After Surviving the Apocalypse, I Built a City in Another World-Chapter 1836: News of Fire Spreads

The moment it touched Flaret Town, the news spread all over the Terran region. Flaret made another, more solemn report as soon as one patient showed the next stage of the illness, which was about a day or two since they isolated the area.

It was their nearest associated territory, after all. By this time, though, the incubation period of the disease had already exploded, and various cases all over were revealed as well.

Generally speaking, most Lords wouldn’t bother sending news to other Lords that weren’t directly linked with them so. This was why, beyond the North and the Northeastern territories, this news was still not widespread.

The difference was that Alterra was linked with territories even tens of thousands of kilometers away. In contrast to the previous instance of the Fire Plague, the news spread extremely fast.

It could be said that the moment it landed in Flaret, through Alterra’s networks, the entire region and its other allies were informed within the day.

They warned everyone, including Silva and Zinnia in Hassen City, through one of his old ’penpals’.

Because no one expected it to happen so soon, Alterra’s research center had not started any research about the disease at all. There were countless other things to study and, though curious, it simply wasn’t the priority.

They were not so lucky with that decision.

Anyway, priority was the prevention of its spread, so no one dwelled on this. The administration quickly isolated those who showed symptoms and those who were in direct contact with them separately.

They were to create a temporary wall at least 3 meters high, which was manually made. With their factories and their expertise, it was fairly easy to do this. It certainly wasn’t practical to create system walls, as that would require the demolition of what was in its path.

Three meters was about the density that the heavy smoke of the disease could reach. The surface was made of watertight and airtight fabric and monster skin. They used everything like bitumen coating and so on.

It was designed to be as airtight as possible within this height using, whatever method they could use.

The zones shall enclose at least a few trees to freshen up the air and make sure everyone, even those who weren’t living near the isolation halls wore masks. For the most part, the smoke had to be inhaled to affect them.

However, for those level 10 and below, they had to wear full-on hazmat suits (which would be made of leather or modified linen) if they wanted to leave their house, because even touching the smoke had a chance to affect them, too.

As mentioned, the zones for those who made contact with those with symptoms were separate, but still not combined with the general population. They could be carriers or even afflicted, just asymptomatic. This was called the medium-risk zone.

Those in this zone, because they could still move and do daily tasks, could remain working for better food. They could be sent raw materials, and they’d also be the ones sending some food and water to the afflicted, and so on. Fortunately, there were wells in various locations, including parks, so they were relatively sustainable.

For now, without a cure, this was all they could do.

This wasn’t a foolproof plan because the smoke was translucent and even invisible if it was diluted enough. Anyone could’ve inhaled it, but one could only do their best with what they knew. However, through proper guidance, the panic and chaos were neutralized before they got worse.

The only advantage of the two fire plagues happening so closely was that there was an entire generation of survivors still alive, and they could guide the younger ones on how to face it.

They could speak of the symptoms, the way to avoid getting afflicted, and what could happen when they did get sick.

It was a bit risky for face-to-face lectures, and not everyone had relatives or neighbors who had survived the ordeal, so what they did was to print information sheets on pieces of paper, distributing them well, and ideally, each household or group would have one for reference.

They hoped for individual copies, but they simply didn’t have that many reams of paper for now. The paper factory was one of the minimally staffed during the cold wave after all, how could they have mountains of stocks?

Anyway, what they dispersed were incredibly detailed pamphlets containing information about the disease, the symptoms, the stages of its development in the body, and so on.

It also included accounts and testimonies of the survivors, including how it affected them. For those who weren’t affected, their accounts were also stated, though verified to make sure that there were no misleading statements.

They printed tens of thousands, and this included those they were exporting to other places. For satellites, Althea simply transferred them through the warehouse. For allied towns, they were sent through Post. Finally, they sent bird messengers out for the villages.

They weren’t able to distribute a lot per territory, but they could just copy them and distribute them in their own way.

Similarly, because it was something everyone knew and many people experienced, there was no period where the Lords wouldn’t believe in the experts, calling them naysayers, and so on.

This meant the execution of various policies was swift, with no one daring to make trouble for others.

This was unlike the previous time, where most did not know of the fire plagues outside of the well-established cities; many Lords only started making moves when a fraction of their people had already been affected.

At the very least, because it lasted for so long, every person who had survived that long knew something about it.

The knowledge level still varied, of course, and there were still plenty of people who chose violent and archaic methods to fix these all over the world, but at the very least, people were not as clueless as they had been.

And Alterra was making full use of that.