The Third Day
In any case, the rescue work can now be carried out in a targeted and effective manner.
Rescuers no longer need to dig haphazardly as if it were a matter of luck, or rely on New York City's few rescue dogs to search, or shout to ask if anyone has survived somewhere.
Quickly, rescue forces in various locations were adjusted, prioritizing targets identified by technological equipment.
Only the team with rescue dogs will remain to continue patrolling the ruins to prevent any undetected debris from slipping through the net.
However, most of the scattered remains unearthed were corpses or body parts buried along with the collapsed high-rise buildings. Only such remains would be buried at a depth close to the surface of the ruins.
The fire chief, who had extensive disaster relief experience, arrived at the World Trade Center Twin Towers site immediately. Joseph Pfeiffer, the fire unit commander, suggested focusing the rescue efforts on areas deeper inside the towers where large numbers of people were clearly gathered.
These people may be survivors who hid in basements or on lower floors and were not killed by falling concrete blocks after the building collapsed, managing to enter the refuge space. However, their locations are all quite deep, making rescue extremely difficult.
This isn't something you can do by simply locating the person and digging a straight tunnel through the rubble to rescue them.
First of all, this is a pile of cement fragments of varying sizes. Removing any one of them could trigger a chain reaction, like Domino falling; in severe cases, it could cause a secondary collapse.
Secondly, there is clearly still some space in the basement and lower floors. If this space could be utilized and connected, it could be a way to reach the person in need of rescue more quickly.
Trying to rescue the target by removing the concrete debris covering it is clearly unrealistic. Clearing this rubble would likely take weeks or even months, and the survivors buried underneath might not be able to survive that long without food or water.
Therefore, at times like these, high-ranking officials in the fire and police systems, who have extensive experience in disaster relief, begin to discuss various rescue possibilities.
Henry and the tech guys, including Tony Stark who had been busy all day, could only stand aside and listen.
As a natural protagonist, Tony Stark could never accept being ignored. Even though he hadn't slept all day, he was still full of energy.
Without his energy and ability, it would probably have taken a whole week to establish this police forward technology command post and it still wouldn't be as complete as it is now.
Moreover, compared to the people around him, Tony Stark had only been awake for one day. Henry Brown, on the other hand, had been working for two days straight without even closing his eyes, continuously engaging in high-intensity mental work, and only now could he finally catch his breath.
However, there's no doubt that the subject of their discussion is unfamiliar to Tony Stark.
He wouldn't say much about things he wasn't familiar with; he, as an engineer, possessed that pragmatic spirit. So he looked at his own multi-functional combat platform, pondering what else he could do in the rescue operation.
He asked the man beside him who was monitoring the rescue progress, "Do you think it's possible for us to use the 'Hollywood Kid's ' physics engine to find a reasonable digging path?"
Tony Stark's ingenious idea truly impressed Henry. Unfortunately—"I hadn't considered using a computer-generated physics engine here. It's a great idea, but we can't do it."
"Why? Is it because of data transmission speed? What If...? I use satellite transmission, connecting with the supercomputer on the West Coast shouldn't be a problem, right?"
Henry replied, "I believe that, and you can do it if you want to. But as one of the developers of the 'Hollywood Kid ' physics engine, I can tell you that to get the right simulation results, you need the right conditions."
"This means we must treat each piece of cement as an object, giving it the correct volume, shape, and weight, in order to use computer simulations to depict the result of digging a tunnel or removing a piece of cement."
"The more ambiguous the conditions, the less accurate the simulation results will be. This is not as simple as digging a tunnel in a mountain and drawing conclusions by simply calculating the earthwork. Moreover, actual excavation operations will still have many ad-hoc problems that need to be solved."
"Given the current conditions, we've already exhausted all our efforts just to find out the extent of the rubble accumulation and the internal burial space. And that doesn't even guarantee that the actual situation is as we've mapped out."
"You also want to input all of these objects, which could number in the hundreds of millions, into the computer. Some are just simple cement blocks, some are wrapped with steel bars or Cyborg, and some may be whole sections of broken Cyborg. Their weight is difficult to calculate simply by volume."
"With so many scenarios, how do you distinguish them? Moreover, there are many variables in the excavation process. The longer it takes, the different construction methods may lead to different results."
"Perhaps given enough time, we can find a way to solve these problems. But what we lack most right now is time. The people buried under the rubble can't just sit there without food or water, waiting for us to slowly solve each problem."
Henry's words were reasonable and well-founded. Tony Stark, when discussing academic and technical issues, was not the kind of argumentative person who would argue for the sake of arguing, so he naturally knew that Henry's words were correct.
The feeling of being powerless to save someone who was right in front of him was making Tony Stark very upset. His brilliant mind was trying to figure out what cards he could play.
Then the sound of Justin Hammer pulling media reporters around in the command tent made him even more upset.
This guy only quieted down for a while in the middle of the night, probably because he went to sleep. During the day, he became energetic again as soon as he saw the news media. Part of the reason is that Hammer Industries ' support materials have been arriving in waves, so there are always opportunities for him to appear in public.
In fact, Stark Industries continued to send supplies, but Tony Stark had no interest in putting on a show for reporters.
Because of his antics, although the amount of supplies donated by other companies was much larger than that donated by individuals, they failed to receive media attention due to the absence of any senior executives present.
Only the volunteers on site quietly moved these supplies into the distribution center, to be used later or distributed to places where they could be used.
Listening to the noisy noise, Tony Stark regretted his decision. Why had he only brought a tent with decent airtightness instead of one with good soundproofing?
Just as the young master Stark was pondering how to resolve the current predicament, an untimely commotion arose outside.
"What's going on?" Although there was no loud noise, the strong wind pressure made the tent curtains of the command post flap loudly.
Tony Stark, in a foul mood, wanted to go outside and yell at someone. But as he stepped out of the command tent wearing a respirator, he saw a dark gray aircraft, resembling an SR-71 high-altitude reconnaissance plane, descending vertically.
The resulting wind pressure was generated by the aircraft's engines. However, without careful examination, the sheer volume of noise, almost inaudible, was what truly piqued Tony Stark's interest in this extraordinary plane.