The Moth
_________________________________________________________
Trin woke up gasping.
"God, that was horrible People like that shouldn't go naked...it's worse than ebola "
Lanen was confused and still half asleep as she turned over muttering.
"...burm...bagels...."
Leaning over the side of his bed and reaching out, Trin grabbed Lanen's shoulder and shook her gently.
"Lanen, Lanen, wake up "
He was met with silence, and continued mumbling. He shook her harder, finally losing patience and jerking her roughly.
"....GAHHHHH I'm awake alreddy ...mutter mutter jerk..interrupting...mutter beauty...mutter sleep..."
"Lanen, we've got to get up, remember? We have that paper to write. You remember? Hello? Hello? C'mon, aren't you getting up?"
He sighed to himself. This was only slightly ridiculous. She'd come over last night to work on the final project of the year, waving some book her father had given her, and blathering on about the end of the world. She'd only been a little pasted...just a little drunk. Why had she even bothered to come over like that? They'd gotten no work done whatsoever except argue and then yell at each other late into the night about how the world was crumbling around them. On and on about some silly dead Scott Sherman guy and his stupid book. Or something like that. She'd been upset, crying, yelling, and very confusing. He didn't remember much either, after she'd raided the family liquor cabinet, and then blackmailed him into not telling about it. They finally had just crashed in his room.
She opened her eyes sleepily.
"Where am I?"
Trin groaned and rubbed his eyes with his fingers. This wasn't going to go so well if she was still grumpy from being woken up.
"Well, right now, you're sleeping on the floor of my room with my extra blanket."
This didn't go over well, as she woke up further and opened her bleary eyes completely.
"No, I meant who the hell are you? And where is this place? It looks nothing like home. On earth— I mean."
This was getting stranger and stranger. What was she talking about? Nobody lived on earth anymore. It was impossible. Earth wasn't sustainable any more. Heck, he didn't even remember living on earth before his family had fled to the moon colony. Lanen might though, because her genetics had been tinkered with and no-one really knew how old she was.
"Lanen, it's me, Trin. And you're not on the earth anymore, remember? It had a few problems and everyone had to leave."
There was silence for a moment. Lanen sat up.
"What do you mean, leave? There's nothing wrong with the earth. I've lived on it all my life."
Trin snorted.
"Unless you just experienced some sort of quantum leap through time and space into the twilight zone, you're DREAMING. You've lived here on the moon for twelve years with your foster parents. Remember?"
He decided to abuse her of her strange hungover morning fantasies quickly. He'd just show her the proof. It was all in the Colony's history database anyway. Having a bad family life shouldn't lead to such strange delusions, should it? He could understand losing one's parents at a young age, but she was strange like this all the time. Refusing to fit in, to think how others did, to react in a way that preserved the integrity of their new society on the moon. She was always pulling strange stuff, The Outsider. That was what had fascinated him about her from the beginning.
He shrugged and pulled on his jacket, still feeling the muzzy taste of alcohol on the back of his tongue. Eeling his way out of bed, he headed for the bathroom.
"I'll be out in five minutes, ok?"
Lanen stared at him bemusedly, as though he were a complete stranger, and nodded her head suspiciously. Where could he be going? Who the heck was he? And how, in God's name, had she ended up in this strange room with no windows? The last thing she remembered was going to a frat party and then not much after that. She was a full time college student at the University. And now, now she was somewhere else, in some strange boy's room, who was calling her "Lanen." What the hell had she drunk?
A strange phrase sprang to mind and she giggled. "It's the end of the world as we know it, and I could use a drink."
Still sitting up, she looked around and thought: *Huh. Not much here. It's a room. He sleeps strapped to a fold down bunk, and I'm on the floor, covered by something warm and fuzzy-silk-like.* Several minutes later, the so-called 'Trin' emerged from the second door in the wall, slightly damper and cleaner looking. He didn't even give her a chance to take a shower or clean up at all.
"Still sitting there? C'mon, let's go. I'll show you the main computers. Mine is just as good, but they're huge, and will make you feel better."
Lanen nodded slowly, and he pulled her to her feet, tugging her out the door and down a tubular hallway. After a myriad of bewildering turns, they were back at the same door they started at. At least, that was the private thought that she had.
Tapping the doorplate, Trin pulled her inside into a darkened room, where the screens on the walls turned on slowly after the door opened. *It must have been a motion detector that turned it on,* Lanen thought. Trin spoke abruptly.
"Hey, Vladofjasky, can you give us some info for poor confused Lanen here on the end of the world?"
There was a slight pause, and the main screen came up with an odd-looking talking jackal with an obnoxious Hawaiian print shirt and red nail polish and a mullet squinting grouchily at them in the–— sun?
"Yeah, yeah, sure. Don't I get any love here? It's Vladofjasky this, blah blah blah, Vladofjasky that. Siiiiiiiiigh. Ah well. Isn't it interesting to note that all the theories that the Old-Earthers had about cosmic calamities were all wrong? I mean, they had so many. Let's see, here's a list. There are natural disasters, including asteroid impact, Gamma-ray bursts, collapsing of the universes vacuum, rogue black holes, giant solar flares, reversal of the earth's magnetic field, flood-basalt volcanism, and global epidemics. Then we have Human-triggered Disasters like global warming, ecosystem collapse, biotech disaster, particle accelerator mishap, nano-technology disaster, and environmental toxins." Then there's willful self-destruction: global war, robots taking over, and mass insanity. And, of course, there's alien invasion (thank you SETI), divine intervention, and the realization that it was all a dream. Ha ha ha I love the last one. Talk about extremist denial. The end of the world was no silly joke to be put off. It happened before anyone even knew it had occurred."
Trin grinned. The expression on Lanen's face was priceless. Vladofjasky (also known hereafter as Vlad) continued cheerily.
"You wanna see what really happened? I think I have a vid here somewhere of the whole shebang, the big enchilada, da fin." Stunned silence became assent, and the film rolled. The entire room became a black floating void. Lanen could not even see her shoes, but she could sense Trin and Vlad standing beside her. Astonishingly, the world began to form.
----------------------------------------------------------------
It all started with the atomic bomb.
Well, actually, the fact that everyone and their mother could get the ingredients to make one off of the black market or the internet. This made them obsolete. Pffft. A thing of the past. Why would we need them? There was, of course, the occasional small detonation here and there, but that wasn't the larger part of the problem.
As technology increased and was able to be shrunk to the sub-atomic level and computers that were smarter than humans could think for themselves, humans thought that they had it all in their favor. After all, the economy was expanding, and new ways to reduce aging and better healthcare were becoming available to all. The earth was just fine, thankyouverymuch. Americans loved their SUV's, their high consumption lifestyles, their waste and trash and pollution. The environmentalists, those crazy eco-earth-freaks, touted their stupid "end of the world" prophecies just like the Jehovah's Witnesses, with increasing shrillness. Not even their shining examples of "living lower on the food chain" or "using eco-friendly energy" were enough to rouse the apathetic consumers to jump on their bandwagon and play the horn like Louis Armstrong. The lack of an environmental policy in the government of President George Bush Jr in 2002 set the precedent for further regimes to ignore the environmental Armageddon that was quickly approaching.
Others, led by writers such as Bjorn Lomborg and the Skeptical Environmentalist would discount the "environmental doom and gloom" and would then fall prey to its catastrophic effects. Adam Smith's invisible hand would haul back and bitch slap the world with crippling force. How could anyone regulate a world gone mad, demanding more and more to fuel the sacred god "Economy" and status quo? Demand had gone beyond the bounds of common sense, leading to senseless destruction. Not even big business or the oil companies could make up for resources that weren't there anymore. It wouldn't just be the land that suffered, but the whole earth.
It truly began with the detonation of a CFC bomb. Why, most would later ask, would anyone sabotage a rowboat when they were sitting in it too? Why would they blow a huge gaping hole in the earth's atmosphere and potentially endanger themselves as well? Easy. It was money. It had to become cheaper for the interests of the big business conglomerates to put people in space, and what better way to encourage mass migration off the earth than to make it uninhabitable? Or, to make it habitable only if their technology was used.
This prompted several things. First of all, a trend toward tunneling. Many of the poor moved themselves below the surface of the earth to avoid the turbulent storms and the unfiltered solar radiation that the over strained atmosphere could no longer buffer. There wasn't much of an ozone layer left to buffer anything at all, and all the other layers of the troposphere had been disrupted too with the introduction of high concentrations of nitrous oxides and flourine atoms.
The richer nations invested in moving their citizens off the earth, into temporary shelters, or into orbiting stations. A massive panic created a huge demand for a "space race." This led to increased pollution as factories sought to make space going vehicles, and the increased stripping of all valued minerals from the lithosphere, destroying many habitats along the way.
It also increased the solar radiation beating upon the surface of the earth, and an even more important part of the natural buffering system of the earth: the oceans. 2/3rds of the world ceased to be productive as harmful UV-A and C rays broke down cellular processes, disrupting photosynthesis of plants and plankton, causing them to die at an alarming rate— even faster than the carbon could be sequestered into the deeper ocean. Food chains dyed out as well, causing mammalian and other predator species to become floating, putrid corpses. The scavengers and heterotrophs had a field day, feasting on decaying matter, but when all the food was consumed, they turned to eating their own species, and finally reached the point of no return. Then they too died, adding to the overloading of the natural pollution and element sinks. Hypoxia and eutrophication were turning the oceans white and green, respectively.
Immediately, the world lost a major source of food stocks with the loss of its ocean capital: fish and other aquatic species. Many third world nations dependent upon fish began to starve slowly, though at first the larger more prosperous nations sought to help their desperate plight.
Things on land got worse too. The disruption in the atmosphere disrupted pollinators and destroyed many food chains. As the larger nations realized what was happening, they quit giving aid to any other countries, instead concentrating their energies on fighting other nations for areas where there was land that could grow sustainable food. Artificial breeding was utilized to create crop species that would withstand high UV and provide high yield foods. Many people moved to highly polluted cities with the idea that at least the pollution in the lower atmosphere provided some protection from the sun. Some grew food indoors, using filtered light from photo-optic cables, made from rapidly decreasing reserves of fossil fuel.
The atmosphere, now drastically declining, was no longer able to withstand all the millions of particles of space dust, rocks and meteors that rained down on it daily. More began to crash to the surface, causing chaos whenever they were big enough to make craters. The earth would begin to look like the moon— a battered patchwork of large holes all over.
Governments concentrated on their own population, to the detriment of all, by ignoring any possible cooperation to stop the downward spiral of the millions on the earth. No-one was willing to listen, because "look where listening has got us " It wasn't helping them save the lives of THEIR citizens, and therefore it took lower priority. Still, millions died. Land available to bury them became scarce as well, since it was needed for agriculture, or mining purposes. Every useable bit was extracted from the soil. People even began to throw their dead into the ocean, or make mass piles of them. Some scientists came up with the idea of reducing the bodies to their elements and using the elements to build what they needed. Using their technology, waste was converted to fossile fuels and other components and reused. But this "recycling" was not enough to overcome the extreme amount of waste that was being generated.
Governments involved in wars gave little thought to worldwide epidemics, and new strains of viruses and other maladies began to spread, mutated by the high exposure to UV radiation. Diseases like AIDS and smallpox spread easily in the cramped conditions underground
and in space, despite precautions. For those too poor to move into space, human frustration rose as well, with people looting, killing and raping each other just for food or shelter.
Religious leaders cried and screamed that it was the end of the world, it was Armageddon, come at last. Fanatically ordering their followers to submit, they beat down the remaining governments in mass hysteria and systematically began ordering mass suicides or deaths when they were denied help by the "spacers."
Added on to the massive diversity loss and death of all other species on the earth, it was becoming a stinking wasteland of rotting corpses, beat down upon by the sun. Only at night were people able to function aboveground, and because of all the wars and nuclear detonation, there were few places left that were not tainted with radiation and unfit for life. Few people now were even willing to venture above the surface. Pollution was vented there, and ignored.
The machines created to be smarter than humans were unable to do anything more than create more pollution to get their masters "off earth." Some, left untended, suffered damage from solar and nuclear radiation and explosions and began to eliminate the very people who had created them to try to solve the ecological disaster that was occurring all around them. Satellites crashed into the earth, causing huge craters or mini tsunami's wherever they landed. These further destroyed life and swept the death of the oceans onto the land. Left isolated in space without any resources, the spacers began to collect anything that came within reach to try to propel them to the moon or asteroid belts where they could find the raw materials to keep themselves alive. They too turned to genetic engineering and hydroponics for their food and survival.
Greater problems remained. The incredible heat generated by high UV radiation and decomposing life caused the earth's oceans to further warm up, and the rate of evaporation all over the earth speeded up, leading to massive acid rain problems in the remnants of the polluted cities. Weather became even more violent and unpredictable as the upper layers of the atmosphere were stripped away by constant bombardment of particles from the sun. Radical atoms that had been split apart were further circulated, causing concentrations of noxious gasses to form in pockets in the atmosphere. The great buffer of the earth, the lower ocean below the thermocline, could no longer handle the temperature change. The temperature on the earth's surface rose 5 degrees on the Celsius scale.
This temperature increase further exacerbated the destruction of the oceans, causing bleaching, mass algal blooms, and then death when the waters became too hot for a certain type of algea. Bacteria activity increased, but it was not enough to slow down the processes o destruction, as the old life processes had become. The temperature increase also altered the entire earth's climate, causing the seas to rise and ice caps to melt, completely covering some countries, and turning others into islands.
Constant bombardment of the earth's disrupted atmosphere and magnetic field begins to affect the earth's surface, with higher incidences of electromagnetic storms. Geothermal and volcanic activity increases as a result, as do earthquakes in number and severity. New land was created, but it was not enough. Earthquakes also disrupted the building of underground shelters from the radiation and destruction of the surface.
Mutation caused by pollution and radiation alter the original human genetic code, causing some humans to become horribly disfigured, or mentally retarded. Others experienced strange side effects from tainted underground water supplies: longer life spans, increased confusion, aggression, and oftentimes amnesia. Some developed strange inabilities to function without gravity– their brains had chemical imbalances that caused them to go slowly insane, despite gene therapy. Eugenics and selective breeding could do nothing when the mutation rate was so high, and the damage to the genome pool so extreme.
The sun, the source of all life and light, had become a scourging hell that visited famine, death, disease and horror upon the surface of the devastated earth.
And yet, gravity remained.
The earth spun, bleeding its guts into the cold vacuum of space, like a dying balloon with a giant hole in it. Thousands died, were born, and then died again.
Life, in small isolated pockets, continued.
The blackness descended like a curtain, with eerie finality.
----------------------------------------------------------
"You see? That's how it was. That's what happened." Vlad's voice was disembodied for a second before he reappeared.
Trin was smiling at her. *oh, boy, here comes some sort of lecture, and then I'll wake up.* was all Lanen could think.
"So, how much did you drink? And don't you think we should get started on that paper now?" Trin asked, enjoying her confusion.
Lanen blinked. This was SO strange. She had no recollection of any drinking or anything else before he had shaken her awake that...morning? Well, there had been the fraternity house, and all that, but what the HECK was going on?
"Look, I don't know what you're talking about, but the earth I know doesn't look like THAT. It isn't even remotely NEAR that. I mean, it's still 2003."
There was a pregnant pause. Vlad's image spoke.
"She must be one of the ones who can't adjust to leaving earth. A shame her psychosis had to appear at a time like this when she was just about able to create a new life here on the Moon. Don't you think that you should take her to the doctor's, Trinidad? She may become violent and start hurting herself."
Now Trin was staring at her as though she were some sort of insect.
"I suppose you're right. Maybe when they screened her, her genetic code had already been mutated after they extracted her and the last bunch from the planet."
Fearful now, Lanen backed away from them, and turned to the panel to run. Racing outside, she turned and looked over her shoulder fearfully.
Blackness grew, spreading over the walls, the floor, like a cancer from the small room, seeping through her, covering and absorbing everything.
The last thing she experienced was a sudden sensation of falling and a stellar blackness pierced by the burning rays of a bright yellow sun, and the sight of an abused brown marble,
spinning and fluttering in time like a trapped
moth.
___________________________________________________________
MY Sources
Scot Sherman's It's the End of the World As We Know It, And I Could Use a Drink.
Bjorn Lomborg's The Skeptical environmentalist.
It's the End of the World As We Know it....Again.
Copyright Alma Geddon© 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003.
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Oracle/9941/
20 Ways the World Could End. Swept away. By Corey S. Powell.
DISCOVER Vol. 21 No. 10 (October 2000)
http://www.discover.com/oct_00/featworld.html
Exit Mundi: A collection of End-of-the-world Scenarios.
Created February 2001: last revised November 2002
http://www.xs4all.nl/~mke/exitmundi.htm
The End of the Classical World. The Internet Medieval Sourcebook.©
created 1996: last revised 1/30/2001
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/sbook1b.html
_________________________________________________________
Trin woke up gasping.
"God, that was horrible People like that shouldn't go naked...it's worse than ebola "
Lanen was confused and still half asleep as she turned over muttering.
"...burm...bagels...."
Leaning over the side of his bed and reaching out, Trin grabbed Lanen's shoulder and shook her gently.
"Lanen, Lanen, wake up "
He was met with silence, and continued mumbling. He shook her harder, finally losing patience and jerking her roughly.
"....GAHHHHH I'm awake alreddy ...mutter mutter jerk..interrupting...mutter beauty...mutter sleep..."
"Lanen, we've got to get up, remember? We have that paper to write. You remember? Hello? Hello? C'mon, aren't you getting up?"
He sighed to himself. This was only slightly ridiculous. She'd come over last night to work on the final project of the year, waving some book her father had given her, and blathering on about the end of the world. She'd only been a little pasted...just a little drunk. Why had she even bothered to come over like that? They'd gotten no work done whatsoever except argue and then yell at each other late into the night about how the world was crumbling around them. On and on about some silly dead Scott Sherman guy and his stupid book. Or something like that. She'd been upset, crying, yelling, and very confusing. He didn't remember much either, after she'd raided the family liquor cabinet, and then blackmailed him into not telling about it. They finally had just crashed in his room.
She opened her eyes sleepily.
"Where am I?"
Trin groaned and rubbed his eyes with his fingers. This wasn't going to go so well if she was still grumpy from being woken up.
"Well, right now, you're sleeping on the floor of my room with my extra blanket."
This didn't go over well, as she woke up further and opened her bleary eyes completely.
"No, I meant who the hell are you? And where is this place? It looks nothing like home. On earth— I mean."
This was getting stranger and stranger. What was she talking about? Nobody lived on earth anymore. It was impossible. Earth wasn't sustainable any more. Heck, he didn't even remember living on earth before his family had fled to the moon colony. Lanen might though, because her genetics had been tinkered with and no-one really knew how old she was.
"Lanen, it's me, Trin. And you're not on the earth anymore, remember? It had a few problems and everyone had to leave."
There was silence for a moment. Lanen sat up.
"What do you mean, leave? There's nothing wrong with the earth. I've lived on it all my life."
Trin snorted.
"Unless you just experienced some sort of quantum leap through time and space into the twilight zone, you're DREAMING. You've lived here on the moon for twelve years with your foster parents. Remember?"
He decided to abuse her of her strange hungover morning fantasies quickly. He'd just show her the proof. It was all in the Colony's history database anyway. Having a bad family life shouldn't lead to such strange delusions, should it? He could understand losing one's parents at a young age, but she was strange like this all the time. Refusing to fit in, to think how others did, to react in a way that preserved the integrity of their new society on the moon. She was always pulling strange stuff, The Outsider. That was what had fascinated him about her from the beginning.
He shrugged and pulled on his jacket, still feeling the muzzy taste of alcohol on the back of his tongue. Eeling his way out of bed, he headed for the bathroom.
"I'll be out in five minutes, ok?"
Lanen stared at him bemusedly, as though he were a complete stranger, and nodded her head suspiciously. Where could he be going? Who the heck was he? And how, in God's name, had she ended up in this strange room with no windows? The last thing she remembered was going to a frat party and then not much after that. She was a full time college student at the University. And now, now she was somewhere else, in some strange boy's room, who was calling her "Lanen." What the hell had she drunk?
A strange phrase sprang to mind and she giggled. "It's the end of the world as we know it, and I could use a drink."
Still sitting up, she looked around and thought: *Huh. Not much here. It's a room. He sleeps strapped to a fold down bunk, and I'm on the floor, covered by something warm and fuzzy-silk-like.* Several minutes later, the so-called 'Trin' emerged from the second door in the wall, slightly damper and cleaner looking. He didn't even give her a chance to take a shower or clean up at all.
"Still sitting there? C'mon, let's go. I'll show you the main computers. Mine is just as good, but they're huge, and will make you feel better."
Lanen nodded slowly, and he pulled her to her feet, tugging her out the door and down a tubular hallway. After a myriad of bewildering turns, they were back at the same door they started at. At least, that was the private thought that she had.
Tapping the doorplate, Trin pulled her inside into a darkened room, where the screens on the walls turned on slowly after the door opened. *It must have been a motion detector that turned it on,* Lanen thought. Trin spoke abruptly.
"Hey, Vladofjasky, can you give us some info for poor confused Lanen here on the end of the world?"
There was a slight pause, and the main screen came up with an odd-looking talking jackal with an obnoxious Hawaiian print shirt and red nail polish and a mullet squinting grouchily at them in the–— sun?
"Yeah, yeah, sure. Don't I get any love here? It's Vladofjasky this, blah blah blah, Vladofjasky that. Siiiiiiiiigh. Ah well. Isn't it interesting to note that all the theories that the Old-Earthers had about cosmic calamities were all wrong? I mean, they had so many. Let's see, here's a list. There are natural disasters, including asteroid impact, Gamma-ray bursts, collapsing of the universes vacuum, rogue black holes, giant solar flares, reversal of the earth's magnetic field, flood-basalt volcanism, and global epidemics. Then we have Human-triggered Disasters like global warming, ecosystem collapse, biotech disaster, particle accelerator mishap, nano-technology disaster, and environmental toxins." Then there's willful self-destruction: global war, robots taking over, and mass insanity. And, of course, there's alien invasion (thank you SETI), divine intervention, and the realization that it was all a dream. Ha ha ha I love the last one. Talk about extremist denial. The end of the world was no silly joke to be put off. It happened before anyone even knew it had occurred."
Trin grinned. The expression on Lanen's face was priceless. Vladofjasky (also known hereafter as Vlad) continued cheerily.
"You wanna see what really happened? I think I have a vid here somewhere of the whole shebang, the big enchilada, da fin." Stunned silence became assent, and the film rolled. The entire room became a black floating void. Lanen could not even see her shoes, but she could sense Trin and Vlad standing beside her. Astonishingly, the world began to form.
----------------------------------------------------------------
It all started with the atomic bomb.
Well, actually, the fact that everyone and their mother could get the ingredients to make one off of the black market or the internet. This made them obsolete. Pffft. A thing of the past. Why would we need them? There was, of course, the occasional small detonation here and there, but that wasn't the larger part of the problem.
As technology increased and was able to be shrunk to the sub-atomic level and computers that were smarter than humans could think for themselves, humans thought that they had it all in their favor. After all, the economy was expanding, and new ways to reduce aging and better healthcare were becoming available to all. The earth was just fine, thankyouverymuch. Americans loved their SUV's, their high consumption lifestyles, their waste and trash and pollution. The environmentalists, those crazy eco-earth-freaks, touted their stupid "end of the world" prophecies just like the Jehovah's Witnesses, with increasing shrillness. Not even their shining examples of "living lower on the food chain" or "using eco-friendly energy" were enough to rouse the apathetic consumers to jump on their bandwagon and play the horn like Louis Armstrong. The lack of an environmental policy in the government of President George Bush Jr in 2002 set the precedent for further regimes to ignore the environmental Armageddon that was quickly approaching.
Others, led by writers such as Bjorn Lomborg and the Skeptical Environmentalist would discount the "environmental doom and gloom" and would then fall prey to its catastrophic effects. Adam Smith's invisible hand would haul back and bitch slap the world with crippling force. How could anyone regulate a world gone mad, demanding more and more to fuel the sacred god "Economy" and status quo? Demand had gone beyond the bounds of common sense, leading to senseless destruction. Not even big business or the oil companies could make up for resources that weren't there anymore. It wouldn't just be the land that suffered, but the whole earth.
It truly began with the detonation of a CFC bomb. Why, most would later ask, would anyone sabotage a rowboat when they were sitting in it too? Why would they blow a huge gaping hole in the earth's atmosphere and potentially endanger themselves as well? Easy. It was money. It had to become cheaper for the interests of the big business conglomerates to put people in space, and what better way to encourage mass migration off the earth than to make it uninhabitable? Or, to make it habitable only if their technology was used.
This prompted several things. First of all, a trend toward tunneling. Many of the poor moved themselves below the surface of the earth to avoid the turbulent storms and the unfiltered solar radiation that the over strained atmosphere could no longer buffer. There wasn't much of an ozone layer left to buffer anything at all, and all the other layers of the troposphere had been disrupted too with the introduction of high concentrations of nitrous oxides and flourine atoms.
The richer nations invested in moving their citizens off the earth, into temporary shelters, or into orbiting stations. A massive panic created a huge demand for a "space race." This led to increased pollution as factories sought to make space going vehicles, and the increased stripping of all valued minerals from the lithosphere, destroying many habitats along the way.
It also increased the solar radiation beating upon the surface of the earth, and an even more important part of the natural buffering system of the earth: the oceans. 2/3rds of the world ceased to be productive as harmful UV-A and C rays broke down cellular processes, disrupting photosynthesis of plants and plankton, causing them to die at an alarming rate— even faster than the carbon could be sequestered into the deeper ocean. Food chains dyed out as well, causing mammalian and other predator species to become floating, putrid corpses. The scavengers and heterotrophs had a field day, feasting on decaying matter, but when all the food was consumed, they turned to eating their own species, and finally reached the point of no return. Then they too died, adding to the overloading of the natural pollution and element sinks. Hypoxia and eutrophication were turning the oceans white and green, respectively.
Immediately, the world lost a major source of food stocks with the loss of its ocean capital: fish and other aquatic species. Many third world nations dependent upon fish began to starve slowly, though at first the larger more prosperous nations sought to help their desperate plight.
Things on land got worse too. The disruption in the atmosphere disrupted pollinators and destroyed many food chains. As the larger nations realized what was happening, they quit giving aid to any other countries, instead concentrating their energies on fighting other nations for areas where there was land that could grow sustainable food. Artificial breeding was utilized to create crop species that would withstand high UV and provide high yield foods. Many people moved to highly polluted cities with the idea that at least the pollution in the lower atmosphere provided some protection from the sun. Some grew food indoors, using filtered light from photo-optic cables, made from rapidly decreasing reserves of fossil fuel.
The atmosphere, now drastically declining, was no longer able to withstand all the millions of particles of space dust, rocks and meteors that rained down on it daily. More began to crash to the surface, causing chaos whenever they were big enough to make craters. The earth would begin to look like the moon— a battered patchwork of large holes all over.
Governments concentrated on their own population, to the detriment of all, by ignoring any possible cooperation to stop the downward spiral of the millions on the earth. No-one was willing to listen, because "look where listening has got us " It wasn't helping them save the lives of THEIR citizens, and therefore it took lower priority. Still, millions died. Land available to bury them became scarce as well, since it was needed for agriculture, or mining purposes. Every useable bit was extracted from the soil. People even began to throw their dead into the ocean, or make mass piles of them. Some scientists came up with the idea of reducing the bodies to their elements and using the elements to build what they needed. Using their technology, waste was converted to fossile fuels and other components and reused. But this "recycling" was not enough to overcome the extreme amount of waste that was being generated.
Governments involved in wars gave little thought to worldwide epidemics, and new strains of viruses and other maladies began to spread, mutated by the high exposure to UV radiation. Diseases like AIDS and smallpox spread easily in the cramped conditions underground
and in space, despite precautions. For those too poor to move into space, human frustration rose as well, with people looting, killing and raping each other just for food or shelter.
Religious leaders cried and screamed that it was the end of the world, it was Armageddon, come at last. Fanatically ordering their followers to submit, they beat down the remaining governments in mass hysteria and systematically began ordering mass suicides or deaths when they were denied help by the "spacers."
Added on to the massive diversity loss and death of all other species on the earth, it was becoming a stinking wasteland of rotting corpses, beat down upon by the sun. Only at night were people able to function aboveground, and because of all the wars and nuclear detonation, there were few places left that were not tainted with radiation and unfit for life. Few people now were even willing to venture above the surface. Pollution was vented there, and ignored.
The machines created to be smarter than humans were unable to do anything more than create more pollution to get their masters "off earth." Some, left untended, suffered damage from solar and nuclear radiation and explosions and began to eliminate the very people who had created them to try to solve the ecological disaster that was occurring all around them. Satellites crashed into the earth, causing huge craters or mini tsunami's wherever they landed. These further destroyed life and swept the death of the oceans onto the land. Left isolated in space without any resources, the spacers began to collect anything that came within reach to try to propel them to the moon or asteroid belts where they could find the raw materials to keep themselves alive. They too turned to genetic engineering and hydroponics for their food and survival.
Greater problems remained. The incredible heat generated by high UV radiation and decomposing life caused the earth's oceans to further warm up, and the rate of evaporation all over the earth speeded up, leading to massive acid rain problems in the remnants of the polluted cities. Weather became even more violent and unpredictable as the upper layers of the atmosphere were stripped away by constant bombardment of particles from the sun. Radical atoms that had been split apart were further circulated, causing concentrations of noxious gasses to form in pockets in the atmosphere. The great buffer of the earth, the lower ocean below the thermocline, could no longer handle the temperature change. The temperature on the earth's surface rose 5 degrees on the Celsius scale.
This temperature increase further exacerbated the destruction of the oceans, causing bleaching, mass algal blooms, and then death when the waters became too hot for a certain type of algea. Bacteria activity increased, but it was not enough to slow down the processes o destruction, as the old life processes had become. The temperature increase also altered the entire earth's climate, causing the seas to rise and ice caps to melt, completely covering some countries, and turning others into islands.
Constant bombardment of the earth's disrupted atmosphere and magnetic field begins to affect the earth's surface, with higher incidences of electromagnetic storms. Geothermal and volcanic activity increases as a result, as do earthquakes in number and severity. New land was created, but it was not enough. Earthquakes also disrupted the building of underground shelters from the radiation and destruction of the surface.
Mutation caused by pollution and radiation alter the original human genetic code, causing some humans to become horribly disfigured, or mentally retarded. Others experienced strange side effects from tainted underground water supplies: longer life spans, increased confusion, aggression, and oftentimes amnesia. Some developed strange inabilities to function without gravity– their brains had chemical imbalances that caused them to go slowly insane, despite gene therapy. Eugenics and selective breeding could do nothing when the mutation rate was so high, and the damage to the genome pool so extreme.
The sun, the source of all life and light, had become a scourging hell that visited famine, death, disease and horror upon the surface of the devastated earth.
And yet, gravity remained.
The earth spun, bleeding its guts into the cold vacuum of space, like a dying balloon with a giant hole in it. Thousands died, were born, and then died again.
Life, in small isolated pockets, continued.
The blackness descended like a curtain, with eerie finality.
----------------------------------------------------------
"You see? That's how it was. That's what happened." Vlad's voice was disembodied for a second before he reappeared.
Trin was smiling at her. *oh, boy, here comes some sort of lecture, and then I'll wake up.* was all Lanen could think.
"So, how much did you drink? And don't you think we should get started on that paper now?" Trin asked, enjoying her confusion.
Lanen blinked. This was SO strange. She had no recollection of any drinking or anything else before he had shaken her awake that...morning? Well, there had been the fraternity house, and all that, but what the HECK was going on?
"Look, I don't know what you're talking about, but the earth I know doesn't look like THAT. It isn't even remotely NEAR that. I mean, it's still 2003."
There was a pregnant pause. Vlad's image spoke.
"She must be one of the ones who can't adjust to leaving earth. A shame her psychosis had to appear at a time like this when she was just about able to create a new life here on the Moon. Don't you think that you should take her to the doctor's, Trinidad? She may become violent and start hurting herself."
Now Trin was staring at her as though she were some sort of insect.
"I suppose you're right. Maybe when they screened her, her genetic code had already been mutated after they extracted her and the last bunch from the planet."
Fearful now, Lanen backed away from them, and turned to the panel to run. Racing outside, she turned and looked over her shoulder fearfully.
Blackness grew, spreading over the walls, the floor, like a cancer from the small room, seeping through her, covering and absorbing everything.
The last thing she experienced was a sudden sensation of falling and a stellar blackness pierced by the burning rays of a bright yellow sun, and the sight of an abused brown marble,
spinning and fluttering in time like a trapped
moth.
___________________________________________________________
MY Sources
Scot Sherman's It's the End of the World As We Know It, And I Could Use a Drink.
Bjorn Lomborg's The Skeptical environmentalist.
It's the End of the World As We Know it....Again.
Copyright Alma Geddon© 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003.
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Oracle/9941/
20 Ways the World Could End. Swept away. By Corey S. Powell.
DISCOVER Vol. 21 No. 10 (October 2000)
http://www.discover.com/oct_00/featworld.html
Exit Mundi: A collection of End-of-the-world Scenarios.
Created February 2001: last revised November 2002
http://www.xs4all.nl/~mke/exitmundi.htm
The End of the Classical World. The Internet Medieval Sourcebook.©
created 1996: last revised 1/30/2001
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/sbook1b.html