When Everybody Dies

What would we do, then, if we woke up Thursday morning to find that, overnight, 80% of the world’s population had died in their sleep? Would we/should we mourn? Let’s say, oh, nobody you loved croaked. Just some people somewhere else. If you live in the city, turns out all those folks out in the country died. Or if you’re rural, well… only city dwellers are gone now. All of them, save for a scattering of lost and confused individuals, probably wandering around those suddenly still streets with dumb and vacant looks on their faces. They lost loved ones, you didn’t, and so you watch on the news, in awe over your coffee but untouched, you watch those cheeks streaked with tears.

What if they didn’t die peacefully? What if it was agonizing? Would it touch us any deeper?

Those lost souls, they would have died writhing in pain, blood pouring from their ears and noses and mouths. They’d be found in the morning twisted into ungodly shapes, like those mummified victims in Pompeii.

What if it DID affect us, oh so slightly, in that we lost cousins or distant aunts. We could tell our story of heartbreak at work that day. “Yeah, it’s crazy. I tried to call cousin Jim all morning, but the news guy said just about everyone in Port Huron is gone. Sad. I’m gonna miss him.”

You won’t miss him.

80%, gone. All over the world.

Hell, there probably wouldn’t BE any news about it. All the media outlets would dry up, because the suits and hairstyles that operate them would be gone. Statistically, every member of Congress would be dead too. The president as well. Every world leader, except maybe a couple, but they would be powerless because all the lackeys that enforce their wills would be twisted in death.

What if it DID take your loved ones? Your husband. Your kids. Your mom. What if you had to watch them scream and howl themselves into blackness, their faces contorted and blood-streaked.

You might wish you were amongst the dead. You might kill yourself, not able to face this new, silent world. Who could blame you?

All the fears that have driven you your entire life would become hollow things with no meaning then.

And the worst part, the very worst part, is that somewhere in the farthest regions of the darkest corners of the back of your brain, you would KNOW this had to happen. It couldn’t end any other way. And the planet will carry on without our teeming, swarming masses, it would thrive, really. It would do better than EVER.

Until, a few thousand years from now, we humans make a comeback, maybe, we populate ourselves right to the precipice again, we eat up every resource available to us, we place an almost holy sanctity on the value of our own lives.

And round and round.