
And in other directions on Earth, one rocket after another flew up from this blue planet like long swords piercing the firmament.
In the launch command center, watching the rockets continuously lifting off, Professor Chen Yusheng felt full of emotion.
“In a short time, mobilizing dozens of rockets to send 1,000 Earth exploration satellites into space—this would have been considered a earth-shattering major project in our era.
In this era… sigh, it counts for nothing.”
Indeed, it counted for nothing.
Benefiting from the large-scale development of the aerospace industry, the current human world could easily produce not just dozens of rockets, but even 1,000. If going all out in production, it could even produce 10,000 rockets in a few months.
And each one was a standard product that had gone through quality inspection and debugging processes, not like the hastily made ones from his era.
“It’s just a pity… this time with the apocalypse, such massive aerospace power seems unusable, wasted preparation, huh.”
He shook his head, unsure in his heart whether it was relief or regret.
At this moment, on Earth’s vast land, those busy were not only rocket launch personnel, factory manufacturing personnel, standardized monitoring station installation personnel, and so on.
There was another massive team equally busy.
“This is the ocean oil field?”
In the vast desert, a deep well researcher gazed at the desolation before him, slightly dazed.
“This oil field supplied 5% of the world’s petroleum consumption decades ago?”
He saw many houses and facilities, but they were all abandoned now, without a trace of human presence.
Decades ago, how bustling it must have been here…
Shaking his head to dispel that thought, he and his many teammates walked toward those abandoned oil wells.
These oil wells generally had depths over 3,000 meters.
They were like passages extending into the body of Earth this giant, allowing humans to place their manufactured “stethoscopes” inside to better monitor what changes were happening inside Earth this giant.
One oil field after another, gas field, even including those at sea—almost all deep wells with certain depth were dug out by people and inspected one by one.
Completely abandoned ones were skipped; repairable ones were urgently repaired, then detectors put inside, connected via ground signal devices to the communication network, transmitting observation data in real time to Earth No. 1 Supercomputer.
In another place, countless troops had also finished assembling.
At one pre-calculated detonation point after another, the roar of explosives exploding was incessant. Hard-to-reach places even had artillery firing directly.
Even the seabed would be taken care of by deep sea torpedoes.
Some special locations would even receive strikes from small tactical nuclear bombs.
These explosives were like hammers constantly pounding on Earth’s drum, generating one seismic wave after another for collection and analysis by those previously placed “deep well stethoscopes.”
