Embedded Files
"Wow, I Guess We Can Just Stay Here?"
"Wow, I Guess We Can Just Stay Here?"
Inspired by a remote wilderness that serves as the setting for the book series that you are reading, you and your classmates visit a wilderness area as a field trip. While there, you and your friends are saved from tragic and unprecedented happenings in the global community.
The events that triggered the disaster were otherwise harmless natural phenomena. Unknown to the people of the world, a vicious strain of bees has been multiplying for decades. They live almost exclusively at high altitudes, feeding on the pollen and insects carried up by jets and tornados. When the weather turns cold, they hibernate underground, directly below the foundations of homes all across the globe, and then return to the upper atmosphere when the weather warms. They are extremely aggressive and extremely venomous. Fortunately, because of where they live, they have very few opportunities to sting anything. There had been only three cases of bee-human contact, always fatal to both parties. Interestingly, the bees repelled attacks by alien invaders in the late 1880s and early 1960s, disabling their spacecraft and continuing to sting them as the bee-covered invaders crashed and sank into the ocean.
On this fateful day, however, a solar flare, full moon, severe thunderstorm and unusually warm spell in the part of the world experiencing winter all occur at once. All the bees are driven to ground level, where they seek the shelter of building foundations. Unfortunately, humans are also moving to buildings. Their paths cross, tragically. The bees sting nearly every human within 50 miles of a building, which is pretty much all of them. The stings are fatal, for the bees as well as humans. In a bizarre poetic twist, the bodies of both lay side by side, neither realizing that their instincts made them enemies unnecessarily.
As the bee and human worlds collide across the planet, world leaders, also driven by instinct, are compounding the problem. Fearing they are under a biological attack from another country, governments all over the world launch attacks against each other, using Electronic Magnetic Pulse (EMP) weapons. These weapons short-circuit every electrical piece of equipment across the planet. As an unexpected side effect of multiple EMPs being fired at the same time, the magnetic fields react with each other, igniting gasoline, kerosene, and gunpowder worldwide. You feel the Earth shudder as it momentarily wobbles on its axis, unaware that every vehicle, gun and electronic device has been rendered useless. Had you known what had just happened, the shudder would have felt appropriate.
Luckily for you, there are no homes, and therefore, no bees, anywhere near you. Nor are there any bullets or vehicles. When you and your classmates realize that society has ended (because your phone won’t turn on and your compass is just spinning endlessly), you decide there is no reason to return home and to rebuild civilization from scratch.
Think about what you will do and what are the most important things to decide first. Use these questions to guide your conversation and make notes about your answers.
Page updated
Report abuse