I can upgrade the shelter
Chapter 43: Analysis of the Current Urban Situation (Seeking Recommendations, Favorites, and Investments)

Chapter 43: Chapter 43: Analysis of the Current Urban Situation (Seeking Recommendations, Favorites, and Investments)

Having exchanged two boxes of vegetables with Mo Qingyan, Chen Xin received in return a box of canned luncheon meat, a box of canned pork, a box of rum, along with a hundred liters of gasoline and a large freezer.

The gasoline and exchanged goods could fit into Chen Xin’s SUV, but the large freezer was too big to take back because the SUV could not accommodate such a large item.

However, Mo Qingyan generously offered to use her own car to help Chen Xin transport the freezer to his shelter, without even requiring him to cover the transportation costs, after all, gasoline was relatively easy to acquire for them in the city.

After sorting all this out, Chen Xin gave up the idea of continuing to gather information in the city. Originally, he planned to exchange vegetables for supplies at other shelters, but since he could already get what he wanted from Mo Qingyan, there was no need to go to the other larger shelters.

After all, the amount of vegetables he had was enough for Mo Qingyan’s small shelter, which had only a few people, to eat for a month. But for a large shelter, it might not even be enough for one meal.

In such a situation, going to a large shelter to exchange goods might not be valued by others; the exchanged materials might not be as much as he’d get from Mo Qingyan, and there’s a possibility of being targeted.

Though the city’s shelters were still under the control of the Mayor, maintaining order, in this apocalyptic situation, if the officials decided they wanted to requisition his greenhouse, saying that the city’s supply is a unified plan and asking him to move to a large shelter and hand over the greenhouse to professionals, what chance did Chen Xin have of resisting?

Of course, as long as the social order has not collapsed, this possibility is low, but since the risk of this happening cannot be ruled out, and there’s no essential need to exchange goods with large shelters, Chen Xin naturally wanted to keep trouble to a minimum.

As for having exchanges with large shelters, it’s bound to happen, but until a safe trading method is found, Chen Xin thought it’s better to temporarily avoid dealings with large shelters.

Moreover, the situation in the city... is not as optimistic as it appears.

As Chen Xin drove back, he thought about the information he heard from Mo Qingyan, analyzing the current situation.

"The train station is still operational, with trains bringing in coal and small quantities of materials from time to time, allowing the city government to ensure the power plant’s operation, so there should be no problem with urban electricity supply. Even if the temperature continues to drop, railway transportation should still be maintained," Chen Xin tapped his fingers on the steering wheel, talking to himself and feeling fairly positive about the train station’s conditions, one of the three major shelters.

The train station referred to the city’s old passenger train station, underneath which was the city’s earliest underground shopping plaza, later converted into an underground hotel as it became desolate.

The place was relatively large, with several large shopping malls around it, and the city government had intentionally connected the surrounding areas, turning it into a sizable shelter.

In addition to being backed by the train station, a transportation hub, its importance in the current scenario was self-evident, and the city government would definitely do its utmost to keep the train station operational, so that shelter’s condition should be fine.

However, the old train station was indeed quite old, and the underground space had gone through several renovations. Although the government likely carried out refurbishments when constructing the shelter, the aging of facilities was an undeniable fact.

Thus, while the conditions at the train station shelter might be good, the living environment was probably the worst among the three major shelters.

As for the other two shelters, the shopping center and the pedestrian street, they each had their own pros and cons.

The shopping center shelter was the large one near Mo Qingyan’s home, primarily a large shopping center built in recent years. The underground area was originally parking lots and a large supermarket, which included a logistics center, providing some advantages in material storage.

Before the disaster happened, the city government had distributed a large amount of grain from the national granary across various shelters, and the shopping center, with sufficient storage conditions, received quite a significant portion of grain, which was largely stored here from the nearby neighborhoods.

But the problem with the shopping center was its limited space. Being a newly constructed shopping center in recent years and surrounded by residential neighborhoods, there simply wasn’t much space.

Even if a few nearby residential underground garages are connected to form a contiguous area, the space was still limited, with a constrained capacity for accommodating people.

Conversely, over at the pedestrian street, it was a civil defense project built during the tenure of the previous Mayor, where two streets were dug out to form an underground pedestrian street, transforming the old pedestrian street into an underground plaza.

In addition, being at the city’s most prosperous commercial area with many large malls interconnected underground, it was essentially like an underground city by itself.

Moreover, since it was built to civil defense standards, the facilities were quite complete and its capacity was certainly good, making it the most populated of the three major shelters.

This brought about its own set of problems, namely high consumption due to the large population, and the fact that the pedestrian street area was filled with malls and lacked large-scale supermarkets and logistics centers like the shopping center, impacting storage capabilities and resulting in limited grain reserves.

Overall, the three major shelters each had their strengths and weaknesses. The train station relied on rail transportation, making it a key channel for the city to obtain external resources, so the survival of this shelter was unlikely to face issues.

The shopping center wasn’t far from the city government, and had stored large quantities of grain, so even if there wasn’t a direct connection to the city government initially, they would surely dig one out now between the two locations.

Conversely, the pedestrian street might offer the best living conditions, but with a massive population and little additional advantages, it might soon face food and clothing shortages.

As for other smaller shelters, they also had their individual strengths and weaknesses, making it difficult to untangle them all at once.

Chen Xin simply stopped thinking about these issues since Ding Ning was at Mo Qingyan’s shelter and backed by the SWAT team and city police department. Trading materials through them was undoubtedly much safer and would yield better results.

Thinking of this, Chen Xin realized that his next step could be focused on increasing production in the planting greenhouse, exchanging vegetables for various needed materials, using those materials to upgrade the shelter, minimizing survival point expenditure, and potentially upgrading more projects.

With this mindset, Chen Xin had new plans for the future development of his shelter.