Chapter 436: Chapter 424: Self-Rescue Guide
Inside Windsor Castle, Perfikot was constantly dealing with various matters large and small, incredibly busy.
The Empire was about to announce the advent of the apocalypse, and naturally, this prominent minister of the Empire, who had always been responsible for this matter, had to return to Langton to oversee, ensuring that the Empire could smoothly navigate the final stages.
As the Empire announced the news of the apocalypse, wanting to ultimately survive the apocalyptic crisis, whether it was Perfikot or the Imperial Center, the tasks to be done were overwhelming, and various matters suddenly emerged, leaving people at a loss on where to start.
Fortunately, Perfikot had warned the Empire three years earlier. Although the efficiency of the Noble Council had wasted a lot of time, as soon as the Imperial Center confirmed the news of the apocalypse, Perfikot gradually gained power. Even with the Empire’s traditionally low administrative efficiency, the Imperial Center still came up with a relatively reliable response plan.
The construction of the Northern Territory shelter was only part of this entire plan, albeit the most important part, but beyond building the shelter, many decisions and proper arrangements needed to be made.
For instance, who exactly qualified to head to the Northern Territory and obtain a ticket to board the "Ark"?
The nobility naturally assumed that they all had the qualifications, but it was clear that not all nobles would be eligible to go to the Northern Territory this time.
Perfikot had emphasized long ago in the royal council that those nobles who only occupy their positions and neither contribute to the Empire and society nor have the talent to contribute were not qualified to go to the Northern Territory; they were the abandoned ones.
Regarding this, even the Duke of Gloster and other dignitaries of the Imperial Center had no objections.
After all, from the very beginning, Perfikot emphasized that the Northern Territory had limited capacity and could only allow a limited number of people to head to the Northern Territory to escape the apocalypse. Both commoners and nobles, a significant portion have to be abandoned.
It’s just that comparatively, the total number of commoners being abandoned is greater, while the proportion of nobles being abandoned is larger.
But who has the qualifications to survive, and who should be abandoned, needs to be evaluated by those qualified to make such decisions.
To accomplish this task, the Empire specially established an evaluation group, and Perfikot, in order to prevent anyone from using backdoor methods or connections, personally oversaw this group, responsible for the final review.
Of course, she was not entirely ruthless. For some nobles who didn’t quite meet the standards and requirements submitted above, as long as it wasn’t too outrageous and she felt these people could still serve some purpose, she would overlook their deficiencies and allow some marginal cases to pass.
The Northern Territory certainly had limited capacity, but it wasn’t that it couldn’t accommodate a few thousand nobles.
Only, the premise of being borderline acceptable was that she found them "acceptable," meaning they still had some merits, although not meeting normal qualifying standards; thus, the nobles allowed to pass in this way still served some purpose.
At the very least, they had family members employed in the Imperial Army or government departments, received an average level of noble education, and did not have an egregious record.
These people, although not capable of great contributions, could still fill some low-level civil servant posts or be stationed in shelters below to take on management roles without significant issues.
The Northern Territory had always lacked sufficient grassroots talents, and these people could somewhat fill part of that gap.
As for those truly idle, oppressive, and infamous nobles, Perfikot was unapologetic about not sparing any of them.
Even to stabilize social order and ensure the smooth transition of the final evacuation, Perfikot, upon acquiring significant power after returning to Langton, directly instructed the Military Department to deal with these individuals.
The Military Department naturally understood Perfikot’s intentions and knew the extraordinary times called for extraordinary measures, so previous leniencies were now met with the strictest crackdown, with the Military Department even deploying the Guard Army to handle those nobles still trying to cause trouble at such a time.
In addition to these matters, Perfikot also spent time compiling a self-rescue guide.
After all, even if the Empire’s homeland were to be abandoned, it still had a substantial population. Although Perfikot was ruthlessly abandoning them, she didn’t just watch them perish.
The self-rescue guide detailed the situation of the apocalyptic winter and introduced some methods that could help ordinary people survive under the apocalyptic winter conditions.
If ordinary people could do as the booklet described, while there was no guarantee of survival, at least they could endure the initial winter.
The reason Perfikot decided to abandon the Empire’s homeland was, on one hand, due to the lack of domestic resources. Without the input from overseas colonies, the Empire’s homeland couldn’t support and sustain its vast consumption.
On the other hand, the Empire’s homeland had a massive population base, and such a large population, when faced with an apocalyptic crisis, would expose numerous social problems.
But this did not mean that the Empire’s homeland stood no chance of surviving doomsday; if someone could organize those left on the homeland following her self-rescue guide, they would still have a chance and hope to survive.
Of course, this was merely a chance to survive the early stages of the apocalyptic winter.
After all, with the extreme cold intensifying, not even the Northern Territory dares to ensure everyone’s survival, let alone the Empire’s homeland.
Perfikot merely gave them a shred of elusive hope, allowing them to get through the initial phase, perhaps afterward she could free up resources from the Northern Territory to find a way to improve conditions on the Empire’s homeland.
But these were matters for later; now, all she could do was compile such a self-rescue guide, then let the Empire’s propaganda department print more copies, so the people wouldn’t truly feel abandoned by the Empire.
If that happened, the problems would be quite severe, after all, you couldn’t predict what a person might do when they felt they couldn’t survive.
She had already witnessed enough these days, people committing suicide, attempting to harm others, or even wanting to destroy the world before the apocalypse arrived...
Perfikot had already seen enough of the diversity of human species and didn’t want things to worsen further.
Moreover, she already had enough on her plate, she didn’t want to add more work to herself.
However, just as she was busy, someone still interrupted her work.
"Count, the Patriarch of the Church is here to visit!" A court attendant interrupted her work, reporting a somewhat unexpected piece of news.