Unlimited Money Shelter of the Apocalypse - Chapter 9

WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: DereKimchi

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ Unlimited Money Shelter of the Apocalypse ◈

Chapter 9: Server Room and Hydroponics Room

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One more day passed.

「Until demo service ends: 25 days, 14 hours, 26 minutes」

Having an expert on hand visibly sped up the work.

Before, whenever I wanted to bring in a piece of equipment, I had to search through papers and all sorts of other sources, spending no small amount of time on research alone. With Anne here now, things were much easier.

As a result, I successfully completed the power generation facility, transformer and substation room, and battery room. The power conversion and storage facilities covered 1,500 pyeong, with construction costs of $2.5 billion and internal equipment costing a total of $3.235 billion.

That came to a total of $5.735 billion.

The costs for the HVAC and power distribution systems could only be properly estimated after the shelter was fully constructed, so I didn't calculate them yet.

For reference, I hid the Juggernaut deep inside the entrance because there was nowhere to use it immediately. I planned to call it out later when scouting the area or constructing military-related facilities.

Anyway, today I planned to build a data center. It wouldn't be enormous, so calling it a server room would be more accurate, but...

Data center sounded more impressive than server room, so I decided to call it a data center.

“May I ask what the server room is for?”

I said data center.

“What is the server room for?”

“Tsk.”

There were several reasons, but the biggest ones were...

Weather forecasting, data sharing with high-performance satellites, long-range communications, and because I wanted to keep using the Internet even after the world ended.

Unlike frail extroverts who start dying in real time if they don't interact with other people, introverts like me could live in a bunker for a thousand years with nothing but the Internet and ramen.

So the Internet was directly tied to my survival. It would also be useful for gathering information.

“I would like to mention a study in the former Soviet Union where people were packed into confined spaces. After thirty-eight days, they developed depression and attempted suicide and murder.”

It was just a figure of speech. How could anyone actually live for a thousand years?

Whenever this happened, I couldn't help feeling that Anne knew exactly what they were doing and deliberately messed with me.

“It is a misunderstanding.”

I clicked my tongue at the rude android, who immediately started making excuses with a blank expression. They said androids were made to imitate humans. Had they copied human comedy instincts too?

One thing was clear: those were some serious dad jokes.

“That hits a nerve a little.”

“Hm?”

“I am joking.”

Saying something like that with a completely blank face was a talent in itself.

Getting back to the point, I had another reason for building the data center first.

It was one of the few fields directly related to my major. In other words, it was a chance to properly confirm just how professional Anne's advice was.

It could also give me a reason to trust Anne more.

“But weren't you a software major, Administrator?”

“That's right.”

“Servers are closer to hardware, if we are being precise.”

I knew that much.

Still, as a computer science major, I had some grounding in hardware too.

I immediately searched through <Shelter Builder>.

In the industry, the cabinets used to stack server computers and network equipment are called racks. A rack unit, or U, is 4.5 centimeters high.

The standard large racks commonly used in data centers were about two meters tall. If I remembered correctly, they were probably 42U.

‘Yep.’

Then let's calculate based on using it for weather forecasting.

Typical Korea Meteorological Administration forecasts used grids with a horizontal resolution of around five kilometers. Put simply, they laid a dense grid of five-by-five-kilometer squares over a map and calculated how values like temperature, air pressure, humidity, and wind would change within each square.

Local forecast models, meanwhile, used much denser grids of roughly one kilometer. Naturally, denser grids allowed for more detailed weather predictions, but they also increased the number of grids that needed to be calculated, along with the required data and computing power. The advantages and disadvantages were clear.

Naturally, I chose the latter.

Because I had money to spare.

When preparing for an apocalypse, what could I possibly lose by obtaining more precise weather observation equipment and high-performance computing systems?

‘Hmm.’

Anyway, how much computing power would be needed to operate a local forecast model?

The KMA's supercomputers, Maru and Guru, had a computing performance of roughly 51 petaflops. That meant they could perform about 51 quadrillion floating-point operations per second.

How did I know this? It was basic computer science knowledge.

“I do not believe that is the case.”

Anyway, based on that information, let's calculate how much computing equipment would be needed for the weather forecasting facilities alone.

Assuming I built a 51-petaflop system using a modern GPU-accelerated cluster, then conservatively calculated GPU performance, node configuration, and rack density...

“You will need at least fifty to sixty 42U high-density racks.”

I was just about to finish calculating!

Anyway, once I added the ultra-fast storage for weather data, the main network backbone, and racks for various management equipment, that was about another eight racks.

That already made fifty-eight.

It might not sound like much, but a single 42U rack usually weighed around 1.5 tons. Fifty-eight of them came to roughly eighty-seven tons, while sixty-eight came to 102 tons.

But servers would also be necessary for fields besides weather forecasting, so I decided to construct the facility around the standard for a high-density data center: 120 racks.

And that wasn't all.

The floor had to be reinforced to bear that kind of load, and cooling facilities were needed to handle the enormous heat generated by the servers.

And that still wasn't all!

Once I considered power equipment, cabling, and fire suppression systems, even more space was necessary.

And that still wasn't all!

Constant-temperature and humidity units, cooling water circulation equipment, heat exchangers, and pumps were needed too!

If this was how it was going to be, why couldn't they just let me use superconductors? Why release only robots? I couldn't understand the creator's terrible sense at all. If they were going to unlock things, they should unlock everything.

‘A high-density liquid-cooled smart rack costs $8,500 each...’

Then Anne, standing beside me, casually spoke.

“...Why exactly were you unable to find employment?”

“Because my parents died suddenly?”

“Ah.”

Apparently, Anne understood.

* * *

National Intelligence Service, Republic of Korea.

A meeting regarding the software <Shelter Builder>, newly classified as a Level 1 state secret, was in full swing.

“It appears that voluntary reporters receive different amounts of initial funds depending on how many survey questions they answered. We secured a considerable comparison group, and although the initial funds were not completely identical, a meaningful increase was confirmed based on the number of answered questions.”

“Nearly all of them answered fewer than five questions. Isn't the sample size too small?”

The report laid before the government officials clearly organized all the information acquired so far.

First, all respondents who answered five questions or fewer received initial funds of no more than $100,000. Kim XX, who was staying in Boston on business at the time, answered four questions and received funds in their home currency rather than the local currency. This suggests that the software possesses some mechanism for identifying a purchaser's nationality.

Second, the greater the voluntary reporter's initial funds, the wider the range of purchasable items. While most voluntary reporters could purchase basic firearms, those with greater initial funds were confirmed to be able to purchase high-powered lethal weapons such as mortars.

Third, all voluntary reporters could use the Construction and Purchase functions only within a radius of roughly three kilometers around the location where they first chose to construct their shelter.

Fourth, previously purchased items could be withdrawn even outside that range. Once withdrawn, an item could not be stored again...

No matter how many times they read it, that last line was the problem.

After reading the report they had reviewed countless times, the government official finally closed the folder.

There was too little information. If close cooperation with the United States had been underway, they would have learned more than this. Or at least with Europe.

However, the global situation was far from normal.

China had judged the software to be a fatal threat to its current regime. It was forcibly summoning voluntary reporters in China and abroad, administering every kind of interrogation drug, including truth serum, and extracting as much information as possible by force. Russia was not much different.

“Whew...”

The truly worst problem was that an ordinary individual could obtain large-scale lethal weapons far too easily. And that they could store them in spaces completely beyond state control.

What if hostile nations used these voluntary reporters as living arsenals?

Put bluntly, what if a voluntary reporter with hundreds of millions of dollars in initial funds infiltrated the Republic of Korea and withdrew large-scale lethal weapons in real time right in front of the National Assembly Building?

Just thinking about it sent chills down their spine.

That was precisely why the United States was taking such a passive attitude toward cooperation with Korea.

The United States had far more enemies than Korea.

As a result, the U.S. government said it had no capacity to concern itself with the Republic of Korea under circumstances where it could not predict what China, Russia, South America, the Arab world, and others might do.

Yet even the United States could not implement the hardline measure of completely sealing its airports and ports. If it did, it would only be a matter of time before citizens noticed something was wrong, and society itself would collapse first.

In the end, all America could do was secretly station agents disguised as civilians throughout airports and ports and deal with dangerous elements in advance.

They were apparently pouring in everyone they had, whether official personnel or private contractors.

The Republic of Korea was not much different.

Other than the minimum personnel required to monitor overseas developments, every intelligence agent had been recalled to the country.

Anyway, today's meeting had only one purpose.

In the name of national security, how far could the state violate its citizens' human rights?

“...”

The government official fingered the prayer beads around their wrist.

Those who refused to cooperate would now all be called non-citizens.

* * *

I modestly finished the server room at 200 pyeong. Taking cooling pipes, cable trays, and load reinforcement into account, I set the ceiling height at a generous five meters. Construction alone cost roughly $165 million.

Then there were the high-density liquid-cooled racks, the 51-petaflop-class computing node system, ultra-fast storage, backbone network, and cooling distribution equipment, which came to $81.2 million.

And I even brought in Frontier from Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the United States, the massive supercomputer that represented exascale computing!

Adding up the costs of building the server room, the equipment, and the latest supercomputer...

A whopping $846.238 million!

‘Hmm.’

A supercomputer server room was cheaper than Anne?

The fact that I considered that cheap probably meant my brain was completely broken.

For reference, Anne designed it. I might have majored in the field, but I didn't know how to design a server room on this scale.

Once I had roughly finished the server room, I lay down in my tent and immediately logged into a survivalist community.

Anon: There are noticeably fewer people...

Anon: Where'd the assistant mod go?

Dead Board User: Is this board dead?

Over the last few days, the number of people regularly visiting the community had dropped sharply. There hadn't been many to begin with, which made the decrease all the more noticeable.

Survivor1: Maybe they got kidnapped? lololol

It had gotten to the point where people were even joking that they had been kidnapped.

‘Tsk.’

I immediately moved to an overseas community. I browsed communities like these to gather information, not for entertainment.

Unfortunately, Korean communities failed to satisfy my intellectual curiosity and were eliminated.

Today's post was about nutrients. The next facility I planned to build was a large hydroponic farm, and I wanted to find out which plants would provide the healthiest and most efficient nutrition.

Naturally, I planned to prioritize taste over efficiency. It was an idea only possible because I had money.

‘Hydroponics are a must.’

With biology knowledge limited to high school level, and perhaps even less than that of a current high school student, I thought the most efficient hydroponic crops would probably be leafy vegetables like lettuce.

Crops like rice and wheat took too long to harvest, while lettuce only needed its leaves picked.

Surprisingly, I was right.

Farmer113: If we're talking strictly hydroponics, kale and spinach are the best. You can get plenty of vitamins A, C, and K, as well as folate, iron, and calcium. You can harvest them around thirty days after germination too. They also need less light than fruiting vegetables.

Farmer113: And you can grow them densely!

Farmer113: If you include ordinary soil cultivation, I'd say potatoes are probably best. Potatoes have lots of vitamins and essential amino acids, and their yield is even higher than rice. Legumes are good too. They don't even need fertilizer.

I wrote down all the information I found from the Internet experts. Sometimes information gained from real experience was more useful than papers.

Actually, I had done quite a bit of farming as a child. Both my paternal and maternal grandfathers had been farmers.

Until relatively recently, I had visited the countryside for holidays to pick persimmons, plant rice, dig up wild parsley, and harvest strawberries, grapes, peppers, sesame, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, eggplants, beans, and pumpkins.

Looking at it that way, I'd done more than I thought.

I might not have done as much as kids from the countryside, but wasn't that still among the more extensive farming experience for someone from the city? At least by the standards of people in their twenties these days.

‘But would kale and spinach alone be enough?’

The disadvantage of hydroponics was that it was very difficult to grow tubers like potatoes, or staple calorie crops like rice and beans.

Over a long stay in the shelter, I wouldn't be able to endure on one type of food alone. I wasn't a picky eater, and I had even eaten military rations without issue, but I thought two or three months was the limit for eating the same food repeatedly.

I needed to diversify food production. But were there methods besides hydroponics?

“There are aeroponics, aquaponics, solid-substrate cultivation, and mycoponics. Are you not going to sleep?”

It was Anne. Anne hadn't stuck their face into my tent. I could tell from the shadow that they were standing right in front of it.

“I'll sleep after researching a little more.”

“Sleeping after 2 a.m. and sleeping five hours or less a day are not recommended.”

“I know.”

Then a question rose in my mind. How did Anne know what I was thinking?

“Can you read my thoughts too?”

“Only partially.”

I felt as though Anne was tapping their own head through the tent with a finger.

“Because I am connected to you, Administrator.”

What were you, a Protoss?