Earth is falling apart.
Humanity had always ignored what scientists said. They reassured themselves, saying, "That’s a story for the distant future. It won’t happen in our time." I was one of those people. Tired of city life, I moved back to the countryside where my parents lived. With the money I had saved, I bought rice paddies and land near their house. Thanks to my parents’ connections and help, I was able to grow rice, fruit, vegetables, and more without being hassled by the locals. On my days off, I lived optimistically, watching movies and anime, reading comics and novels without a care in the world.
Five years passed, summers grew longer, and temperatures began rising drastically. Every day, the TV aired emergency news reports like, "We have exceeded the one-degree increase scientists warned us about," and, "Does Earth have a future?" Our household was affected too. Due to the abnormal weather, there was not enough water for farming, and the scorching sunlight began to burn the young rice shoots.
"Good grief, is the world really ending? It’s insanely hot..."
"I know. At this rate, we might have to give up farming and move to the city."
My parents spoke with sighs. That year’s rice harvest visibly declined, but fortunately, crops grown in greenhouses suffered somewhat less damage.
Ten years after I came to the countryside, the weather grew even hotter, and the entire world began suffering from food shortages. Countries near the equator, as well as populous and poor countries, began to suffer from a lack of food, but the international community ignored them. Our country designated food as a strategically vital resource and began providing farmers, free of charge, with water, agricultural machinery, and greenhouses that could block an appropriate amount of ultraviolet radiation. Rice prices were skyrocketing like crazy.
"This is really going to blow up into something huge, isn’t it?"
Government support and soaring produce prices meant I was making plenty of money, but the international situation did not look normal.
Things were relatively better in our country, but more and more people were starving to death in Africa, Central and South America, Southeast Asia, India, and elsewhere. Desertification in China advanced at an incredible rate, and when it could no longer feed its enormous population, it began receiving aid from Russia. Even that was not enough, so China began threatening neighboring countries to sell it agricultural products cheaply. The United States harshly condemned China for it.
From then on, I felt a serious sense of crisis. I bought survival supplies like mad and began building a bunker in our yard using the mini excavator the government had supplied for farm work.
"You crazy bastard, stop it!"
"Yes, stop already. Nothing is going to happen."
Once the front of the house turned into a complete mess, my parents began trying to stop me. But I paid them no heed and kept digging. A month later, perhaps because they had given up, they stopped saying anything.
With no knowledge whatsoever, I relied only on books and the internet to build it. It took a lot of time, cost a fortune, and put me through hell, but after three years, I somehow managed to build a sturdy, roughly twenty-pyeong bunker beneath the house with double doors. Naturally, I took great care installing a generator, air purification, water purification equipment, and waste disposal facilities.
"That guy on YouTube is a god."
I canned vegetables and fruit in glass jars and stored them in the bunker warehouse. I dried the rice thoroughly, put it into plastic containers, and stacked them up. Protein was the problem. Nearly all canned goods sold in our country were fish, and I could not find long-lasting smoked or dried meat. So, with tears in my eyes, I had no choice but to buy canned American beef jerky, which had become expensive enough already because of the food shortage. I also thought weapons were absolutely necessary, so I bought a compound bow and arrows, the only weapons one could legally buy in our country. In apocalypse fiction, it was not zombies or monsters that were frightening—the scariest thing was people.
Four more years passed, making this my seventeenth year in the countryside. During that time, my father suddenly fell ill from overworking himself on the farm and passed away.
Before I even had time to grieve, North Korea collapsed, and as many as ten million refugees flooded in, rapidly worsening the food situation. The government declared a national emergency, announced that it would manage all food production itself, banned food sales, and switched to rationing. Soldiers constantly patrolled our farm too, and took away the crops we produced after giving us a pitiful amount of money as so-called compensation. There was nothing our family could do about it. At least the bunker had not been discovered, so between the rations and our stockpile, we were able to eat relatively well.
About half a year later, China and Russia began a war against the United States. Our government initially seemed determined to avoid the war under the pretext of stabilizing North Korea, but continued pressure from Japan and the United States eventually forced it to join. Feeling threatened, China began firing nuclear weapons indiscriminately, and World War III broke out.
I hurriedly ran to the farm to find my mother.
"Mom, Mom! The Chinese fired nukes. We have to get home, now!"
"What... what do you mean?"
I gripped my mother’s hand tightly and tried to head for the bunker. Then, all of a sudden, the sky turned red, and the ground shook violently with a Rumble-rumble.
"This is fucking insane!"
I looked in the direction of the sound and saw a mushroom cloud rising in the distance. It seemed to be Seoul.
"What is this..."
My mother collapsed where she stood.
"Mom, there’s no time for this! We have to get home, quickly!"
I was out of my mind too, but I hurriedly carried my mother on my back and ran home.
The moment we arrived, I opened the bunker’s thick steel door, brought my mother into the bunker room, then firmly shut and locked the double steel doors.
"Whew... The bunker walls and supplies are fine."
I had calculated the supplies to last three people for ten years. I had expected that even if war broke out, it would end within five to seven years.
With my father’s death, we should have had about one-third extra to spare, but once the government began rationing, food purchases were blocked, so we had eaten some of the supplies. About ten percent of our total food was gone. Even so, there was more than enough for the two of us to last over ten years.
"At this rate, we can hold out for twelve to fourteen years."
My mother still seemed out of it, sitting blankly on the bed.
"Mom, are you okay? Nothing hurts?"
"Ah... y-yeah. Nothing hurts."
After examining my mother and confirming she was uninjured, I turned on the TV to watch the news. There was no news. The screen only gave off a Beeeeep while displaying white text against a red background, warning people to evacuate to shelters. Every other channel showed the same thing. Left with no other choice, I turned off the TV and switched on the radio and laptop. I desperately needed information about what was happening outside. The laptop was useless because it could not connect to the internet, but over the radio, soldiers reported that hydrogen bombs had fallen on Seoul and the Gori Nuclear Power Plant.
"Shouldn’t we evacuate somewhere too?"
"Don’t worry. This is safer than anywhere else in South Korea right now. And we don’t need to worry about water or food either."
It seemed my mother was anxious because it was her first time seeing the inside of the bunker. So I showed her the warehouse piled high with survival supplies, and she accepted it.
The next day, the radio announced that a provisional government had been established in Daejeon. It said the government would release the emergency food it had stockpiled, and that anyone without shelter or in need of food should gather in Daejeon. Of course, I had no intention of going.
About three days later, weak tremors shook the bunker several times.
Did something happen?
I hurriedly turned on the radio, but it was completely dead. No matter how I changed the channel, all I heard was crackle, crackle—there were no broadcasts anywhere.
A month passed after we entered the bunker. Then, from the radio, which had produced nothing but static, a faint male voice suddenly came through. I was glad to hear it, and hoping to learn what was going on outside, I raised the volume.
[(Crackle) Ah... ah... I do not know whether anyone is listening, but nuclear weapons have fallen on Daejeon, where the provisional government was established, and on all major cities. As their front lines were pushed back severely, China and Russia launched every nuclear missile they possessed at the United States and its allies. Do not head toward the major cities. The radioactive contamination is severe. The southern regions are especially bad, so please be careful if you travel. Good luck. (Click...)]
Holy shit... Doesn’t that mean even if we hunker down for ten years, surviving will be difficult? This is driving me insane.
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