The protagonist retreats near the river bank.
He wanted to find a new site suitable for nesting, and his first requirement was to be close to the south bank of the river so that he could get support in time and ensure that the back road would not be cut off.
Then, the river bank becomes the first choice.
However, the biggest difficulty in building a nest on a river bank is waterproofing. Because it is close to a water source, a newly built ant nest may be permeable to water. In addition, the passage of the ant nest is narrow and narrow, which can easily form a siphon effect, causing water to enter the entire ant nest.
The saying that a thousand-mile embankment breaks in an ant nest is not just an exaggeration and metaphor. In fact, small ant nests will indeed cause the soil embankment to be immersed in water for a long time, reducing the structural strength, leading to piping and embankment bursting.
During the 1998 devastating natural disaster in the Yangtze River Basin in China, ant infestation was the cause of "piping surges" in some dams. Of course, the "ants" here are not ants, but termites. River embankments infested by termites often appear to be intact on the outside, but are likely to have suffered severe damage on the inside. At that time, a small jeep speeding along the Jingjiang embankment actually got stuck in the earthen dam. It was not uncommon for pedestrians and buffaloes to fall into the "trap" of the dam.
For ants, once the nest located on the river bank gets flooded, it is often the end of the group.
The protagonist has never lived in "Linshui City", so he doesn't know how much the river's water level can rise during the rainy season. Even if we ask the original defenders of "Linshui City", due to the annual war, they only know the hydrological conditions of the previous year and do not have long-term data.
The protagonist is unable to determine the maximum water level of the river. So the most reliable way to build a new nest is to find the main nest as high as possible and provide drainage facilities.
After searching along the river bank, the protagonist quickly determined the most suitable place - under the huge tree he was looking at before.
When the protagonist first landed on the north bank of the river, he looked at the nearby terrain from this tree more than 20 meters high. Now it seems that the land under this tree is also a suitable nesting site.
Since all the leaves have fallen in winter, the protagonist could not tell what kind of tree this tree was. He could only see that its bark was dark gray, cracked vertically, and peeling off in sheets. The protagonist can identify its type only when it sprouts, blooms, and bears fruit next year.
This tree is about twenty meters high and about half a meter in diameter at the base. It has a tall and straight shape. At the base of the tree, due to the fixation of the roots and the erosion of the area not covered by the remaining tree roots, the soil at the base of the tree is more than half a meter higher than the nearby ground and nearly one meter higher than the current ice surface.
What the protagonist is interested in is the gap between half a meter and one meter. At present, the river is in dry season in winter, and it is about one meter away from the mound under the tree. Even in the rainy season, the protagonist believes that this height is enough to prevent floods.
There is also the inconvenience that the newly built nest needs to be as shallow as possible and then expanded horizontally to avoid water seepage in the lower areas. But compared to the other advantages, this inconvenience is bearable.
Because it is close to the river bank, the new nest can more easily receive support from the rear. This place is far away from the enemy's daily activities, and it can also be difficult to detect when building a nest in the early stage, thereby gaining more construction time.
Most importantly, the terrain here can avoid being completely surrounded by enemies, and at least the river side can sit back and relax. If the communication routes with the south bank of the river are carefully calculated, the enemy will not be able to cut off the communication between Xinzhinest and "Linshui City".
Between the new nest and the "Linshui City", the protagonist initially planned to build a floating bridge.
A pontoon bridge refers to a bridge that uses boats or pontoons instead of piers to float on the water. The military pontoon bridge assembled by the army using standard equipment is called a pontoon bridge. Ancient pontoons were mostly built by laying wooden planks on parallel boats, rafts or ropes.
Floating bridges can be used for cross-river traffic. Because of its simple structure and easy erection and disassembly, it was often used as the main means of transportation on rivers and even straits in ancient times when bridge construction technology was backward.
Our country has a long history of building pontoon bridges. In the Book of Songs Daya Ming Dynasty in the 8th century BC, it was recorded that King Wen of the Zhou Dynasty built a pontoon bridge on the Wei River in order to marry a wife. It has been three thousand years since today and is the earliest record of the construction of a pontoon bridge. . According to research, pontoons were rare and valuable items at that time. The etiquette system of the Zhou Dynasty stipulated that only the "Emperor" could use them, and they must be removed immediately after use. During the Warring States Period, "rituals collapsed and music collapsed", and the rule that only the "Emperor" was allowed to go on the pontoon also collapsed.
By the Han and Tang Dynasties, the use of pontoons in my country became increasingly common. Over the course of thousands of years, it is difficult to count the number of floating bridges built. Before building permanent bridges in many areas, pontoons are always built first to explore and understand the water conditions, and then seek a suitable permanent bridge type. According to rough statistics, nearly twenty large pontoon bridges have been erected on the Yangtze River and Yellow River alone, most of which are military pontoon bridges.
For example: During the Spring and Autumn Period in 541 BC, Qin Jinggong’s mother and brother Hou Zizhen built a pontoon bridge on the Yellow River near Linjin, Shanxi Province, and brought "carriage weights" because they had too much money. "Thousands of Cheng" of wealth fled from present-day Shaanxi to the State of Jin, which can be said to be the first Yellow River Bridge.
The first floating bridge on the Yangtze River appeared in the 11th year of Jianwu (AD 35) when Emperor Guangwu of the Eastern Han Dynasty fought against Gongsun Shu, a separatist force in Sichuan. Gongsun Shu was located between Jingmen, Yidu County, Hubei Province and Huya, Yichang County, today. Taking advantage of the dangerous terrain, a pontoon bridge, the Jiangguan Floating Bridge, was erected to cut off the waterway traffic of Emperor Guangwu of the Han Dynasty. Later, the navy of Emperor Guangwu of the Han Dynasty took advantage of the wind and set it on fire.
The Tianjin Bridge built on Luoshui River in Luoyang, Henan Province in the first year of Daye of the Sui Dynasty (AD 605) was the first pontoon bridge built by connecting ships with iron chains. Li Shimin, Emperor Taizong of the Tang Dynasty, wrote a poem, four of which are "temporarily low to meet the chariot speed, but still high enough to be shocked by the waves, the water shakes and flutters, the cable turns and the brocade flowers linger", which is used to describe when he was crossing the pontoon bridge in his imperial chariot. , the figure of a hawk on the bow that is good at fighting the wind and waves and the brocade flowers on the cables are swaying on the waves of the river.
In AD 974, during the reign of Emperor Taizu of the Song Dynasty, the second pontoon bridge was erected at Caishiji in Dangtu County, Anhui Province, in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River. It provided important support for the Song soldiers to defeat the Southern Tang Dynasty, unify the country, and march to the south of the Yangtze River.
During the reign of Emperor Shizu of the Yuan Dynasty, in order to unify the southwest region and send troops to Sichuan, more than 20 military pontoon bridges were erected on the Baima River, Hejiang, Peijiang, Qingjiang and other rapids. These pontoon bridges made great contributions to Kublai Khan's unification of the southwest.
The earliest pontoon bridge that appeared in the West was recorded by the ancient Greek historian Herodotus: the pontoon bridge built on the Bosporus when the Persian king Darius invaded Greece. Unlike China's pontoon bridges, which are mostly used to cross rivers, the pontoon bridges here are built to float on the sea.
The floating bridge has a long history and is used very well, but the protagonist is a little dissatisfied.
