Industrialization

"The Gozdali Plains, where the Icefield Giant Bear Tribe is located, lack the large-scale iron and coal resources necessary for industrialization. Apart from the two sizable coal and iron mines near Eskil City, nowhere else in the entire Ice and Snow Wilderness has coal and iron mines developed on such a scale!"

Elder Gulas, who had long been in charge of civil affairs in the Ice and Snow Wilderness, spoke after pondering briefly.

"In such a vast place as the Ice and Snow Wilderness, there are no large-scale coal and iron mines in other regions?" Zhang Tie found this somewhat unbelievable. Judging from the map, the Ice and Snow Wilderness covered nearly twenty million square kilometers. He had originally thought that the climate here was merely harsher, never imagining that its natural resources would be so scarce as well.

"It is not that they do not exist, but that there are no conditions for mining them. The climate and living conditions in the Ice and Snow Wilderness are extremely harsh. Even where resources exist, many places cannot support large-scale extraction. Take the Fire Dragon Coal Mine outside Eskil City, for example. Developing a coal mine like that requires roughly seventy or eighty thousand miners. It is easy enough to support seventy or eighty thousand people near Eskil City, but if you throw them onto the wilderness farther north of Eskil City, merely feeding them could drag down a bear-level tribe. It would be like a tribe supporting an army of seventy or eighty thousand people wandering outside all year round—the daily costs would be terrifying! They would far exceed the value those workers created."

Elder Nikolai continued, adding, "Large-scale industrial development must rest on a sufficient population base. And a sufficient population base requires enough food and suitable living conditions.