Chapter 1179: Chapter 178: Probability of Victory
AIM explained the current situation as quickly as possible, "...to sum up, you can regard me and this Li Rising as projections of a higher-dimensional world into this place."
"He wants to destroy the world, to kill as many inhabitants of this planet as possible, while I want to protect you."
"This is a conflict that cannot be mediated; there’s no room for negotiation, discussion, or bargaining."
"..."
The attending leaders and high-ranking officials from all countries present fell into silence. After a moment, someone said hoarsely, "Isn’t this just treating our world like a videogame..."
"You could put it that way."
AIM said calmly, "In fact, it’s not even as good as a videogame."
"By my estimate, if this were a human planet exactly identical to Earth, Li Rising might still hesitate and consider whether to show some mercy for the sake of sharing the same genetic sequence as humans."
"But your Brain-eating Worm population replaced all of humanity twenty years ago."
"Based on my assessment of him, he might be overjoyed and unleash every means he has, exploring the maximum extent of his destructive capacity, without giving a damn about the life or death of your Bugman civilization."
AIM’s virtual projection paused for a moment. In fact, according to the internal predictions of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Cataclysmic Experts like Li Rising, Hoenhem, Side Truth, and Su Ni Sheng all possess single-handed city-annihilation-level power,
and might even each have several different world-ending schemes in hand.
As long as they’re given enough time, they can effortlessly sweep away the surface structures of large cities one by one, causing millions, tens of millions of deaths.
"Fortunately for you, you have me."
AIM spoke quickly: "Although there is a certain gap between Li Rising and me in terms of individual strength,
one thing is certain: his electronic computer technology is far inferior to mine."
"Which means he cannot bypass my interference and seize control of the world’s nuclear missile launch systems."
"He can only rely on his own personal power to carry out the actual world-destruction operations."
AIM said this with great confidence, and it was indeed the case.
In the real world, the Supernatural Accident Place under the Federal Bureau of Investigation has established complete databases for all first- and second-tier players, and each database is updated in real time according to external changes.
From the contents of those databases, Li Rising does not possess particularly advanced techniques for massive control over modern computer networks,
and the electronic information skills he has mastered are far behind AIM’s[Electron Ghost]form, honed over many years (including in script worlds).
Though Li Rising might have gotten his hands on some "idiot-proof one-click hacker computer" bought from the Special Affairs Bureau or European Heavy Industry organizations, at most those things only threatened the global World Wide Web before the slaughter game started, and cannot break through the Electron Ghost’s defenses.
"Personal power..."
One leader mused, "Does that include the so-called[Pale World]?"
"It does."
AIM replied: "[Pale World]is a mycelium weapon developed by Li Rising. Judging from its practical performance on a Modern Earth–type planet in a certain parallel universe, it is extremely dangerous and has world-ending potential."
"But under the current circumstances, that is not the primary issue you need to be concerned about."
"Hm? Why not?"
"Because of time, and cost."
AIM said calmly, "After being transferred here, he only has 15 hours of world-destruction time available."
"[Pale World]does indeed have world-ending potential, but that requires him to pay with his own power."
"Spiritual Power, Divine Power, Spiritual Energy—those kinds of energy."
"Only when there are these unseen forces at work can[Pale World]become impervious to water and fire, rapidly expand, and remain completely unharmed even by Solidified Gasoline Bombs,"
"but when there is no injection of those unseen forces, the mycelium of[Pale World]still has to obey the physical laws of the real world; it can be obstructed and slowed by defoliants and other special agents, greatly reducing its expansion time."
In the White House office, among the think tank members hastily brought in, a mycologist raised his hand and asked, "Greatly reduced? Then you’re saying that if we leave it alone,[Pale World]will still expand to cover the globe?"
"You can understand it that way."
The plain-looking middle-aged mycologist pushed up the glasses on his nose, a bit excited. "Then what about the mutation rate of this fungal Biological Weapon? Without additional energy supply, what are its growth speeds and growth cycles in different substrate platforms such as soil, grassland, cities, deserts, oceans, and cloud layers? What’s the mechanism by which it harms people? How do we ensure that after you leave, our civilization can survive the fungal invasion..."
"There’s no time to explain."
AIM cut him off: "Li Rising will not fully drive[Pale World]! Because I exist!"
"His fungal Biological Weapon cannot be separated from his energy support, while my existence is an invisible lifeline!"
"When the time comes, I will hide, slip into some corner where he can’t find me,"
"forcing him to be on guard against me, preventing him from unleashing energy without restraint."
"Although in normal conditions the power gap between us is enormous,"
"if he consumes too much energy,"
"he will still be giving an opportunity to me, who has been hiding in the dark, conserving consumption and building up strength,"
"to launch a surprise attack!"
And besides! This is only a small battleground in the War of Fate!
AIM said silently in his heart, "The reason the Killing Ground Game sets up this kind of constrained deathmatch is to balance the power gap between us.
The next battle will start in 24 hours. Neither Li Rising nor I will throw out our trump cards here, or burn too much Spiritual Power at this stage.
He’s very good with Biological Weapons, but whether it’s the [Pale World] or any other kind of mycelium, fungus, or toxic gas, none of it can spread very far within 15 hours.
Even if he really has such means, it would also cost him a massive amount of Spiritual Power."
Destruction is always easier than protection, but in terms of overall consumption state, both sides are still roughly even—an 18-hour duel window; the longer it drags on, the worse it is for Li Rising, who’s the one taking the initiative.
"Also, you don’t need to worry about what happens if he deploys the [Pale World]."
AIM said coldly, "Like I’ve already told you, without Li Rising, the [Pale World] will be vastly weakened.
As for the subsequent damage...
He has the power to destroy you; so do I.
Over 3,000 nuclear warheads scattered across the globe are more than enough to scour the major cities of this world over and over again.
This battle is between him and me, a confrontation where we use you as pieces to secure victory.
Understand?"
All the participants looked extremely grim, but AIM didn’t care in the slightest. "In that case, let’s begin the discussion.
Assuming he doesn’t go all-out with the Pale World, what methods would he most likely use to end the world."
Let the think-tank elites of this world provide their advice and opinions—
this was one of the reasons AIM convened this top-tier video conference.
"The fastest doomsday method, aside from the [Pale World] and seizing control of the nuclear missile launch system through the net, would most likely be to directly hijack nuclear missiles, right?"
One strategist spoke up first: "According to Your Excellency’s description, the opponent can perform 500-kilometer-class Teleport maneuvers,
shatter a main battle tank with a single punch or kick,
shoot down a supersonic cruise fighter with one bullet,
destroy a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier with a flick of his finger,
and with a single wave of his hand strip half a city district of everyone’s minds,
press his palm down and melt the toughest underground fortifications.
The conventional weapons and regular armies of mankind are completely useless against him; it would devolve into a one-sided massacre.
Which means there is no place in this world he cannot reach, and no secret he cannot obtain.
If he discovers any nuclear launch platform of any country anywhere in the world, he can quickly seize several, even dozens of nuclear warheads.
Nukes are the most effective and rapid weapon for exterminating the Bugman population."
At present there are three types of nuclear delivery platforms in the world: land-based, sea-based, and air-based.
Land-based refers to silo-launched missiles and special missile vehicles,
sea-based refers to warships and nuclear submarines,
air-based refers to strategic bombers.
Because of the special nature of nuclear weapons, every country naturally tries to conceal the exact locations of each nuclear launch platform as much as possible. For example, the United States and Russia both have large numbers of land-based silos hidden deep in remote mountains and forests.
Only a very small number of people know where these silos are.
But sea-based platforms—especially surface warship platforms—are much harder to hide.
"If we don’t consider the more stealthy nuclear submarines and only look at surface platforms—
Russia’s Peter the Great Cruiser, that 25,000-ton nuclear-powered guided missile Cruiser commissioned in the late 1980s, is the only active nuclear-powered surface combatant with carrier-like air capabilities in the world. It carries roughly 20 nuclear-tipped missiles.
Italy, India, and several other countries also mount ballistic missiles on their Destroyers.
In addition, every major nuclear power uses its carrier strike groups as platforms for aircraft-delivered nuclear bombs.
For example, the French Charles de Gaulle Aircraft Carrier carries ASMP-A advanced medium-range air-to-surface nuclear cruise missiles,
and America’s Hornet Series Carrier-Based Aircraft can carry its mainstay B83 nuclear bombs as well as B61 nuclear warheads."
An officer in uniform said in a deep voice, "All the nuclear submarines currently in service worldwide can dive, shut down sonar and external communications, cut off all contact, and then just wait out the 18 hours.
But Destroyers, Cruisers, and Carriers can’t do that.
They either have to keep drifting out at sea, or run into naval bases and shipyards.
In terms of both time and space, they simply don’t have enough margin to completely hide their presence.
According to Your Excellency, that Li Rising possesses ultra-long-range instantaneous movement and carries a ring of Psychic Abilities field around him.
Once he draws near, the crew on Destroyers, Cruisers, and Carriers will all lose the ability to act.
He can absolutely close in on surface warships at extreme speed and then control the crew to launch the nuclear missiles."
"We scuttle the ships."
AIM said coldly.
"What?"
The United States officer jerked, as if he hadn’t heard the other party clearly.
"We detonate the ship."
AIM said icily, "Li Rising’s ultra-long-range Teleport is not without cost, nor is it without a distance limit.
When he Teleports into this world, or makes any obvious move, the low Earth orbit satellites can detect his presence.
Once he tries to perform an ultra-long-range Teleport toward the ships, we directly detonate all the nuclear missiles on that ship—this is theoretically feasible.
Whether I remotely modify the missile launch programs, or arrange for two vessels to fire at each other at close range, we can destroy the vessels themselves.
If we’re lucky, we might even seriously injure Li Rising when he approaches the ships."
The officer’s eyelids twitched wildly. "Seriously injure him? Not kill him outright?"
AIM gave him a bland look, all the data on this United States officer flashing through its mind in an instant. "A Transcendent’s abilities exceed your imagination. Even nuclear bombs
must be used at close range, when he’s unprepared and undefended, to have any chance of harming a Cataclysmic Level Transcendent.
If he’s on guard and takes defensive measures, then you’d have to carry out a wide-area saturation nuclear bombardment over a massive region."
"Wide-area saturation nuclear bombardment" was a term coined by AIM itself. Considering Li Rising’s ability to Teleport 500 km, the phrase was not an exaggeration.
"This is not the time to worry about the lives of the soldiers on the nuclear-missile ships. The meaning of a soldier’s existence is to protect the nation and the people. Sacrifices that are valuable and meaningful are permissible."
AIM said with cold cruelty, "Also, don’t put all your chips on the idea that self-detonating nuclear missiles will blow Li Rising to pieces.
We’re smart; he’ll only be more cunning and sharper than we are.
Anything we can think of, he can think of too."
After hearing AIM’s words, everyone fell silent for a moment, then someone spoke again: "On the sea, ships can use self-detonation to deter the enemy from getting too close, but what about land-based, especially within military bases?
America currently has 374 overseas military bases, spread across more than 140 countries.
There are 871 domestic bases, including 242 naval bases and 384 air force bases.
Many of these bases have nuclear missile stockpiles and nuclear launch capabilities.
The deadliest problem is that the positions of these military bases are public and exposed.
If the enemy sweeps across low altitude over America,
and we destroy them via self-detonation, we’ll be the first to annihilate America’s own homeland."
At these words, everyone’s breathing hitched. America’s military bases were simply too many; though many were built in uninhabited regions, the compounded power of overlapping nuclear blasts was enough to destroy...
"Ninety-five point eighty-three million people..."
AIM instantly gave the estimate. "If each base’s nuclear weapons were to explode in overlapping chain reactions on the ground,
the massive nuclear fallout dust kicked up would drift with the wind and kill ninety-five point eighty-three million people within fifteen hours.
If we assume everyone moves into underground shelters, the projected death toll is still around fourteen million."
!!!
Everyone in the video conference froze again, not shocked by AIM’s terrifying calculation speed, but by its cold-blooded cruelty.
If all bases across America exploded together, the enormous nuclear fallout dust would kill ninety-five point eighty-three million people—and that would only be the fatalities in the first fifteen hours! Within a week, far more would die from radiation! Over seventy percent of America’s population would perish!
And AIM didn’t care in the slightest, openly displaying its indifference!
Cold sweat seeped down many people’s backs, but AIM continued its own calculations. "At the cost of fourteen million deaths, clearing out the nuclear arsenal within America’s borders is undoubtedly worth it.
The question is whether this can completely prevent the enemy from getting their hands on nuclear weapons..."
The result of the calculation quickly appeared: it could not.
The effect of Psychic Abilities was simply too powerful.
Even if they nuked their own surface vessels, military bases, and missile silos once over,
they still couldn’t stop Li Rising from using Psychic Abilities to locate the remaining warheads.
"Compared with America’s relatively cautious attitude on its own soil, many of America’s overseas bases are much closer to densely populated cities.
For example, the Atsugi Naval Air Facility 35 kilometers southwest of Tokyo, the Yokosuka Naval Base 50 kilometers southwest, the Jinhae Naval Base in southeastern South Korea, the Subic Bay Naval Base in the Philippines, and the naval base in Hawaii...
The nuclear yields from detonations at these bases would also kill massive numbers of people."
The victory condition of this global restriction deathmatch was that more than 500 million people die as a result of both sides’ actions. If Li Ang simply Teleported randomly around the world, scaring AIM into repeatedly detonating nuclear weapons and thereby killing tens of millions of Bugmen,
then the first to lose would definitely be AIM itself.
"Unless we launch the nukes into the sky."
A German strategist said, "The countries with the most nuclear weapons are America and Russia. Among them, in America’s triad nuclear force, a large portion are ICBMs and cruise missiles, while there are only 1,538 B61-series earth-penetrating nuclear bombs.
Intercontinental ballistic missiles follow parabolic trajectories. At the peak of their trajectory they exit the atmosphere and enter outer space, thereby achieving ultra-long-range strike capability.
Since ballistic missiles can already go beyond the atmosphere, we might as well just launch them directly into outer space. As long as we disable the detonation function of the warheads, these missiles will fly themselves into outer space and no longer affect Earth’s environment.
As for the cruise missiles..."
"Although cruise missiles mainly fly within the atmosphere, as long as we modify their launch programs, we can also fire all of them into outer space—after all, we don’t care about accuracy or precision, we just need them to exit the atmosphere."
AIM immediately began calculating. "If we do this, we can get rid of over 70% of the world’s active nuclear weapons, and we don’t have to worry about warheads self-detonating on the ground and causing casualties."
Everyone felt a surge of relief when they heard this, but before they could show a bitter smile, AIM kept calculating further: "The remaining 30% of active nuclear weapons, plus the bunker-busting nukes in the nuclear stockpiles, as well as the pits, still won’t be fully dealt with.
Within America alone, there are more than two thousand active warheads that currently lack missile delivery capability,
1,538 bunker-buster bombs,
and 5,000 plutonium pits at the Y-12 plant in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and the Pantex plant in Texas.
Besides these, there’s a comparable quantity of thermonuclear secondaries as strategic reserves.
Furthermore, during the Cold War the US and USSR deployed military bases with nuclear missiles all over the world. After the Cold War ended, many of these bases still retained leftover nuclear bombs.
For example, the Incirlik Air Base in Turkey stores roughly 50 B61 tactical nuclear bombs.
Because these warheads are so old, many can no longer be launched as missile-borne nukes, can’t be remotely detonated at long range, and there aren’t enough people to dismantle them; they must be manually detonated."
The faster AIM thought, the grimmer its expression became. "Launch a portion into outer space, use a portion as decoys to lure Li Rising and wait for self-detonation, and reserve a portion as weapons to deter Li Rising.
Taking all factors into account, there will still be 1,000 detonable warheads worldwide, plus an equal number of warheads awaiting dismantlement and preprocessed pits that can be exploited by Li Rising.
Or rather, that are certain to be seized by Li Ang.
One thousand, one thousand..."
AIM took a deep breath. Its Electron Ghost-form brain spun up at full speed, calculating the maximum destruction that 1,000 nuclear devices of various types could inflict.
In terms of kill effect, the lethal radius of an airburst nuclear weapon can be divided into the following layers.
Fireball radius—the high temperature generated by the nuclear blast in this region is enough to vaporize everything.
Blast radius—the energy from the explosion will destroy all surface structures.
Radiation radius—all surface lifeforms within this radius will die within hours to weeks, but people hiding underground might survive.
Shockwave Zone I—the high-temperature, high-pressure gases from the explosion destroy most aboveground buildings and trees.
Thermal radiation radius—the thermal radiation and the subsequent backflow of massive volumes of gas will burn or crush the remaining lucky ones within the area.
Shockwave Zone II—some buildings and people hiding inside them may survive, but they still have to endure the ensuing nuclear radiation.
In reality, nuclear weapons are very powerful, but not that powerful.
In Shockwave Zone II, there will still be a considerable number of survivors,
and if people can hide beforehand in deep enough underground shelters, there is a chance of survival even within the thermal radiation radius or radiation radius—provided they wear anti-radiation gear.
One of America’s main active warheads, the W78, has a yield of 350 kilotons,
and if detonated as an airburst, its fireball area is 1.27 square kilometers,
the medium blast damage area is 77.1 square kilometers,
the thermal radiation radius covers 185 square kilometers,
and the light-damage area is 610 square kilometers. It sounds large, but the diameter is only 13.9 kilometers.
In other words, if you drop a single W78 over Times Square in New York, even Long Beach wouldn’t be heavily affected.
And if you use America’s largest stockpiled warhead, the W53 with a yield of 9 megatons, its maximum lethal diameter is only 41.1 km, unable to reach nearby areas like New Haven or Allentown.
"As long as the citizens hide underground, the lethality of a nuclear weapon against a megacity won’t be as exaggerated as people imagine; it remains within a bearable range.
To actually destroy a city and cause massive casualties, you must carry out multiple consecutive airbursts.
Globally, there are 22 cities with populations at the ten-million level,
Tokyo with 38 million, New Delhi with 25.7 million, Sao Paulo with 21.07 million, Mumbai with 21.04 million, Mexico City with 21 million, Osaka with 20.24 million...
Even if you add all of these together, that’s only a bit over 200 million people,
and to efficiently annihilate a city and ensure no population remains,
you need roughly 380 high-yield warheads in total, about 17 per city.
Considering that what’s left for Li Rising will only be small and medium-yield nukes, and that large numbers of citizens will hide in underground shelters, the number of warheads required will increase further..."
AIM quickly arrived at a conclusion. "Reaching 500 million casualties is very difficult to achieve with just the 1,000 assorted warheads he can seize.
And he’s only one person. Even though he has Psychic Abilities, I can also use my Electron Ghost form to interfere remotely,
preventing strategic bombers from flying.
This war is winnable.
My odds of victory are higher than his."
