This morning, I thought up a scenario for destroying the world.
The destruction came in a big kaboom, followed by a mounting wave of catastrophes that engulfed the world and sentenced humanity to, if not actual extinction, then societal eradication.
At first, I was just going to ruin Philadelphia and follow the plight of its citizens in the ensuing economic disaster. Then I thought it would be more impressive to ruin the entire East Coast, with an utterly destroyed Philadelphia as the smoking center of it all.
But why stop there? I grew the event so that it blasted everything from Cincinnati to Paris in a lethal blast of hard radiation, followed by a flattening, incandescent shockwave that threw cities sideways and set forests and fields aflame in an instant.
But wait, there's more! The same shockwave pounded the Atlantic Ocean right down to the mid-Atlantic trench, sending a tsunami more than a mile high ripping out across the world. The wall of water, crashing ashore, retreating and crashing on again, stripped everything down to bedrock, stopping only when it hit the Appalachian Mountains in North America and the Pyrenees in Europe. With nothing to stop it, the wave of seawater tore up the western coast of Africa and dumped it into the Sahara Desert. Key West, Gibraltar, Pain de Sucre.. all of them thrown up and over by a quintillion-ton wall of water.
But wait, there's more! The swath of destruction followed the curve of the planet, burning all of North America and destroying everything in the Ring of Fire. American's West Coast, Alaska, Japan, the Philippines: earthquakes and volcanoes level and burn it all. Chile slides into the Pacific. Eastern China is crushed in the impact zone. Beijing, Seoul, Tokyo, Manilla... all destroyed.
But wait, there's more! Russia, India and Australia think they've gotten off easy, not being in the direct blast zone, but the coastal cities of Australia and India are destroyed by the mega-tsunami that washes around the world. The boiling of the Atlantic Ocean and the upsurge of carbon dioxide from the burning forests of Europe and North America throws the climate utterly out of balance. The tundra of Siberia melts and collapses. Moscow is buried under 100 meters of snow, St. Petersburg under 300 meters. Both cities should be abandoned, but the Russians would rather die in their homes. India freezes and floods, leaving 800,000,000 people to die of starvation and disease. Temperatures in Australia reach 53C and stay there. Uluru cracks and crumbles in the heat. The bony white corpse of the Great Barrier Reef slowly dissolves away into frothing nothingness...
So that's what I was thinking about this morning.
||| Comments are welcome |||
Help keep the words flowing.
The destruction came in a big kaboom, followed by a mounting wave of catastrophes that engulfed the world and sentenced humanity to, if not actual extinction, then societal eradication.
At first, I was just going to ruin Philadelphia and follow the plight of its citizens in the ensuing economic disaster. Then I thought it would be more impressive to ruin the entire East Coast, with an utterly destroyed Philadelphia as the smoking center of it all.
But why stop there? I grew the event so that it blasted everything from Cincinnati to Paris in a lethal blast of hard radiation, followed by a flattening, incandescent shockwave that threw cities sideways and set forests and fields aflame in an instant.
But wait, there's more! The same shockwave pounded the Atlantic Ocean right down to the mid-Atlantic trench, sending a tsunami more than a mile high ripping out across the world. The wall of water, crashing ashore, retreating and crashing on again, stripped everything down to bedrock, stopping only when it hit the Appalachian Mountains in North America and the Pyrenees in Europe. With nothing to stop it, the wave of seawater tore up the western coast of Africa and dumped it into the Sahara Desert. Key West, Gibraltar, Pain de Sucre.. all of them thrown up and over by a quintillion-ton wall of water.
But wait, there's more! The swath of destruction followed the curve of the planet, burning all of North America and destroying everything in the Ring of Fire. American's West Coast, Alaska, Japan, the Philippines: earthquakes and volcanoes level and burn it all. Chile slides into the Pacific. Eastern China is crushed in the impact zone. Beijing, Seoul, Tokyo, Manilla... all destroyed.
But wait, there's more! Russia, India and Australia think they've gotten off easy, not being in the direct blast zone, but the coastal cities of Australia and India are destroyed by the mega-tsunami that washes around the world. The boiling of the Atlantic Ocean and the upsurge of carbon dioxide from the burning forests of Europe and North America throws the climate utterly out of balance. The tundra of Siberia melts and collapses. Moscow is buried under 100 meters of snow, St. Petersburg under 300 meters. Both cities should be abandoned, but the Russians would rather die in their homes. India freezes and floods, leaving 800,000,000 people to die of starvation and disease. Temperatures in Australia reach 53C and stay there. Uluru cracks and crumbles in the heat. The bony white corpse of the Great Barrier Reef slowly dissolves away into frothing nothingness...
So that's what I was thinking about this morning.
||| Comments are welcome |||
Help keep the words flowing.
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