Chapter 289: Times pass

Almost none of the people living in Russell's time, especially those who were exposed to insiders, believed that human civilization could last until three hundred years later.

It can be said that it was an era that made scientists very desperate.

Interestingly, against the backdrop of the collective despair of scientists, civilians have lived almost the happiest life since the birth of human civilization.

Although World War III had a great impact on mankind, billions of people were affected by war, and several of the largest countries in the world were completely destroyed by war, in less than ten years, the trauma of war was completely wiped out, and mankind entered a golden age of 160 years.

In this era, there is almost no disease, no hunger, no war.

At least, for most people in developed countries, this is a paradise-like era.

Let’s first talk about the United States, a country that has been almost completely destroyed by the war.

The post-war reconstruction work of the United States officially began in 2057. First, it was China's free aid, that is, millions of people stationed in the United States, carried out three years of reconstruction work for the United States. It was not until early 2060 that the last batch of Chinese troops finished the construction work.

During these three years, China's reconstruction assistance laid a solid foundation for the great post-war development of the United States.

Although there are no exact statistics, one thing is certain, that is, the construction work done by about five million people in the past three years exceeded the sum of all infrastructure projects in the United States in the next five years, and all construction work carried out by the army was free of charge. To be precise, the United States did not pay labor remuneration for the people in the country, but only needed to purchase the materials needed for reconstruction.

Some details may explain the problem better.

During these three years, 75% of the nation's electricity consumption in the United States was provided by the small controllable fusion nuclear reactor of the China National Team. At that time, in Los Angeles alone, the China National Team used 22 small fusion power supply systems, providing a total of nearly 20 trillion kWh of electricity in three years, providing household electricity for about 10 million households, and providing industrial electricity for tens of thousands of reconstruction projects. If these electricity energy is calculated based on the electricity bills in the United States before the war, it is equivalent to ten trillion US dollars, which is ten times the electricity consumption of Los Angeles in the years before the war.

In addition to providing electricity, the China National Team also helped all major cities in the United States to restore water and gas supply, repair infrastructure such as roads, railways, subways, airports, etc. in all urban areas, and repaired sewers, rainwater discharge pipelines, underground pipelines, high-voltage transmission systems and other social public infrastructure. In addition, nearly 1.5 million kilometers of highways and hundreds of large-scale water conservancy projects have been built.

At that time, the Chinese team even built more than 10,000 hospitals and nearly 10,000 schools in the United States.

While the infrastructure reconstruction was being carried out, the national economic reconstruction work in the United States also began. The first thing that was rebuilt was economic industries related to people's livelihood, such as agricultural production factories, food processing factories, light industry, pharmaceutical industry, daily chemical industry, and logistics industry.

At that time, in order to help the United States restore its logistics industry, China provided very selfless assistance to the United States.

For example, many of the excess materials from the Chinese team were sold to American companies at very low prices, as well as Chinese companies that opened branches in the United States. According to data released by China, within ten years after the war, there were as many as 100,000 transport aircraft sold to the United States, of which nearly 20,000 were large electric transport aircraft, and the other used more flexible electric tactical transport aircraft.

These excess military supplies became the main engineering equipment for the United States to carry out post-war reconstruction.

More importantly, these aids have laid an extremely solid foundation for the United States to become the second largest industrial country after China and the second largest developed country.

You should know that within ten years after the end of the war, only two countries achieved aviationization, one was China and the other was the United States.

Around 2060, China basically achieved aviation, that is, air transportation became the most important means of long-distance transportation, and gradually replaced railways and water transportation, and eventually became the only means of long-distance transportation. Even in short-distance transportation, aviation occupied the most important seat. By the end of the 21st century, China had fully realized aviation, and even the transportation tools used by residents were flying cars.

The United States was immediately the one who achieved aviation in China.

By 2067, when the post-war reconstruction work was basically completed, air transportation accounted for 70% of the long-range transportation in the United States, while railways and water transportation dropped to less than 30%, and were eventually completely replaced by air transportation in 2072. By the end of the 21st century, the United States had basically achieved full aviation with China at the same time, that is, flying cars became the means of transportation for residents to travel.

Aviation is the main symbol of developed countries in the new era.

You should know that among the most important developed countries at that time, except for China and the United States, such as the European Federation, Russia and Australia, it would not be possible to basically achieve aviationization until the mid-22nd century, but the European Federation still did not fully achieve aviationization by the end of the 22nd century.

If aviation is used as the standard, then the European Federation was no longer a developed country in the early 22nd century.

So, how important is aviation?

To put it simply, the direct role of aviationization is to improve logistics efficiency. In the second half of the 21st century, when material wealth has reached its peak, logistics efficiency directly determines a country's production efficiency. Traditional logistics methods obviously cannot adapt to a brand new production model.

To give a very simple example, after the full popularity of air transportation, the trans-Pacific commodity transportation has been shortened from about one month in the 21st century to half a day, that is, products produced in the United States in the morning can arrive in China in the evening and delivered to Chinese consumers that night. In this way, China and the United States have the basis of a comprehensive alliance, and the joint development of the two countries is no longer restricted by distance.

Of course, aviation not only refers to cargo transportation, but also personnel exchanges.

By the end of the 21st century, transoceanic passenger aircraft had fully entered the orbital era, and the flight time from Shanghai to New York was only about two hours.

This improvement in communication efficiency fundamentally improves the productivity of society.

Of course, the essence of improving productivity is to improve energy utilization capacity in a comprehensive way.

By the 1980s, China had fully popularized the second-generation fusion nuclear power plants, while the United States reached the same level twenty years later.

It can be said that this is the basic technology of social development.

In a sense, the second-generation fusion nuclear technology is the truly controllable fusion nuclear technology, because the second-generation fusion nuclear technology basically turns electricity into an unlimited supply of social public resources, and its cost is truly reduced to a level close to zero.

You should know that before that, even if China provides free power to residents, it was restrictive, that is, each resident had a rated power supply quota, and the excess still had to be purchased, and it was purchased at a high price. As for industrial electricity, China had never truly achieved free supply before.

Only after the full popularization of the second-generation controlled fusion nuclear power plants did China truly begin to provide unlimited free power supply.

Of course, this is not really free, because Chinese government still has to use taxes to produce and supply power generation raw materials for power plants.

Strictly speaking, it is necessary to achieve comprehensive and unlimited free power supply until the third generation of controlled fusion nuclear power plants are launched, that is, nuclear power plants directly fueled by hydrogen can be fully unlimited and free power supply. All governments have to do is build nuclear power plants and maintain nuclear power plants, and the raw materials can be extracted by the power station itself.

There is no doubt that the unlimited supply of electricity has begun to have a very thorough impact on human civilization.

Don’t forget that in modern society, the most indispensable resource is electricity.

Without electricity, human society is almost unable to move forward. With electricity, almost all materials can be produced, from food to clothing, food to drugs, from flying cars to large aircraft, from household appliances to electronic equipment, and even the space where humans live, can be obtained through electricity.

This change is most prominent in the United States.

Although the United States also popularized fusion nuclear energy before the outbreak of the war, the United States' technology is not very mature. Even though it uses heavy hydrogen and superheavy hydrogen as raw materials for power generation, the construction cost of power stations is high, the maintenance cost is even higher, and the power generation efficiency is not as good as China's first generation of controllable fusion nuclear technology. The result is that the United States did not achieve free power supply before the war, and the price of domestic electricity is not too low.

After the war ended, China basically promoted the second-generation fusion nuclear power plant in the United States at the same time.

However, at that time, China had a large amount of war surplus materials, including thousands of small fusion power supply systems. In addition, the country also dealt with a lot of first-generation fusion nuclear power plants. Therefore, within the twenty years after the war, the main power supply in the United States still came from the first-generation fusion nuclear power plants.

However, for the Americans, this is definitely much better than before the war.

You should know that since 2065, the United States has also promoted a free power supply system. The government will provide residents with a certain amount of free power for free. Only after exceeding the average consumption level, residents need to pay for electricity themselves, and the price of industrial electricity has also been greatly reduced.

It can be said that such earth-shaking changes are the basis for the commonalization between China and the United States.

Of course, this can also be seen as China's post-war policy, that is, through economic support, trade exchanges, and comprehensive cultural invasion, China and the United States will eventually form a bipolar and unity world to jointly build a civilization system with the Pacific as the core.

Of course, these huge changes have also made China extremely significant, and the final result is that China has become the center of the world indisputably.

However, the ultimate benefit is not only the Chinese and Americans, but everyone, including the Europeans who were once regarded as the number one enemy by China.
Chapter completed!