Chapter 226: Chapter 222 City Sanitation
Faced with Perfikot’s design diagrams optimized by the Jade Record, the group of Alchemists didn’t offer any suggestions for major changes.
After all, Perfikot’s original design was already very comprehensive, considering issues like ventilation, water supply, heating, etc., which were well addressed through optimization by the Jade Record.
Therefore, they couldn’t propose any modifications to the major structural issues.
However, these Alchemists were not idle; they did offer some minor refinements, such as recommendations on lighting, city sewage, and garbage disposal, which were also valuable references for Perfikot.
In the end, she actually didn’t have related experience in designing a city; most of her designs were based on reference from the underground air-raid shelters and such defense projects from the original world pre-travel, but there was a significant gap between the two.
After all, one is just to withstand war, a temporary refuge, while the other is designed for long-term or even permanent residence.
The difference in purposes leads to different functionalities, naturally resulting in differences in design.
Perfikot, although initially tried to make adjustments in this aspect, and the optimization by the Jade Record improved many areas, the wisdom of one person is limited, inevitably she overlooked some details.
For example, sewage disposal and toilet arrangement were aspects Perfikot missed during planning and designing.
While Perfikot definitely didn’t miss the sewage system, she indeed designed a sewage system, but she overlooked a relatively easy-to-ignore point, which was that the entire underground city had a spiral structure; the streets naturally sloped downward in a spiral manner, so if someone poured sewage on the streets, it would flow straight down.
This is neither a very big nor very small issue, more precisely, it’s a matter for the city’s managers to handle.
But Perfikot had to consider this problem, because the sanitation issue brought by sewage could indeed trigger epidemics.
In her original world before traveling, in the 18th century, London in the United Kingdom had suffered from the ravages of various epidemics such as malaria, typhoid, and influenza due to water supply sites and sewer water pollution problems.
Therefore, Perfikot was quite serious about this matter; after an Alchemist raised the problem, she also pondered seriously on how to handle this issue.
The sewage system originally designed by Perfikot for the shelter was distributed along the main structure of the entire shelter, used to collect all domestic sewage, and after centralized collection, it would be uniformly sent to the surface for treatment, preventing pollution and sanitation issues caused by sewage accumulation.
However, the sanitation problem of this era is a very difficult municipal problem; in fact, even in the original world, this problem was almost unresolved until the Second Industrial Revolution, after the Spanish flu in 1918 took away tens of millions of lives, prompting the establishment of modern sanitation systems.
The medical development and technological progress involved in it are not merely isolated issues.
Under the premise of overall social progress can this problem be effectively resolved; before that, all Perfikot could do was think it through as much as she could in the planning and design of the shelter, trying to minimize the impact of this issue.
"We can set up a drainage ditch at regular intervals along the roads, so that even if sewage flows down the street, it can be effectively blocked and collected for centralized processing." One Alchemist proposed his suggestion.
Turns out everyone agreed after some discussion, so it was added to the design diagram.
Upon adding this part of the design, Perfikot also raised another issue, which was a consequence of the food supply shortage that occurred yesterday, that is, how to ensure food supply in the Northern Territory.
Perfikot didn’t mention anything about facing a doomsday winter; she merely suggested to maintain a certain degree of food self-sufficiency within the underground city during cold conditions, ensuring food supply during the winter.
To these Alchemists, Perfikot’s request indeed put them in a difficult position, as they had never considered this aspect before, or thought it was necessary to address such a problem.
But since Perfikot brought it up, they had to find ways to solve it.
In fact, it was one of the issues Perfikot originally planned to tackle, but according to the original plan, she was supposed to address this issue with the help of the biologists dispatched from Langton to the Northern Territory.
Because this involved a series of problems like crop selection and the construction of planting environments, and it’s challenging to resolve these problems without people skilled in the relevant disciplines.
Originally, Perfikot wasn’t in such a hurry, but considering the food supply issue in the Northern Territory, she asked these Alchemists, just to see if there might be an unexpected gain.
Unfortunately, most of these Alchemists had no concept of agricultural planting and offered no valuable suggestions.
One Alchemist proposed to create some kind of alchemical creation, using alchemy to directly turn wheat seeds into complete wheat plants, achieving the purpose of obtaining large quantities of food in a short time.
This proposal captured Perfikot’s interest; from an alchemy perspective, it was indeed possible, Perfikot herself could even do this and could exaggerate a bit more, achieving results directly like producing bread in one step.
However, energy is conserved, and alchemy cannot conjure food out of thin air. The Philosopher’s Stone merely breaks the principle of equivalent exchange, using the Philosopher’s Stone itself as a substitute, instead of being able to materialize desired things with the Philosopher’s Stone.
Therefore, although it could be done, Perfikot must also consider the cost-effectiveness of the process.
Moreover, using alchemy consumes energy; should this creation require exhausting an ordinary Alchemist’s energy to transform one grain of wheat into a wheat ear, the input-output ratio would be too low.
Hence, after careful consideration, Perfikot decided to let this Alchemist have a try first, what if it works?
"Professor Greenspan, you can form a research group to carry out research on this project. If there’s anything you need, you can tell my steward, and he will provide the necessary supplies for your experiments." Perfikot promised, then turned to the others, "If you have similar ideas, you can tell me, I don’t mind letting you all give it a try."
Despite Perfikot expressing her expectations to everyone, ultimately only Professor Greenspan’s idea seemed to be somewhat feasible.