Chapter 82 - 75: Contemplation

Chapter 82: Chapter 75: Contemplation

Just as the Jiang City Shelter’s meteorological department had predicted, after a brief and overcast day, the sky grew gloomy once more.

A fine, steady drizzle drifted down, pattering against the ruins and the surface of the water. This rainfall seemed much "gentler" this time, but it still carried an undeniable, cumulative force.

Xu Mo stood before a broken third-floor window, gazing out at the endless curtain of rain and the murky water rippling from the downpour. A thought surfaced, and he couldn’t help but sigh. "Science is the primary productive force, no matter the era."

If the Jiang City Shelter hadn’t retained a considerable degree of scientific and technological strength—allowing them to monitor and predict the weather, hydrology, and geology, and issue advance warnings—who knows how many more survivors would have perished in this natural disaster, completely unaware. Even he had benefited, preparing for the flood ahead of time.

The calm yet urgent voice of the Jiang City broadcaster still crackled from the radio beside him. It repeatedly stressed precautions against secondary disasters, reminding survivors to be wary of rising water levels, landslides, and the risk of disease that the floodwaters might bring.

This inevitably made Xu Mo think of the heated dispute on the radio—the one involving the survivor settlement called Luoxing Valley. He wondered if, after that outburst of desperate accusations, they had finally heeded the advice and evacuated to higher ground in time.

’Jiang City gave them warning after warning. Why would a settlement of several hundred people completely ignore them, only thinking to cry for help and cast blame when they were already in a hopeless situation?’ The question resurfaced in Xu Mo’s mind. This time, he didn’t just chalk it up to the personal foolishness or stubbornness of their leader. Instead, he tried to analyze it from a broader, more profound perspective.

Xu Mo recalled some sociological knowledge he had learned before he transmigrated. The apocalypse wasn’t just the collapse of the physical environment; it was the complete disintegration and reconstruction of the old social order, moral ethics, and value systems.

First was the collapse of the system of trust in information. In the old world, official information, especially disaster warnings, carried immense credibility. But in the apocalypse, with order shattered, former authorities were now questioned.

Many survivors had likely experienced the chaos during the initial collapse of order firsthand. They had witnessed the powerlessness or even inaction of certain factions, which led them to harbor a natural skepticism toward information from large shelters.

Instead, they were more likely to trust the leaders of their own small groups or rely on their own direct experience. The leader of Luoxing Valley might have exploited this mentality, or perhaps they shared the same suspicion, and thus chose to selectively ignore the Jiang City Shelter’s warnings.

Second was the issue of "sunk costs" and path dependency.

Establishing a settlement for several hundred people was no easy task. It required clearing an area, building defenses, distributing supplies, and maintaining a basic order—an immense investment of effort and resources. Deciding to abandon their base and migrate would mean all that previous investment would come to nothing. Furthermore, they would have to face unknown and potentially more lethal dangers on the move, such as zombies, Mutant Beasts, attacks from other survivor groups, starvation, and disease.

This "sunk cost" would make people gamble on wishful thinking. They’d be inclined to believe things like, ’Maybe the situation isn’t that bad,’ ’The flood won’t necessarily reach us here,’ or ’If we just hold on a little longer, it’ll pass.’ This would lead them to delay the difficult decision to migrate.

Furthermore, there was the entrenchment of power and the filtering of information. In an independent survivor settlement, the leader often held absolute power.

To maintain their own power and status, they might consciously or unconsciously block or downplay unfavorable information from the outside, creating an illusion that ’it’s safe here’ and ’I can protect everyone.’ The average survivor had limited access to information and was easily led and controlled. Even if a few individuals realized the danger, they might be too powerless or afraid of punishment to speak out.

Finally, one had to consider the distortion of values in an apocalyptic environment. When the pressure to survive trumped all else, short-term survival benefits could easily overshadow long-term risks. Migration meant instability and a drain on resources, while staying put, at least for the moment, appeared "stable." This excessive pursuit of "immediate stability" blinded them to long-term dangers.

Pondering it all, Xu Mo felt that the root of Luoxing Valley’s problem was that in the post-apocalyptic world, humanity’s morals, values, and worldview had undergone a drastic and still-unsettled transformation. This had pushed social structures to evolve in a more closed-off, more leader-dependent, and ultimately more fragile direction.

This made Xu Mo recall a rather philosophical question he had once discussed with a friend before he transmigrated: "Modern society seems to be in a state of ’social and moral decay.’ Is this social progress or regression?"

At the time, Xu Mo’s answer had been: From a long-term historical perspective, it was more like the growing pains of "progress." Or, to put it another way, it was the necessary adjustment of the social ethical system as it adapted to a new environment.

Xu Mo’s reasoning was that society is dynamic. Technology advances, methods of information dissemination change, and the ideas and volume of information people receive are incomparable to previous eras.

A moral and ethical system built on an old economic foundation and information environment would inevitably fail to fully adapt to the new social reality. Therefore, what appeared to be a "collapse" of old norms was, in reality, the process of new, more suitable ethical norms for modern society being conceived and formed. This process was usually slow, full of controversy, and marked by setbacks.

So, why did so many people intuitively feel it was a "collapse of social norms and civility"?

That was naturally due to different frames of reference. People often compared the present to a possibly romanticized past or to some idealized, static "golden age" template, thus arriving at the conclusion that "public morality is in decline." They ignored the inherent complexity of history and the darkness and injustice that also existed in past societies.

Then there was the amplification effect of information dissemination. Under the spotlight of modern media, especially the internet, any event that violated traditional morals would be rapidly spread and magnified, creating the illusion that "such incidents are everywhere and getting worse." Meanwhile, the vast number of conventional, kind actions in daily life, being "ordinary," lacked news value and were rarely reported on, thus becoming "voiceless" in the public discourse.

These were the inevitable growing pains and confusion of a transitional period. The old norms were broken, but the new ones had not yet been established. During this interim period, people often felt lost. The diversification of values sometimes manifested as chaos, allowing extreme and negative phenomena to stand out more easily, sparking widespread unease and criticism.

Finally, there was the erosion of morality by capital and internet traffic. In a market economy, certain corporations and media outlets, in pursuit of profit, might deliberately create and promote content that challenged the bottom line of traditional morality to attract views. This objectively accelerated the loosening of the traditional moral order and, to some extent, even guided the development of distorted values.

Connecting his pre-transmigration thoughts with the apocalyptic reality before him, Xu Mo felt as if he were witnessing a social evolution experiment, accelerated countless times over.

In peacetime, the "collapse of civility" was merely a conflict of ideas and a breakdown of certain behaviors. But in the apocalypse, this "collapse" was bloody and directly tied to survival.

Old laws and morals seemed so pale and powerless in the face of survival instincts and the struggle for resources. Luoxing Valley was the result of flawed value judgments and a failed social structure in such an extreme environment.

’So, perhaps the important thing isn’t to lament the collapse of social order, but to find, amidst the changes, the bottom-line consensus and rules that can sustain human civilization,’ Xu Mo thought to himself as he watched the rain outside. ’For example, respect for objective laws, attentiveness to warnings, and preserving the most basic spirit of cooperation and mutual aid in times of crisis.’

Perhaps this was the kind of baseline order that the Jiang City Shelter was trying to establish and maintain. The leader of Luoxing Valley, however, had chosen isolation, suspicion, and stubbornness, ultimately leading their entire group into peril.

The rain was still falling.

The Jiang City broadcast continued on the radio, a voice of order and reason. But the channel for Luoxing Valley, ever since yesterday’s heated argument, had fallen into a dead silence. Not another sound was heard.

That silence was heavier than any accusation.

Xu Mo pulled his gaze away from the window, no longer trying to guess the fate of those so far away.