Apocalypse Survival: Starting with a Shelter

Whether ready or not, willing or unwilling, time flowed forward as it always did.

As the daylight dimmed into the darkness of evening, the predicted arrival of the radiation storm's earliest possible time approached.

Fifteen minutes later, just as everyone anxiously awaiting the storm's arrival began to relax, the sparse purple glow in the sky that had been fading over the past several hours suddenly burst forth with hundreds of times its previous brightness.

The entire sky seemed to be enveloped by a vast purple halo, a sight both magnificent and overwhelming.

At the same time, all radiation detectors deployed across the surface began emitting piercing alarms.

They detected radiation levels on the surface rising at an unimaginable rate, quickly surpassing the safety threshold and continuing to climb dozens or even hundreds of times higher.

"It's here."

This realization sent a chill through all who had been closely monitoring the situation.

The storm arrived a mere fifteen minutes later than its earliest predicted time, leaving no room for additional preparation.

Every shelter that had clung to the hope of avoiding disaster and failed to make proper preparations would now face relentless consequences. To compensate for this oversight, many would likely pay the price with widespread illness or even loss of life.

Outside a small, privately-owned shelter, several young men dressed in simple insulated suits with oxygen tanks pushed open the heavy doors of their shelter.

A rush of scorching heat swept over them, penetrating their inadequate insulation layers and causing mild discomfort.

However, this unease was soon replaced by excitement.

"Look! Didn't I tell you?"

"Isn't the sky breathtaking?"

"It's even more stunning than the auroras I saw in Antarctica," the group leader declared triumphantly.

Since discovering the strange glow in the sky through their external cameras, he had gone to great lengths to convince the others to open the shelter's doors.

Now, it seemed worth it. Missing such a spectacular sight would have been a lifelong regret.

His companions, initially skeptical, now had no objections.

Each of them stood mesmerized by the dreamlike purple glow that lit up the ground and filled the sky with an otherworldly brilliance.

"If only it were cooler out here," one of them lamented. "With some cold beer and snacks, this would be the perfect spot for a party."

The thought of sipping chilled beer and biting into a juicy piece of barbecue briefly filled his mind. But as the image took hold, his expression changed slightly, and he felt a sudden wave of nausea.

Clenching his jaw, he pushed down the discomfort and forced himself to focus on the enchanting view above. This rare outing was too precious to spoil.

Behind them, the shelter's metal door shimmered faintly in the eerie light, standing like a tombstone lost in the wilderness.

In one of the residential zones of Official Shelter No. 9, a worried woman spoke to her husband.

"Are you really going out there, Lao Zhao?" she asked, her voice filled with anxiety. "I heard people say the radiation outside is terrible. It's dangerous for your health—you might even get cancer."

"That's only if you're unprotected," Zhao Haihua reassured her.

"We have the radiation suits provided by the shelter. And there are rest stations set up within a few hundred meters of the work sites. It'll be fine."

Despite his calm tone, Zhao Haihua couldn't entirely suppress his own doubts. But necessity outweighed his hesitation.

"Besides," he continued, "the pay for this work is three times our usual rate, and we'll even get access to special medications. Yuan Yuan hasn't been sleeping well lately because of his headaches, and you need to take care of your anemia.

"Plus, we should stock up on more food. I heard they're going to reduce daily rations again soon."

His wife looked at him, her voice trembling. "But what if something happens to you?"

"You're overthinking it," Zhao Haihua replied. "I'll only be out there for three days. What could possibly go wrong?"

Their conversation was interrupted by a sharp bell ringing outside—the shelter managers were calling workers to assemble.

Zhao Haihua stopped mid-sentence and placed a comforting hand on his wife's shoulder.

All his reassurances boiled down to one simple phrase:

"Wait for me to come back."

Half an hour later, a group of workers wearing insulated suits and radiation-proof clothing boarded modified buses and left Shelter No. 9.

As they entered the surreal, dreamlike world bathed in purple light, vehicles continued to traverse nearby roads.

But as the radiation storm intensified, the number of breakdowns rose sharply.

Every so often, a vehicle stalled inexplicably, coming to a halt in the middle of the road or crashing into roadside obstacles.

The sudden onslaught of the radiation storm was mercilessly eliminating those on the surface who were unfit to endure its presence.

In the brightly lit control center on the second underground level of Su Wu's shelter, the arrival of the radiation storm activated the monitoring network he had set up.

Stretching across a 10-kilometer radius and reaching deep into the mountains 40 kilometers away, the network began transmitting real-time data on the changing environment.

As a result, Su Wu became the first—aside from the official shelters—to gain a comprehensive understanding of the situation across Jianghe City.

The AI used this data to model and predict the storm's impact.

The highest radiation levels were detected in a mountainous region, reaching 20 millisieverts per second.

At that intensity, an unprotected human would face fatal risks within three to four minutes.

Even in the relatively safer urban areas, most people wouldn't last more than half an hour without protection.

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