50s: Starting with a storage ring

Chapter 851 Salvage
Three hours later, Sun Zhiwei got up feeling refreshed. After a quick wash and a light snack, he continued his journey.

By this time, he was far away from Svalbard, surrounded by open space, and the wind suddenly rose to force 10.

Sun Zhiwei had anticipated this, and he has now entered the area affected by the "Arctic cyclone".

An "Arctic cyclone" is a polar high-pressure system that lingers within the Arctic Circle year-round. Under normal circumstances, it "locks" cold air within the Arctic Circle through the westerly winds, preventing it from moving southward on a large scale.

Nearly 300 Arctic cyclones occur every year. This stable meteorological structure can effectively maintain the low temperature environment within the Arctic Circle during winter.

This is a very important weather system for the Earth. When the Arctic cyclone is stable, most of the land in the Northern Hemisphere will maintain the cycle of the four seasons.

If the "Arctic cyclone" fails for an extended period, we will be met with a large-scale southward movement of cold air.

We often hear weather forecasts on TV during the autumn and winter saying things like "cold air from Siberia is moving south."

This actually refers to the cold air released from the Arctic Circle when an "Arctic cyclone" occasionally stops moving.

A small portion of these cold air masses entered northern my country after passing through Siberia.

Even the slightest leak of cold air, weakened by the vast Siberian plains, can cause significant and large-scale temperature changes in my country, thousands of miles away.

If the entire Arctic cyclone system fails and all the Arctic cold air currents spread to the Northern Hemisphere, the consequences would be unimaginable.

In the most extreme case, there could be two different outcomes.

One possibility is that it could lead to the loss of Arctic cold air, rising temperatures, and massive melting of glaciers, causing global sea levels to rise, at which point all low-lying areas on Earth would sink into the sea.
Another possibility is that the entire Northern Hemisphere, swept by polar cold currents, directly entered the Little Ice Age.

The consequences are similar to the situation depicted in the movie "The Day After Tomorrow," where the entire Northern Hemisphere is frozen over.

After entering the area affected by the "Arctic cyclone," Sun Zhiwei has now truly entered the Arctic, and at the same time, he has witnessed the most brutal side of the Arctic.

First, the wind intensified, then the outside temperature dropped below -50 degrees Celsius. Through space exploration, he also saw many icebergs hundreds of meters thick beneath the sea surface.

At this point, due to the strong winds, Sun Zhiwei had reduced the speed of the "Kharkovchaka 2" polar vehicle to 15 km/h in order to maintain the stability of the vehicle.

He is now very grateful that he bought the "Kharkovchaka 2" polar vehicle in Oslo.

Otherwise, according to his original plan, he would have driven his snowmobile at breakneck speed to the sinking site of the "Komsomolskaya Pravda," salvaged the ship, and returned.

But if he really dares to do that, he'll probably die here.

He couldn't handle the strong winds here; snowmobiles can't travel in such gales, and overturning in strong winds is almost inevitable.

Now with the "Kharkovchaka 2" polar vehicle, although the speed of movement is very slow, people are extremely comfortable in the warm vehicle.

Anyway, he's not in a hurry, so it's fine if he takes his time.

He braved the strong winds and slowly made his way to his destination, eating when he needed to and sleeping when he needed to along the way.

It took him three days to travel a distance of less than 1000 kilometers.

Of course, it's not fair to blame him for being slow. The strong winds significantly reduced his speed, and he encountered several massive icebergs frozen on the ice, forcing him to take detours and lengthening the journey considerably. Throughout this time, whenever he was driving, he kept his spatial awareness active, monitoring everything around him.

To his alarm, he discovered two massive strategic nuclear submarines passing by deep beneath thick ice.

One of them is the Ulyanovsk, a 26,500-ton Typhoon-class strategic nuclear submarine belonging to the Russian family.

The other is the USS Henry Jackson, an Ohio-class strategic nuclear submarine belonging to the American family, with a displacement of 18,750 tons.

These two behemoths cruised beneath the Arctic ice cap in complete silence, ready at any moment to receive orders and launch a second nuclear strike against the enemy.

Sun Zhiwei didn't dare touch the two submarines. These were the last trump cards of both sides. If he dared to let them disappear without a trace, he was afraid that the two sides would directly launch a violent apocalypse.

Six days after departing from Longyearbyen, Sun Zhiwei finally arrived at the target sea area. He then turned off GPS navigation and began circling around the area to search.

Two days later, Sun Zhiwei finally discovered the "Communist Youth League Member" ship, which had been submerged for several months, on the seabed.

His broken body lay quietly on the cold seabed of the Arctic Ocean. The depth of 1580 meters and his weight of 8500 tons left the bears helpless.

Sun Zhiwei noticed that there were two large gaps on the hull of the "Communist Youth League Member".

One of these locations, in compartment VII at the rear of the submarine, was the site of an explosion that blasted a large gash into the sturdy titanium hull from the inside.

Another missing part is the central part of the conning tower, where a section is missing – the submarine's autonomous separation escape capsule.

It was ejected as the submarine was sinking, but due to a malfunction in the ejection system, four of the five crew members in the escape capsule died during the ejection process.

The ejected life pod sank back to the bottom of the sea shortly after surfacing, and it should now be lying somewhere on the seabed nearby.

He had noticed that the Komsomolskaya Pelajaran submarine had suffered extensive damage from fire, with many compartments burned and the damage far more severe than he had imagined.

With such extensive damage, he didn't know if the house could be repaired, but it seemed unlikely.

But no matter what, we've come all this way, we can't leave empty-handed, so let's send it back for the experts to study.

Sun Zhiwei sighed helplessly and put the "Communist Youth League Member" into his spatial storage first.

Along with the "Komsomolskaya Pravda" hull, 22 munitions were also retracted into the space: 10 Blizzard torpedoes, 6 anti-ship torpedoes, and 6 Garnet submarine-launched cruise missiles.

Of all the ammunition, two points are worth noting.

Firstly, there are six "Garnet" submarine-launched cruise missiles with a range of 3000 kilometers, two of which are equipped with nuclear warheads.

Secondly, there's the Blizzard torpedo, which can reach speeds of up to 200 knots.

The "Shkval Torpedo" was a groundbreaking "supercavitating torpedo".

(End of this chapter)