MELTDOWN
"Wait up!" My little sister yelled from behind me, "I can't run as fast as you!" Running through the woods, my favorite thing to do, it was the only escape from the hectic, everyday life of 2046. These were the only woods for 550 miles, and they were my getaway. "Dalena! Slow down!"
"I'm not slowing down so you'd better keep up!" I yelled back at Ariele. Life was so simple back then, so innocent, but not anymore.
There had been warnings of a Global Nuclear Meltdown (or GNM) since 2011 when a strong earthquake hit Japan's coast, but that was 35 years ago; no one thought it would ever happen. Boy, were they wrong. A year earlier, in 2010, a volcano in Southern Iceland erupted and caused global problems, scientists said that it had woken up an even larger volcano that could erupt at any moment. Once more, five years later, everyone forgot about it. Big mistake…
On the southwest coast of Canada, there's a small half-island called Stanley Park, that's where we were. I lived in downtown Vancouver along with 2.75 million other people. In our average, 20 sq. foot apartment lived my mother, my 12 year-old sister, my dying father and I. My father had cancer along with a third of the population, but the hospitals were too full to hold cancer patients anymore. With all the pollution, crime and hustle-bustle of everyday city life, the park was the only place that wasn't corrupt.
The next day, everything changed. I woke up in the early morning to the sound of the TV buzzing with alarms, warnings and broadcasts about how a volcano erupted. But not any volcano had erupted; it was the volcano, the giant one in Southern Iceland. My mother and my father were watching the news, so I joined them. The huge eruption had caused massive damage to Iceland, the Arctic Ocean and all the airports of the world, everyone was grounded. Not only that, but the eruption had stirred up the abandoned Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant in Japan. There was a high risk of a Nuclear Meltdown.
Panic quickly invaded the hearts of billions all over the world as they watched in horror as the end of the world was preparing itself. More volcano eruptions, earthquakes, mudslides, tsunamis (and soon JNMs) were destroying the world; hundreds of thousands of people were dying every minute. "Dalena! Ariele! Run to the bunker in Stanley Park and stay there until we come!" My mother was telling my sister and me to go down to an underground, concrete tube inlaid in the top of a hill we found a couple of years ago. It would protect us from earthquakes, mudslides, tsunamis and even radiation poisoning. We grabbed some supplied, said goodbye to our parents, and I knew that we would never see them again.