The Scale Was No Joke
The next morning, as soon as Jun-ho woke up, he checked his physical condition. As expected, there was nothing wrong. He had no fever, nor did he experience the dizzy, disoriented vision characteristic of someone turning into a zombie. Jun-ho felt a wave of relief. It was a blessing that he knew the premonitory symptoms so well, having experienced them firsthand right before his regression.
Full-service movers were absolute gods. The three workers who arrived with a five-ton truck packed and loaded his belongings at an unbelievable speed. Since they were strangers, Jun-ho felt a bit tense at first, but he quickly relaxed as they quietly went about their work, barely speaking a word except for the man who seemed to be the supervisor. On the first day of his regression, his mental state had been quite fragile, but as time passed, his mind was gradually returning to normal. He had even considered seeking psychiatric counseling, but fortunately, it didn't seem necessary anymore.
Since they had already provided the address of their new home, the brothers packed a few simple duffel bags and set off first. Along the way, Jun-ho called the CCTV and solar power companies he had contacted yesterday to schedule their visits.
The movers unloaded the truck with the same blistering speed they had used to pack. They placed the furniture and appliances exactly where they were told, then drove off like the wind.
Jun-ho looked around the house. This place is just a small testing ground for later. Once the Selene Coin exploded and made him a fortune, he would move to the "real shelter." Until then, he needed to prepare and practice various survival techniques here.
"Money really is the best, Hyung." A look of awe washed over Jun-hyeok's face as he surveyed the interior.
"Of course it is." They had spent nearly two million won on the movers and a professional cleaning service, but it was worth every single penny.
"We'll file the change of address tomorrow. For now, finish unpacking your room quickly and come down to the basement."
"Yeah, got it." Though he had already completed his military service, Jun-hyeok was still young at heart, practically beaming with joy over his new room, which was much larger than the one in their old apartment.
After carefully arranging his parents' keepsakes in the smaller room and tossing his own belongings into the master bedroom, Jun-ho headed down to the basement—one of the primary reasons he had chosen this house.
The basement, which the previous landlord had used as a storage unit, was roughly thirty-five square meters, measuring six meters on each side. Thanks to the landlord's meticulous maintenance and the cleaning crew's thorough work, there was no musty odor, and the space was incredibly clean.
Jun-ho had briefly inspected it yesterday, but as he examined every nook and cranny once more, Jun-hyeok's voice echoed from behind him.
"Man, this place is huge. Hyung, you said you're making a workshop here? What kind of workshop?"
"Yeah. First, we'll reapply the insulation and do some soundproofing..."
Bzzz. His phone vibrated. Jun-ho checked the text message, then looked up.
"Let's go grab the cargo."
"Cargo? What cargo? Is there more stuff coming?"
"You'll see when you get out there." Tilting his head in confusion, Jun-hyeok followed Jun-ho up the stairs. The moment they opened the front gate to the yard—
"What on earth is all this?!" As Jun-hyeok gasped in shock, Jun-ho replied nonchalantly.
"What do you think? Aren't we going to do a dry run for the apocalypse?"
"Whoa..." Jun-hyeok's jaw dropped as he stared at the dozens of delivery boxes piled high in front of the gate.
"What are you standing around for? Let's start moving them."
"Oh! Right!" From appliances like refrigerators, freezers, mini drones, CCTV cameras, robot vacuums, monitors, and 3D printers, to survival gear like machetes, shovels, sickles, and slingshots—the brothers carried in boxes containing an absurd variety of items.
"Just leave them in the basement for now. It won't rain for a while, and the basement is dry, so they'll be fine." Although the refrigerator and freezer were compact models, they were still quite heavy, but moving them together made the task easy. After hauling all the boxes down in about ten minutes, Jun-hyeok dusted off his hands and shook his head in disbelief.
"Wow, that's a lot of stuff. Hyung, how much did all this cost?"
"Around three million won? I bought cheap electronics, so it wasn't too bad."
"Wait, isn't three million won a ton of money?" Jun-ho patted the freezer they had just brought down and replied.
"The refrigerators and freezers we'll put in the actual shelter will be massive commercial units, over a thousand liters. You know, the kind they use in restaurants? Compared to those, this is dirt cheap. I only bought these to run some tests."
"Tests? What kind of tests are you running with a fridge and a freezer? And couldn't we just use the refrigerator we already have?"
"We need that one for our daily lives, so no." Jun-ho inspected the neatly stacked boxes and tore a few open. "Lock&Lock containers? What's this? Silica gel? Oxygen absorbers?"
"Go upstairs and grab a few packs of ramen, some frozen dumplings, and... those chopped potatoes and carrots we prepped. Bring those down."
"Unbelievable..." Though he had no idea what his brother was up to, Jun-hyeok was an obedient younger brother and did as he was told. When he returned to the basement with the items, an unfamiliar device caught his eye.
"Hyung, what's that?"
"A vacuum sealer."
"Vacuum sealing? Oh, I know that. It's for keeping meat fresh for a long time, right?"
"That's what most people think. But if you vacuum seal things, it's not just meat—everything lasts longer."
"Oh, really?"
"Yeah. It's something I learned while surviving the apocalypse. Take these frozen dumplings, for example." Jun-ho placed the frozen dumplings into a plastic bag, fed it into the sealer, and pressed the button. Whirrrr! With a low hum, the plastic bag shrank rapidly, clinging tightly to the food. Soon, the noise stopped, and Jun-ho held up the vacuum-sealed dumplings to a wide-eyed Jun-hyeok.
"The expiration date printed on this bag is March of next year. If you just throw it in a regular freezer, it's realistically edible until about May."
"I know. That's the 'use-by date,' right?"
"Exactly. The actual use-by date is usually twenty to thirty percent longer than the expiration date. But if you vacuum seal it like this..." Jun-ho placed the vacuum-sealed dumplings inside an airtight Lock&Lock container. Then, he tossed in a handful of silica gel—moisture absorbers—along with some oxygen absorbers, and snapped the lid shut tightly.
"If you store it in the freezer like this, the shelf life extends exponentially."
"What? Seriously?" Jun-ho handed the airtight container to Jun-hyeok.
"Yeah. For now, go put this in our old refrigerator's freezer. We'll move it over here in a couple of hours."
"Why go through all that trouble?"
"Because once we transfer it to the new freezer later, we're going to leave it shut and not open it unless absolutely necessary."
"Huh? Why?" Jun-ho began vacuum sealing a pack of ramen, bag and all, as he explained.
"I told you, it's a test and a dry run. I ate like this during the apocalypse, but I want to verify the results myself. Anyway, this ramen's expiration date is February. We can take it out next autumn and cook it to see how it holds up."
Normally, the actual use-by date would only stretch to April, but to truly test the effectiveness of this method, they would have to eat it around September or October.
"Wow... that's crazy. But I'm a little nervous."
"Nervous about what? Aren't you curious to see if it actually works?"
"Yeah, actually, I am. Let's do it right now." Men were naturally drawn to things that seemed useless but incredibly fun. Of course, what Jun-ho was doing now was far from useless—it was vital preparation for the end of the world.
"Can we keep vegetables fresh like this too? For how long?"
"Yeah. Since the potatoes and carrots are blanched, they'll probably last at least half a year like this."
"That's insane. What about rice?"
"Government-reserve rice—they call it Nara-mi these days. The government grain warehouses can keep those bags of rice fresh for two or three years even without electricity. But if we store it using our method, it'll easily last ten years."
"Ooh!" Jun-hyeok grinned as he packed the ramen, potatoes, and carrots. Watching his fully grown brother get so excited over this, Jun-ho chuckled softly.
"Memorize this: vacuum sealing, oxygen absorbers, moisture absorbers, and airtight containers. We're going to store all of our shelter's food this way."
"Vacuum sealing, oxygen absorbers, moisture absorbers, airtight containers... But do we put everything in refrigerators and freezers? What about canned food?"
"This is just a test run. The real deal will be different. First, we'll have at least two or three of those massive commercial refrigerators and freezers I mentioned. But that's not all."
"Then what else?"
"There's something called a cold storage walk-in. You see them a lot in rural areas—basically, a refrigerator the size of a room. We'll build one right next to the shelter's kitchen and connect them. Maybe around sixty square meters? About twice the size of this basement. We'll make it a double-decker structure to stack our food."
"Oh."
"If we keep the humidity low and lock the temperature at three to four degrees Celsius, any food stored this way will easily last two to three times past its use-by date."
"Is that true?"
"I've actually eaten it during the apocalypse. It was ramen that was a year past its expiration date, stored in a cold room inside a basic Lock&Lock container without any vacuum sealing, oxygen absorbers, or moisture absorbers. I ate it, and I didn't even get a stomachache. It was perfectly fine."
"That is insane."
"Now, imagine what happens when you add vacuum sealing, oxygen absorbers, and moisture absorbers to the mix. It'll last even longer, right? So, we'll store dry goods in the cold room using this method, and we'll use the same technique to stock up on meat, fish, and frozen foods in the kitchen freezers. That alone will feed us for two or three years."
"I see. But what about after that? Do we just stop eating meat?"
"No. I've got a plan for that too."
"Oh, what is it?"
"An ultra-low temperature freezer. The kind they use for long-term storage of seafood."
"An ultra-low temperature freezer...?" Jun-ho recalled a survivor group from before his regression that possessed one, along with the information he had researched online yesterday.
"We're talking minus forty or fifty degrees Celsius. With an ultra-low temperature freezer, we can store meat, fish, and seafood for over ten years. Of course, only if they're vacuum-sealed with oxygen and moisture absorbers inside airtight containers. Rice, flour, and noodles? Those could easily last thirty, maybe even fifty years."
"Wow, that's crazy..."
"Want to hear something even crazier? You know what MREs are, right? Freeze-dried combat rations."
"Of course."
"Those can last even longer. If you store them in an ultra-low temperature freezer, we're talking centuries. Same goes for canned food."
"Whoa... Then, Hyung, are you planning to build one of those ultra-low temperature freezers in our shelter?"
"Absolutely." It was non-negotiable. Of course, it wouldn't be on the massive scale of a food manufacturing plant. They didn't need a freezer that large, and above all, power supply would be an issue. According to his research last night, large-scale commercial ultra-low temperature freezers consumed thousands of kilowatts of electricity daily. A typical household used about ten to fifteen kilowatt-hours a day, meaning a single commercial freezer gulped down as much electricity as hundreds of homes combined. So, I'll keep ours modest—around sixty to ninety square meters. If he managed the power grid properly, a freezer of that size was entirely manageable. Furthermore, by designing it with a double-decker structure and standardized storage racks, they could store far more food than one might expect. By his rough estimate, a single sixty-square-meter ultra-low temperature freezer could hold enough food to sustain the shelter's residents for over twenty years.
"A kitchen with standard refrigerators and freezers, a cold room right next to it, and then an ultra-low temperature freezer. We'll store our food using this three-tier system. With this, we can easily last thirty years."
In other words, the kitchen and the cold room would hold enough food to sustain the shelter's members for about ten years, while the ultra-low temperature freezer would store the food to be consumed after that. Of course, he would have to put it into practice to know for sure, but Jun-ho was confident it would work. If it wouldn't, then every survivor group in the apocalypse wouldn't have fought so desperately to seize the ultra-low temperature freezer facility powered by a massive solar array.
"This is absolutely insane. Hyung, you really thought all of this through just from that prophetic dream?"
"It wasn't a prophetic dream... Sigh, never mind. Anyway, I worked incredibly hard to plan this out."
"Yeah. I can see that." To be honest, until now, Jun-hyeok had only understood his brother's plans on a superficial level. The concept of a "perfect shelter" hadn't felt real to him; he had simply envisioned it as a safe space where they could hoard a massive amount of food and water and hide out for a few years. But right now, that perception shattered. The shelter his brother was planning... the scale of it was truly on a whole different level.