Doomsday: Humanity shrinks 100 times

Chapter 231 Nitric Acid
"artillery?"

Lu Yuning nodded: "Yes, literally, a weapon that can break through the range"

Zhang Song turned around and looked around, thinking: "Oh, you want to install a few more kinetic weapons on this ship?"

He did not answer immediately, but paced on the deck for a while, touching the deck and looking towards the cabin.

"You can even transform metal? In that case, there should be no problem."

Lu Yuning showed a look of joy and said, "Okay, if you need help, I'm always available."

"Okay, but for now we have to get the gunpowder out first, and then we have to do some experiments."

"That's it for now. It might be too late today. Let's get some clean water back to the lab and then we can look at the current problem together."

The two finalized their ideas, chatted briefly for a few more minutes, and then ended the conversation.

Here, Lu Yuning and others continued to be responsible for the transportation and production of drinking water, while Wu Shumei, Zhang Song and others gathered the remaining captives from the Blood Hand Settlement.

What to do with this group of prisoners is a problem. It is definitely impossible to let them go back, but it is obvious that Wu Shumei and the others are not the kind of people who want to massacre them. Keeping them in the laboratory is both troublesome and a waste of resources.

After much thought, I finally came up with a good solution.

Send it in exchange for supplies.

Wu Shumei murmured, "Those people in the supermarket might be interested in the captives."

The group of people gathered in the supermarket has always been rather mysterious, but their strength is quite strong, and they have clearly stated that they can deal with the prisoners. In that case, it would be a waste to use them.

Lu Yuning and others quickly brought up another bottle of water. Everyone decided to send the water to the laboratory for processing and purification. As for the container for boiling water, Lu Yuning can basically make it now.

Wu Shumei and her group actually have the ability to boil water. After all, they can even develop gunpowder, so they definitely cannot do without fire.

But the main problem was that they didn't have enough fuel.

Lu Yuning and the others had discussed this issue many times before. In order to boil enough water, sufficient materials are needed.

However, it is not easy to generate a continuous and stable fire source after people are shrunk, so the best fire starter is actually something like an alcohol lamp.

It’s just a pity that there is not much alcohol in the laboratory.

Wu Shumei and her colleagues did use an alcohol lamp to boil water in the early stages, but since the shelf life of purified water was not long, they boiled water quite frequently and the alcohol was soon used up.

Fortunately, some bottled water can be found in school, but as time goes by, the bottled water gradually deteriorates, and only later do we have to trade with people in the supermarket.

In short, it was similar to what Lu Yuning had thought before. The survivors living in urban areas had relatively abundant resources in the early stages, but as time went on, the biggest problem was the deterioration of supplies.

However, there are still very few people who actually die of thirst or starvation, and everyone will always think of some way to deal with it.

As time went by, when humans adapted to the smaller living conditions, the real survival crisis became the struggle between species and the struggle within humans themselves.

In the laboratory.

Lu Yuning and his group easily got the drinking water out. With this large bottle of water, they wouldn't have to worry about running out of drinking water for at least a few days.

They also met other survivors in the laboratory for the first time, most of whom were young students.

The few adults who were present were basically former school teachers and some parents.

But logically speaking, there should be more than just these talented people in the school.

Wu Shumei looked a little gloomy about this question, as if she was reluctant to bring it up. In the end, she gave a brief explanation.

"Some people choose to leave school, while others do so due to illness."

Lu Yuning was stunned for a moment before he understood what she meant, and finally didn't ask any more questions.

Some of the people in the school must have been attacked by some epidemic disease. Due to their lack of experience and supplies in the early stages, they were all defeated by the virus.

Lu Yuning had also witnessed the threat that diseases posed to shrunken humans. Just a typhoid fever or a cold could take half a person's life. If they hadn't had the ability to apply hot compresses at the time, Xu Qi would probably have had a hard time surviving.

It is conceivable how desperate it is for a large number of people to be infected with the virus in a short period of time, so this is probably why they later chose to live in the laboratory. It is not only sturdy, but most importantly, it is clean.

This also reminded Lu Yuning that they also needed to make adequate preparations. Fortunately, they had brought back a lot of medicine before, and he felt more at ease when he thought of this.

After the water was almost ready, Lu Yuning finally arrived at the place where Zhang Song was developing gunpowder.

A huge laboratory table was placed on the ground by someone who had somehow found it, and some small containers were placed on it.

Some black, low-quality gunpowder residue could still be seen on the table.

Zhang Song nodded at Lu Yuning and then explained, "We currently have sufficient stocks of charcoal and sulfur, the three raw materials for gunpowder. The biggest problem is that we don't have potassium nitrate in our lab. We can use sodium nitrate instead, but to produce enough sodium nitrate, we still need large amounts of sodium hydroxide and nitric acid."

Lu Yuning carefully sorted out the chemistry knowledge that had long been rusted in his head: "Sodium hydroxide, sodium carbonate plus calcium hydroxide, causticization, nitric acid, ammonia?"

He felt a headache for a moment. After thinking about it carefully, he found that the production process was quite complicated.

Zhang Song smiled and nodded, "You should know something about this, but we currently have enough sodium to make sodium hydroxide. The most troublesome thing is nitric acid."

After he finished speaking, he walked over to a pile of test tubes, in which some reagents could still be seen, and next to them was an alcohol lamp with a few remaining lamps.

"To produce nitric acid, the most critical raw material is ammonia. However, the laboratory methods for producing ammonia are quite complicated and require continuous heating. We did produce some before, but the amount was very small."

"So the most important thing now is to find a way to produce ammonia?"

Zhang Song gave a wry smile, then shook his head. "No, I'm afraid we have to abandon the idea of producing nitric acid in the laboratory. The process is quite complicated, and most importantly, it's extremely inefficient. If we want to mass-produce gunpowder and make explosives using this method, it's probably not going to be realistic for at least a year or two."

Lu Yuning was stunned, not quite understanding what he meant.

"So, the best way is not to produce nitric acid in a laboratory, but to use it directly. After omitting this step, we are still capable of carrying out the subsequent synthesis steps, and the yield is very high!"

(End of this chapter)