The Plane War Begins from Wandering Earth

Chapter 176 175. Exploitation
After PPDC decided to drastically cut military spending on the "Hunter Plan", the biggest impact was on the "Broken Dome Mecha Bases" spread across the Pacific Rim region.

They are not only the bases for the garrison of numerous giant mechas, but also the bases for the research, development and manufacturing of giant mechas.

There are also a large number of students from the Hunter Academy receiving training here to become future mecha pilots and maintenance operators.

As soon as the ppdc's military funding was cut off, the various Shattered Dome bases immediately fell into a serious financial crisis.

As the most advanced weapon and equipment used by human countries to deal with Kaiju, the giant mecha embodies the wisdom of countless scientific researchers.

Therefore, correspondingly, their R&D, manufacturing, and maintenance costs are also quite astonishingly high.

In order to enable these giant mechas to perform better in close combat with Kaiju.

Even the most basic outer shell material on a mecha must go through layers of optimization.

The shell material is created through various complex forging technologies, and also has to go through a series of processes such as lightweight design, corrosion resistance, wear resistance, and impact coating.

Only then can it finally truly become a part of the giant mecha's body.

When the costs are added up layer by layer, the manufacturing costs such as labor, materials, design, research and development, etc., are added together and the figure is simply astronomical.

And this is just the simplest and least technologically demanding giant mecha shell.

Those power systems and weapon systems with higher technological content cannot be produced even by most countries in the Pacific Rim with the whole country's efforts.

Without the support of financial resources, the factory at the Broken Dome Mecha Base had to shut down.

Relying on the inventory of spare parts, these bases can only provide basic maintenance and simple repair services for the existing giant mechas.

Even the salaries of the staff within the base cannot be guaranteed.

As a key base, the situation at Broken Dome in Hong Kong is slightly better.

But the highest commander here, who is also the top leader of the "Hunter Project": Marshal Stek, still feels a headache.

As the former pilot of the Tango Wolf mecha, Marshal Stek was a soldier who rose to his current position step by step from the front-line battlefield against the Kaiju.

He knew clearly that the so-called "wall of life" was just a trick to fool people.

Judging from the terrifying evolutionary ability of Kaiju, it won't be long before these giant walls made of reinforced concrete will be unable to resist the invasion of those alien monsters.

At that time, no matter how much money is invested in the Wall of Life, it will be wasted.

However, no matter how he argued in front of the senior officials of PPDC, there was an extremely realistic problem that he could not get around.

No money.

Not only the Pacific Rim region, but the entire world has been drained of its energy by the Kaiju's attacks and invasions.

Many coastal cities and ports were destroyed.

The biological toxins of the Kaiju have spread throughout the world with ocean currents.

The direct economic losses amounted to more than 10 trillion US dollars, and the indirect economic losses due to environmental pollution, damage to the aquatic products, tourism, and port trade industries reached astronomical figures of hundreds of trillions of US dollars.

The economies of the entire Pacific Rim region have regressed by more than ten years due to the impact of this disaster that lasted for seven years.

Even Europe, far away from the Pacific Ocean, was deeply affected.

On the other hand, the giant mecha that consumed countless manpower, material resources and financial resources to build did not have the ability to crush the Kaiju.

This made the PPDC member states extremely disappointed, and they turned their attention to another path, the Wall of Life.

The long and wide Wall of Life costs less than the "Hunter Project" and the visual effect looks more intuitive.

It can be considered as an explanation to the people.

Marshal Stek couldn't conjure up the huge productivity resources to continue supporting the "Hunter Project" out of thin air, so he couldn't convince the senior officials of the PPDC.

Fortunately, as of now, humans still have a lot of giant mechas, and in the short term, they can deal with the upcoming Kaiju.

But what about the future?

Marshal Stek is not optimistic enough to think that the giant mecha controlled by PPDC can kill all the Kaiju that land on the earth next time without any injury.

Judging from the combat power level of the third-level monster "Sickle Head", the next ones to land are likely to be third-level monsters with greatly enhanced combat power.

Among the existing mechas of ppdc, many are still relatively backward first- and second-generation mechas.

For the time being, Kaiju can't see any signs of slowing down their landing on Earth.

But from now on, every time a giant mecha of mankind is destroyed, there will be one less.

Marshal Steck had to consider the future of the "Hunter Project".

Especially after the emergence of the United Government, Marshal Steck and the "Hunter Plan" he led, once the guardian of the Pacific Rim, had a stronger sense of crisis.

The Dangerous Wanderer, which was originally consigned to the "Mecha Graveyard", began to evaluate the possibility of repair and maintenance under the order of Marshal Steck. If necessary, Marshal Steck was ready to "recycle waste".

At the same time, various countries began to promote the "Wall of Life" project.

Unlike the "Hunter Project", it requires a large team of highly skilled R&D personnel and high-standard mecha parts suppliers.

The "Wall of Life" project requires the most basic industrial infrastructure materials such as steel bars, concrete, and cement, as well as a large number of workers.

Every country along the Pacific Rim can do this independently without any difficulty.

Therefore, countries have regarded the "Wall of Life" operation as the best solution to resist the Kaiju and have begun to promote it on a large scale.

The people were organized and went to various important coastal cities to start an infrastructure construction campaign unprecedented in human history.

The construction of the "Wall of Life" will be supervised by a ppdc specialist. The quality of reinforced concrete, cement, sand and other materials must be guaranteed to ensure that the "Wall of Life" will not be a "shoddy project."

The cost of these basic building materials cannot be reduced.

In order to further reduce the production cost of the "wall of life", countries can only find ways to reduce "labor costs".

There are more than 100 countries and regions along the Pacific Rim, with different economic levels and strengths, so their engineering plans, salaries and benefits are also very different.

Developed regions such as Sydney and Los Angeles offer their citizens salaries that are higher than the local average weekly wage in order to attract them to participate in the massive construction of the "Wall of Life".

Various levels of food and accommodation, as well as salary subsidies, are all close to the average level of heavy physical labor jobs in the country.

However, despite the publicity, the willingness of the country's citizens to participate in the construction is not high.

It’s fine for them to make appeals online or even march in the streets, but heavy physical labor on construction sites? That’s not allowed!
Instead, a large number of refugees from the Pacific Rim region were attracted here. Even though developed areas such as Sydney and Los Angeles have repeatedly reduced the treatment of "foreign workers", there is still an endless stream of refugees going to these developed areas to get a job and seek a good life for themselves and their families.

As developed countries, Japan and South Korea offer much inferior treatment.

Japan is surrounded by the sea and has suffered landing attacks from Kaiju before. The people are extremely afraid of Kaiju.

Therefore, a plan that sounded quite outrageous was proposed. They wanted to build a huge "border wall" of nearly 30,000 kilometers around the entire coastal border of Japan.

The cost of basic building materials is simply an astronomical figure. Even with Japan's economic level, it is somewhat unbearable. The construction can only be divided into multiple batches, with priority given to the construction of border walls in economically developed areas.

In addition, in order to save costs, the Japanese government vigorously promoted and called on refugees from the Pacific Rim to go to Japan to participate in construction, and was even willing to provide travel expenses for the refugees.

With the examples of areas such as Sydney and Los Angeles, refugees flocked to the island region without hesitation.

However, when they arrived here, they found that the actual treatment provided by Japan was completely different from that in Sydney and Los Angeles.

The salary is less than a quarter of that offered in Sydney and Los Angeles.

No salary will be paid until the project is completed, and only basic food and accommodation will be provided on weekdays.

When the refugees felt remorseful and wanted to leave, they were told that if they gave up, they would have to pay the travel expenses previously paid by Japan before they could leave.

The dumbfounded refugees had no choice but to stay.

Due to the large number of refugees, the basic food and accommodation conditions provided by the Japanese government had to be downgraded again and again.

In the end, the refugees were only provided with tents and sleeping bags, and not even temporary shelters were built.

The food provided is seafood from the waters near the island country. The waters in these areas are mostly polluted by the blood of the corpses of kaiju, and all kinds of mutated and deformed fish and seafood are everywhere.

These deformed seafood products that the islanders were so terrified of had no market at all and eventually became food for the refugees.

The not-so-far country of Han also has a strong demand for the construction of a wall of life.

Compared with island countries, they have less money and fewer people, so the budget they spend on "labor costs" is pitifully small.

To this end, the Han country government has vigorously promoted it and announced that it can help accept refugees who want to leave the island country.

However, after these refugees were transported to the peninsula, they discovered that the Han country exploited them even more harshly.

Although the island country says that project salaries can only be paid out uniformly after the project is completed, at least there is still a hope.

The food and accommodation standards of the cold country here are copied from those of the island country, but they don't mention anything about salary at all, and simply treat the refugees they bring in as free cheap labor.

On the other hand, the construction of the Wall of Life is also being promoted in the vast Southeast Asian region.

In these populous Southeast Asian regions, the number of refugees in their own countries is sufficient to support the construction of the Wall of Life.

Even considering that they are all citizens of the country, the local officials' exploitation of refugees is not as obvious as that of Japan and South Korea.

Although wages and salaries are almost nothing.

But at least they will provide the refugee workers with basic fixed housing, and the supply will be half and half of deformed seafood and normal food, so it won't be too unscrupulous.

(End of this chapter)