I had fun writing this so I thought I'd share it. It's an assignment I had and I may have put too much thought into it. Get comfortable. And be warned! The assignment was supposed to be offensive and test the limits of my sensitivities. Here's what it was:
Imagine
you are members of a department in Washington in charge of a nuclear
fallout shelter. The Third World War breaks out, and there are threats
of worldwide devastation. The 14 people listed on the board are first in line at your door fighting for space in your
shelter. Because they cannot reach a decision among themselves as to who
shall be left to perish, the decision will be left in your hands. In
the short time you have, only a superficial description of each person
is available. There are enough provisions and space for seven people, and it is highly possible that you
will be the only people to survive the war. Your task is to select
which seven people you will save.
- a 25-year-old black militant who graduated from Harvard
- a Mexican farmer, illegally in the United States/>/>
- a homosexual football star
- a middle-aged religious fanatic, mother of two teenagers
- an attractive lesbian, occupation M.D.
- a sorority girl majoring in fashion merchandise
- a male radical hippie working as an environmental ecologist
- a 59-year-old female community leader
- a call girl
- an obese and balding politician
- a drug dealer from an upper-class family
- a mildly retarded male teenager who is a musical genius
- a handicapped telephone operator
- a male midget
This is what I came up with:
The potential for world-wide obliteration of the entire human race puts a few priorities foremost in the decision of who to bring along. Survival of the entire species rests in my hands here; to err would be to doom all of mankind to obscurity. Seven people to carry on mankind’s glorious tradition of careening towards our own doom. Since the decision has come down to me, and since it’s my shelter that all these mooches will be cowering within, you’d better believe that my name appears atop the passenger list in permanent marker. I took that as a given, and that there are seven additional seats that get to witness doomsday with me.
My
addition of myself to this equation is relevant, since my presence
throws off the male: female ratio by a significant percentage. I'll
keep the count going so we get an idea of what our population looks like
as it's established. So far: Count = me. One man. Seven seats
left. Engage post-conventional moral reasoning skills.
Priority one, when we open the door to the shelter
and witness the devastation wrought by our own inability to cope with
our petty differences, will be to stay alive. It is going to be
particularly difficult given that anything which eliminates all human
life on earth probably did a number on all the other types of life as
well, so food and water will be our most valuable commodity. With that
in mind, the farmer gets the first key. The ability to farm will be
crucial in the coming years. I’ll infer that the farmer is a tough,
able-bodied sort within reasonable breeding age. We do not know if the
farmer is a man or a woman. Count: men 1, unknown 1.
Farming takes a substantial amount of time, and a
more immediate source of food will be needed. With any luck, the wake
of WWIII didn’t contaminate the soil. It’s probably a safe bet that it
left some cockroaches we can munch on. That’ll be fun. Either way,
hunting and gathering will rapidly become the most marketable skills on
the planet, next to fertility and adaptability. The football player
comes to mind as the agile and healthy sort of hunter/gatherer type we
might need. I’m inferring from the list that the football star is a man
based on the word “homosexual” verses “lesbian” used later on to
describe the doctor. The fact that he’s a homosexual throws a wrench
into his value in a society hell-bent on reproduction, but I’ll put him
on the short list as a potential passenger. He may wind up having to
take a few for the team in the name of procreation. Count: men 1,
unknown 1. Short-list: 1 man.
Since every person represents 12.5% of the entire
world population, it becomes vitally important that everyone survive.
As such, the Dr. gets a key. We don’t know what sort of a doctor she
is, but I’ll have to roll the dice and hope she didn’t get her doctorate
in Revolutionary War history. She’s a lesbian, which puts her in the
same boat as the football player as far as how excited she’ll be about
procreation. It will probably be necessary for one of us to pack a
couple of bricks in our carry-on luggage, code named “foreplay” and
“pillow talk”. She’s attractive, which doesn’t really matter but it's a
nice little perk. Count: men 1, women 1, unknown 1. Short-list: 1
man.
We’ve got a 25 year old militant Harvard graduate.
This could be a man or a woman, we don’t know, but I think it’s
probably safe to downplay the “militant” descriptor thanks to the fact
that there will be very few causes left to fight for and the odds are
that whatever was worth fighting over before isn’t worth fighting over
now. Graduating from Harvard is no small thing, so we’ve got a smart,
spirited person of breeding age and unknown gender. We'll be fighting
for our lives. We’ll need all the breeding we can get, and it helps to
have intelligent people around, so this person gets on the short list.
Count: men 1, women 1, unknown 1. Short-list: 1 man, 1 unknown.
The sorority girl is a shoe in just for her sheer
breeding potential. Fashion merchandise expertise will probably not be
highly sought after, but she may be able to make clothes and she's
educated at least to a partial college level. From a strict
survival-of-the-species standpoint she’s a must-have. She’ll be revered
like the ancient fertility goddesses of old, and we will make
lady-Venus statues of her whenever she’s pregnant. We’ll issue her a
sack full of nickels, code named “cuddle-time” in case she goes after
the football player and he doesn’t want to play starting line-up in the
Sugar Bowl, if you know what I mean. We’ll stash some designer tequila
in the capsule to help things along. Count: men 1, women 2, unknown
1. Short-list: 1 man, 1 unknown.
I think it will be very difficult for the
politician to convince me to give up a key. I don’t know if the
politician is a man or a woman, let’s say it’s a man for the sake of
argument. I can’t think of a practical use for politics in a community
of eight. There’s a good chance politics are the reason we went to war,
so maybe we can bring him along just so we can occasionally hit him in
the head with a brick in order to bolster morale. Worst case scenario
we can eat the bastard if times get tough. No… the politician is doomed
to stand on the docks waving a handkerchief as this ship sails.
I'll have to leave the call-girl on the docks too.
Who knows what sort of a person she is. She may be able to crank-out
children, but her specific skill-set is only useful once every nine
months or so and we need people who are useful in a much broader sense.
She's riding on what appears to be a lifetime of bad decisions, so her
credit is pretty well shot. At least she'll be with the politician;
there's a good chance they're already acquaintances, so they can console
each other as they're being vaporized.
The middle-aged mother of two teenagers seems like a
good candidate, if we assume that she knows how to raise children.
Those skills will be extremely valuable, so I wish we knew whether or
not she actually raised her own kids, and if she did whether or not they
turned out okay. She could be a violent crack-head for all we know,
but from what little data we have I’d say we’ll need some matronly
wisdom and she makes the short list. I'm nervous about the fact that
she's a religious fanatic, since I'm not sure what that actually means. She’d be pretty
bummed about her kids getting vaporized in the war, but then again we
all recently suffered the loss of the entire human race, so she’d have
to suck it up and jog on like the rest of us. She might not be excited
about having more kids, but if she could pull that off it would be
huge. Count: men 1, women 2, unknown 1. Short-list: 1 man, 1 woman, 1
unknown.
An environmental ecologist seems like something we
might be able to use, depending on the nature of the apocalypse.
Assuming there's enough to salvage, having a guy around who specializes
in existing in perpetual symbiosis with nature seems like a pretty good
idea. The fact that he's a radical hippie suggests that at least the
shelter will smell like patchouli for the duration of our hunker, which
is fine as long as nobody attempts to leave the bunker in search of
potato chips while the 500 kiloton nuclear device plummets towards
Earth. I'm taking for granted that he is capable of reproduction, since
we don’t know his age, or his sperm count after a lifetime of bong
hits. Count: men 2, women 2, unknown 1. Short-list: 1 man, 1 woman, 1
unknown.
I would love to bring the 59 year old female
community leader for her leadership prowess, but we don't have the
luxury of filling a slot with someone who can't take an active part in
the reproductive process. We've got to keep our little tribe strong and
fertile, or else we curse future generations with whatever genetic
weaknesses are associated with prolonged inbreeding. Her wisdom will be
missed, but we'll figure it out.
The drug dealer from an upper-class family doesn't
have a very heavy resume. The mention of the upper-class family only
makes me believe that this person probably doesn't know how to do
anything useful in a survival situation. We won't be needing a drug
dealer while we're repopulating the world. One dock-pass for the rich
kid with the kilo.
Another for the musically gifted, yet mildly
retarded teenage boy. It's tragic, since he's already had a rough time
of it, but unfortunately fine music is a luxury that comes after
civilization and culture have taken root. His gift isn't compatible
with our mission. We'll have to do the best we can to remember what
songs we knew and pass them on from generation to generation by word of
mouth. New world folk songs will include "The Humpty Dance" and "Brass
Monkey".
I know very little about the telephone operator
aside from the fact that there's some sort of handicap involved. While I
don't know what it is, I do know that we won't be making a lot of calls
after the nationwide telephone infrastructure fuses itself into a 607
ton ball of copper somewhere in Oklahoma. Since the seats are at a premium, and since we don't have any more information, I'm afraid this
person will be vaporized.
Had there been a situation after the final tally
that suggested we needed another male for breeding purposes, I'd have
taken the midget. When I weighed in the possible evolutionary
advantages of fathering small people in a post-apocalyptic world, I had
to give him extra points. Small people require fewer resources, so that
could have been a bonus. As it stands, we don't know what he's good at
other than being small, so he's on the docks.
The final count works out to be exactly eight, so
it looks like everybody who made the short list will be coming along.
Here's the final crew: Me, a farmer, a doctor, a football star, a
Harvard graduate, a sorority girl, a middle aged mother, and an
environmental ecologist. That's 3 men, 3 women and 2 unknown. With any
luck, the farmer and the Harvard graduate will turn out to be a man and
a woman, and we'll have a good balance of people/skills/procreation
potential in our little community. With enough well-placed bricks and
sacks full of nickels, the species may well survive. I would probably
be willing to trade the middle aged mother for the call girl if it
turns out the call girl isn't a lost cause, and the middle aged mother
was a sandwich-sign wearer who yells "SINNER!" at everyone. The rest of the landing party and I would probably agree to
look a little harder at the virtues of prostitution in that case.
Nothing brings people together like the threat of
an impending apocalypse. In our brave new world, where
bricks replace chocolate as the most effective aphrodisiac,
everyone needs to step up and work hard. Hardship strips
away all the extraneous noise and make us focus on what’s really
important, like not dying while babies are being made. Think of the
children, man. Think of the children.
image: unknowingly courtesy of this web address, where I found it. https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&authuser=0&site=imghp&tbm=isch&source=hp&biw=1173&bih=807&q=armageddon&oq=armageddon&gs_l=img.3..0l10.548.5360.0.5587.10.10.0.0.0.0.334.1923.2j3j0j4.9.0....0...1ac.1.29.img..3.7.1426.5aAxMi-SCdU#facrc=_&imgdii=_&imgrc=zgs6GA9v_kMEPM%3A%3Bgeqr_w1L3Nv6hM%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.opinion-maker.org%252Fwp-content%252Fuploads%252F2012%252F03%252Farmageddon.jpg%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.opinion-maker.org%252F2012%252F03%252Farmageddon%252F%3B400%3B300
