Chapter 7: The Scale Was No Joke

The next morning, as soon as he woke up, Junho checked how his body felt—but there was still nothing wrong.

No fever. And none of the dizzy, warped-vision symptoms people got right before turning into a zombie, either. That alone made him exhale in relief.

It helped that he’d experienced it right before regressing. At least he knew the warning signs.

Moving crews were basically gods.

Three workers showed up with a five-ton truck and started packing and loading at an insane speed.

They were strangers, so Junho tensed up without meaning to—but aside from the older guy who seemed to be in charge, they didn’t talk much. They just packed and moved. He got used to it fast.

The first day had been rough—almost seriously rough—but as time passed, it felt like his head was slowly settling back into something normal.

He’d even wondered if he should see a therapist, but maybe he wouldn’t need to after all.

He’d already given them the new address, so the brothers just grabbed a few small bags of clothes and headed out first.

While they were moving, Junho called the CCTV company and the solar company he’d contacted yesterday and set up visit schedules.

The moving crew unloaded just as fast as they’d packed—placing furniture and appliances exactly where they were supposed to go.

Then they drove off like the wind.

Junho looked around the house.

This place was a small testing ground for what came next.

Once Selene coin blew up and he made real money, he’d move to the “real shelter.”

Until then, he had to prepare here. Practice here. Get ready here.

“Yeah. Money really is the best, huh, bro.”

Junhyeok’s face was full of awe as he looked around.

“Obviously.”

He’d spent almost two million won on the moving crew and the cleaning company, but it was worth every won.

“We’ll file the change-of-address tomorrow. For now, hurry up and finish setting up your room, then come down to the basement.”

“Uh, okay.”

Even if he’d already done his time in the military, Junhyeok was still young enough that he was grinning like an idiot over having a bigger room than the apartment.

Junho carefully organized their parents’ belongings in the small room, then dumped his own stuff roughly into the bigger room. After that, he went down to the basement—one of the biggest reasons he’d chosen this house in the first place.

The basement the owner had used as storage was about six meters by six meters—around ten pyeong in size.

The owner had clearly kept it well maintained, and with the cleaning company doing a thorough job, there wasn’t even a smell. It was impressively clean.

Junho had given it a quick look yesterday, but as he checked the corners again, he heard Junhyeok’s voice—somehow already down here.

“This place is huge. You’re making a workshop down here? What kind of workshop, though?”

“Yeah. First, I’m redoing the insulation, then soundproofing—”

Bzzz.

His phone vibrated.

Junho checked the text, lifted his head, and said, “Let’s go pick up the stuff.”

“Stuff? What stuff? There’s more moving boxes?”

“Just follow me.”

Junhyeok tilted his head, confused, and followed him up the stairs.

And the moment they opened the yard gate and stepped outside—

“What the hell is all this?!”

Junho answered him like it was nothing.

“What do you think? Are we not doing an apocalypse rehearsal?”

“Hooooly...”

Dozens of delivery boxes were stacked in front of the gate. Junhyeok just stood there with his mouth hanging open.

“What are you doing? Move them inside.”

“Huh? Oh—yeah!”

From electronics like a refrigerator, a freezer, a mini drone, CCTV equipment, a robot vacuum, a monitor, and a 3D printer...

To gear like a machete, a shovel, a sickle, a slingshot, and more...

There were boxes with all kinds of things, and the brothers carried them in together.

“Put everything in the basement for now. It won’t rain for a while, and there’s no dampness down there, so it’ll be fine.”

The fridge and freezer were small, but still heavy. Even so, with the two of them moving them together, it wasn’t hard at all.

After carrying all the boxes down in about ten minutes, Junhyeok dusted off his hands and clicked his tongue.

“Damn, that’s a lot. Bro—how much did all this cost?”

“About three hundred. I bought cheap models for the electronics, so it wasn’t that bad.”

“How is three hundred ‘not that bad’?”

Junho tapped the freezer they’d carried down last.

“The fridge and freezer we’ll put in the shelter are huge—over a thousand liters. You know the kind restaurants use? Compared to that, this is dirt cheap. I only bought these to test things out.”

“Test? What are you testing with a fridge and freezer? And why can’t we just use the fridge we already have?”

“Because we still need that one.”

Junho looked over the boxes he’d stacked neatly, then tore a few open.

“Airtight containers? And what’s this—silica gel? And these are oxygen absorbers?”

“Go upstairs and bring a few packs of instant noodles, the frozen dumplings, and... you know the potatoes and carrots you already trimmed and cut? Bring those too.”

“Jesus...”

He had no idea what Junho was trying to do, but as the obedient younger brother he was, Junhyeok did what he was told.

When he came back down with the items Junho asked for, he spotted something unfamiliar.

“Bro, what’s that?”

“A vacuum sealer.”

“Vacuum sealing? Oh, I know that. It’s for storing meat longer, right?”

“That’s what most people think. But if you vacuum seal, it’s not just meat. Pretty much anything lasts longer.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah. I learned it the hard way in the apocalypse. Like these frozen dumplings.”

Junho put the frozen dumplings into a plastic bag, slid the edge into the sealer, and pressed a button.

Wheeeee—

The bag slowly collapsed as the machine whined.

A moment later the noise cut off completely, and Junho held up the vacuum-sealed dumplings to Junhyeok, who was staring like he’d never seen magic before.

“This bag says the sell-by date is March next year. Even if you just throw it in a freezer, realistically, it stays edible until maybe May.”

“I know. That thing—‘use-by date,’ right?”

“Yeah. The real edible window is usually about twenty to thirty percent longer than the printed sell-by. But if you vacuum seal it like this...”

Junho put the vacuum-sealed dumplings into an airtight container.

Then he tossed in a handful of silica gel—moisture absorbers—and oxygen absorbers, and sealed the lid tight.

“Store it like this in a freezer, and that edible window gets a lot longer.”

“What? Seriously?”

Junho handed the container to Junhyeok.

“Yeah. Put it in the freezer section of the fridge we’ve been using. In a couple hours, we’ll move it over here.”

“Why bother?”

“Because we’re going to move it into the new freezer later and then keep it closed as much as possible.”

“Huh? Why?”

As he spoke, Junho vacuum-sealed packs of instant noodles without even opening them.

“I told you. This is testing and rehearsal. I’ve eaten stuff like this during the apocalypse, but I want to confirm it again myself. Anyway, these noodles expire in February. We can pull them out next fall and try cooking them.”

Normally, the use-by window would stretch to around April—but if he wanted to test whether this method actually worked, they’d need to eat it in September or October.

“Damn... that’s crazy. But I’m kind of nervous.”

“Nervous about what? Aren’t you curious too? Whether it’s really possible or not?”

“Yeah. I mean... I am curious. Let’s do it.”

Guys were wired that way—going insane over anything that was pointless but looked fun.

And this wasn’t even pointless. For apocalypse prep, it was ridiculously useful.

“So if we do vegetables like this, they last longer too? How long?”

“Yeah. Potatoes and carrots—since they’re blanched, they’ll probably be fine for half a year.”

“That’s insane. Then what about stuff like rice?”

“Government-distributed rice—these days they sell it under a new ‘national’ label, right? Anyway, the government has grain warehouses for that kind of thing. Even if the power goes out, I heard it keeps for two or three years easy. But if we store it like we do, it’ll last ten years without breaking a sweat.”

“Oooooh!”

Listening to Junho, Junhyeok grinned as he sealed noodles, potatoes, and carrots.

Watching a fully grown man get this excited over it, Junho snorted and spoke with a crooked smile.

“Memorize this. Vacuum sealing. Oxygen absorbers. Moisture absorbers. Airtight containers. We’re storing all our shelter food this way.”

“Vacuum sealing, oxygen absorbers, moisture absorbers, airtight containers. But does everything go in fridges and freezers? What about canned stuff?”

“This is just for testing and rehearsal. The real thing is different. First off, we’re getting two or three of those giant commercial fridges and freezers restaurants use. That’s the baseline. But that’s not all.”

“Then what?”

“There’s something called a cold storage room. You see them out in rural areas. Just think of it like a walk-in fridge that looks like a regular warehouse. We’ll build one next to the shelter kitchen and connect it. Maybe twenty pyeong? About twice the size of this room. Two floors, and we stack supplies.”

“Huh.”

“If you keep the humidity low and lock the temp at around three or four degrees, food stored this way usually lasts two to three times longer than what’s printed.”

“For real?”

“I’ve eaten it in the apocalypse. Instant noodles that were about a year past the printed date—no vacuum sealing, no oxygen absorbers, no moisture absorbers. Just stored in airtight containers inside cold storage. I ate it. No stomachache. Totally fine.”

“No way.”

“And if we add vacuum sealing plus oxygen absorbers and moisture absorbers, what do you think happens? It’ll last even longer. So in cold storage, we keep normal packaged foods this way. And in the shelter kitchen freezers, we use the same method for meat, fish, and frozen foods. That alone gets us two, maybe three years of food.”

“I get it. Then after that? Does that mean we can’t eat meat anymore?”

“No. There’s a way.”

“Oh? What is it?”

“Ultra-low temperature freezing storage. It’s what people use to store seafood long-term.”

“Ultra-low temperature...?”

Junho answered while recalling what he’d heard before he regressed—along with what he’d confirmed online last night—about a survivor group that had one.

“Negative forty, negative fifty Celsius—somewhere around there. If we have an ultra-low freezer storage like that, we can store meat, fish, seafood—eat it while keeping it preserved for more than ten years. Of course, only if it’s vacuum-sealed, packed with oxygen absorbers and moisture absorbers, then placed inside airtight containers. Stuff like rice, flour, noodles—thirty years. Maybe even fifty.”

“Jesus...”

“Want to hear something even crazier? You know MREs. Freeze-dried combat rations.”

“Of course.”

“Those last even longer. If you store them in ultra-low storage, you’re talking almost a century. Same with canned goods.”

“Holy— So, bro. In the shelter you’re thinking of... you’re building that ultra-low storage too?”

“Of course.”

It was non-negotiable.

Not some massive industrial facility like a food company would run.

He didn’t need something that huge, and more than anything—

Power supply was the problem.

From what he’d found online last night, large ultra-low storage facilities consumed power on the order of a thousand kilowatts every day.

A normal household used around ten to fifteen kilowatts per day, and a single commercial ultra-low freezer ate electricity equal to hundreds of homes.

So he’d keep it modest—two or three dozen pyeong.

If he managed power properly, he could handle that scale.

And if he built it as a two-story structure and stacked everything in standardized storage, it would hold more food than people expected.

Roughly speaking, a single twenty-pyeong ultra-low storage room could store enough food for a shelter population to eat for more than twenty years.

“A kitchen with regular fridges and freezers, cold storage right next to it, and then ultra-low storage. A three-tier system. With that, thirty years is easy.”

In other words, the kitchen and cold storage held roughly ten years’ worth of food for the shelter members to consume.

And the ultra-low storage held everything after that.

Of course, he wouldn’t know for certain until he actually did it—but Junho was sure it was possible.

Otherwise, in the apocalypse, nobody would’ve been hunting that survivor group that seized an ultra-low facility and ran it on large-scale solar power.

“This is insane. Bro... you really thought about all this because of that prophetic dream?”

“It wasn’t a dream—”

Junho let out a heavy sigh and cut himself off.

“Forget it. Anyway, I planned like hell.”

“Yeah. I can tell.”

To be honest, up until now, Junhyeok had only understood his brother’s plan in a vague, surface way.

A “perfect shelter” hadn’t felt real. He’d pictured something simple: a safe place stocked with a ton of food and water, where you could hide for a few years.

But right now, that picture cracked.

The shelter his brother had planned...

The scale was no joke.