The entire fortification is a perfect circular structure with a diameter of half a meter. The outermost side is a circle of deep trenches. The inner side of the trench is an earth embankment made of piles of earth. There is a flat trail on the top of the earth embankment for the defenders to move. and attack the enemy from a high position.
Inside the earth embankment is an open space used for the assembly and movement of troops. A nest was dug downwards in the center of the open space, which was used for garrison and residence as well as storage of food supplies.
The reason why it is designed in this style is that the protagonist decided on the plan after fully considering the difficulty of construction and the defense effect.
In terms of construction, the construction difficulty, project volume and construction period of the entire project are not a problem for Ant, who is good at soil work.
The construction of the entire fortress mainly involves three operations: digging holes, digging pits, and piling earth embankments.
Digging holes is the specialty of ants. All main and secondary nests are built by digging holes. Most of the nests are dug in the soil. There are also strange secondary nests dug in tree holes like "Linshuicheng". Therefore, it is easy to find any ant when digging holes.
The excavation work required to dig a trench is similar to digging a hole. If you dig a trench with a trapezoidal cross-section that is wide at the top and narrow at the bottom, the top width of the trench is one decimeter, the bottom width is half a decimeter, and the depth is one decimeter. According to data calculation, the total earth volume is only 15 cubic decimeters.
These earthworks can fill a 15-liter container and weigh about dozens of kilograms. It is not difficult for the ants to complete it based on their construction capabilities. The proverb "a dike of a thousand miles breaks in an ant nest" can reflect the amazing digging ability of ants from the side.
The seemingly simple task of building an earth embankment is actually the most difficult part of the entire construction.
To pile up an earth embankment, you only need to pile the earth excavated when digging holes and trenches on the inside of the trench to form an earth embankment with a trapezoidal cross-section.
However, simply piling soil particles together will inevitably lead to a loose structure of the soil mound. It only takes one or two large-scale rainfalls to completely destroy the soil embankment. In order to avoid this situation, the protagonist can refer to the wisdom of ancient Chinese.
When constructing buildings in ancient China, a technology called "rammed earth" was developed based on local conditions. Rammed earth, also known as ramming, is to use various tools and means to compact the soil to form a pressed mixed mud block that is strong, dense and has few gaps, and is used for construction.
This technique has been used on a large scale from the Neolithic Age to the 1950s and 1960s, and is still used in some remote areas today.
The general method of rammed earth is to use dry mounding to compact the soil layer by layer. It is a kind of high-intensity physical labor that requires a large number of laborers, ranging from thousands to tens of thousands or more. The foundations of ancient buildings such as the Great Wall, the Forbidden City, the Mawangdui Han Tomb, and the Mausoleum of Qin Shihuang are all made of rammed earth.
The rammed earth method does not have to be selective in materials. The clay underground of the fortress is enough, and there is no shortage of ants in terms of labor. The only difficulty is that rammed earth requires heavy tools such as stones to compact the loose soil layer.
Although ants can lift objects hundreds of times their own weight, considering their tiny size, the small rocks that several ants can lift together are simply not enough to bear the heavy responsibility of rammed earth tools. A stone of this weight would leave a small crater on the mound.
Fortunately, ants themselves carry a construction adhesive that can tightly bind loose soil particles.
For example, in the real world, there are a large number of "skyscrapers" - ant mounds - built by ants and termites on the African continent.
Anthill, also known as anthill, is a tower-shaped anthill built by soil-dwelling ants above the ground. It is called anthill because of its shape.
Many soil-dwelling ants or termites choose dead trees or shrubs to build their nests in their mounds. The ants and termites will first bite off the soft and decayed parts of the plants, leaving only the hard wood as the skeleton; then, thousands of them Ants and termites, holding grains of sand and soil in their mouths, continuously climb up the skeleton and build the soil and sand on top with their saliva and feces.
The sand and soil particles play the role of "bricks", and the saliva and feces of ants and termites are good adhesives, like "cement", firmly sticking the "brick layers" together. Whether it is termites, black ants, or red ants, their saliva and feces, when mixed with sand and soil particles, can be turned into building materials as strong as "concrete" and can withstand strong winds and rains.
As the "brick walls" continue to become taller and thicker, the "walls" are connected according to the natural shape of the tree skeleton, separating large and small "rooms". The construction speed of ant mounds is very amazing. A cubic meter of ant mounds can be built in more than ten days. As the ant colony proliferates, the ant mound increases year by month.
When the protagonist was a child, he read the story about African ants building ant mounds. He was very excited and determined that the Chinese ants should catch up and never lose to the ants from the third world in Asia, Africa and Latin America.
So he picked up plasticine and other materials at home and built a "building" that he barely called a tower above the exit of the ant nest in his backyard, forcing the ants to live in this "ant mound."
In the end, it was a failure of course, although the protagonist fought hard against all the adults and saved the "ant mound" from being demolished. However, these ungrateful ants actually opened a new entrance and exit and would not live in the "ant mound" that the protagonist had worked so hard to build, which made him angry to death.
But at this moment, the protagonist is still grateful for his misbehavior in childhood, for which he has learned a lot of knowledge and experience.
If the saliva and feces of big-headed ants mixed with clay particles can be as strong and malleable as "concrete", then the construction technology of "Dongyang City" will take a huge leap. The protagonist decided to experiment immediately after returning home.
The defense effect is the main consideration when the protagonist designs this fortress.
Although this fortress is very simple, it is completely designed based on the combat characteristics of parasitic ants, which can greatly weaken the threat of parasitic ants.
The height difference between the bottom of the trench and the top of the embankment is only two decimeters. In order to ensure the stability of the building foundation, an inclination angle of 45 degrees is left.
This kind of angle and height is the same as flat ground for parasitic ants who are good at climbing, but for the silk thread parasitic fungi on the back of the parasitic ants, once they are separated from the host, they cannot exceed this height by their own ability.
During the last failed expedition to the parasitic ant nest, the protagonist discovered that the teams guarding the cliff basically did not encounter the nuisance of the thread parasite in the initial defensive battle, while the soldiers in other directions were deeply affected by it. Harmful.
As long as the unpreventable attacks of the thread parasitic bacteria in the dark can be blocked, it will not be easy for the parasitic ants with strong individual combat capabilities to defeat the legion of the God Envoy King with strict discipline, tight organization and sophisticated tactics.
This is the biggest role of this fortress.
