Utopia Project

The War of Natural Disasters

        One day the world was calm and content, everyone was happy and living their best lives. Until one day the president of the United States made an announcement that changed the country forever. The president shared that each quarter of the U.S. has now become one nation. The first was the Eastern nation named the Loyals, then the southern nation was named the Saints, soon followed by the western nation called the Wings, and lastly, the Midwest nation which was named the Wells. Each nation's purpose was to fight for power over the other nations, leaving only one in victory.

These are the sectors of the U.S.

    The president watched alongside his government as the U.S. went to war, but little did the sectors know they had a lot more coming for them than just war. As the fighting began, all hell broke loose. A fourth of each nation was wiped out in a matter of hours leaving the rest unaware of what was happening. The world went into a panic as people began collecting all the necessary items in order to survive. Everyone was fighting and arguing with each other about ways they were going to approach the war. Each nation had a top group that led each nation into battle but many decided not to listen to their leaders and that resulted in them being shot by automatic weapons concealed in each nation by the government. The people soon realized they had to cooperate with their own nations in order to survive, so they did just that. The killing slowed down and the arguing came to a halt. But just as things started to slow down the president became bored.

    The president brought this destruction upon the world because he wanted to challenge everyone in order to find the toughest, smartest, and luckiest people who lived on earth, curious about what the world would look like with only them left. But he didn’t expect each nation to stand down and become content with the way they were living. He decided that he was going to add a twist to the game of destruction, making it so only those types of people survived. The president created a device that would construct its own natural disasters which would be released in all the nations, lasting for four hours and then it would disappear until the next one would regenerate. The device was controlled from the depths of the government building where the president and his chairman would watch what was happening. The first natural disaster to touch down was a lightning storm. The electricity went out in each nation leaving them left in the dark with no access to technology of any kind. The people of each nation ran and screamed frantically as they tried to take shelter, dodge the lightning, and simply survive. The first natural disaster only took out one-eighth of the population in each nation but the effects of each strike did not disappoint, as the strikes hit the atmosphere, and each one caused more damage to the electrical systems. This resulted in the electricity shutting down completely. This first disaster was a wake-up call to those who needed to be reminded they were here to survive and if they didn’t have the strength or courage to fight then they would die. After about two and a half days the second natural disaster was ready to take action. In only a few minutes the country would go up in flames. Fires began emerging from the forests, valleys, and dry mountains and even lava erupted from volcanoes. The fire wiped out homes, shelters, lakes, rivers, farms, and forests and each nation was stuck with nowhere to escape from the scorching hot flames. The fires only lasted two hours but it was still enough to wipe out the citizens. The nations went silent as half of each population was burned to a crisp. This was exactly what the president wanted. He watched as each nation became smaller and smaller, invested in each person and how they escaped the flames. He wanted to find the toughest humans out there to create a new world filled with people who possess the most gifted skills a human can have. 

    A group of survivors from the Midwest sector caught the president's eye when he watched how they survived the natural disasters. The group consisted of seven people and their names were Lindsey, Jason, Julie, Abby, Thomas, Sydney, and Tessa. The group met on the second day of the start of the disasters, a little after the lightning strikes hit. Julie and Jason were a young couple who were very athletic, and they first ended up in a small shelter underneath a small cabin while they waited out the storm. Fortunately, this was where they met Lindsey and Thomas after the storm, they were siblings and they were hidden in the cabin that was above the underground shelter Julie and Jason hid in. The four of them traveled down a mountain which was in the middle of the Midwest sector where they stumbled upon three girls. These girls were the ones known as Abby, Sydney, and Tessa. These three girls were extremely intelligent. Tessa was the brains of the group Abby was the strategist and Sydney was the food collector. The seven of them connected really well with each other and this was because all of them played some kind of sport that involved teamwork. Julie and Jason were big into pickleball, Lindsey and Thomas both played the sport of lacrosse, and the three girls all played hockey together.  Each of these three sports requires lots of teamwork in order to win the games, so that is why this group of seven worked so well with each other. The seven of them set up three campsites making sure they were ready for any natural disaster. The first one they set up along the beach in case of another fire. The second one they set up in the mountains to separate themselves from any possible flooding and the last one they set up in an underground tunnel the three girls found one night as they were looking in the sewers. These campsites included two tents with sleeping bags in each with the necessary supplies to survive hidden in a pack that only they would be able to find in case of an emergency. During the day they collected food, fixed up any damaged tents that they used for sleeping, and then they spent the rest of the day having fun playing games while taking turns to keep watch in case anyone tried to steal their food or tried to attack them. All of them knew how to work together not just as a team but as a unit. None of them were playing the president's game to win the battle alone, their goal was to win and survive as a group that all worked together as a family who found each other in the darkest of times. As they spent long days and nights together moving from one campsite to another each day, they grew closer together as a team would and decided to come up with a safe word they would yell in case they got split up or they were in danger. The group decided they would yell the word “Goal” if they were ever in trouble. They chose this because each one of them knew what the goal of the game they were playing was and knew if one person yelled the word “goal” then the others would know right away that their next goal was to rescue their teammate. They were always truthful with each other because they knew lying would just get them all killed in an instant and they all were smart enough to know that. As the president watched them keep surviving he gave them the nickname “the wolf pack”. 

The Wolfpack survives the wildfires.

Source: https://www.tvinsider.com/show/wolf-pack/

    

    The days were long as everyone awaited the next natural disaster to emerge. Two weeks have gone by since the first lightning strike and since then there has been a forest fire, a tornado, wind, and sand storms, along with the most recent one a hurricane. The problem was that this hurricane wasn’t like a normal hurricane. Since the device that controlled these disasters was controlled from the government building, it had the power to create a hurricane that covered the whole country, not just from the ocean side. Many people in the group were worried and didn’t know how to react to a hurricane because they lived in the Midwest their whole lives but luckily Lindsey and Thomas lived in Florida for a few years before moving to Colorado, so they knew a thing or two about hurricanes. As soon as the winds began to pick up Lindsey who was nineteen years old knew exactly what they had to do. They needed to get to the underground tunnel and block off all entrances in case water got down there. They gathered their things and quickly made their way down to the tunnel blocking the entrance with a seal that stopped any water from getting through.

 

09/05/2035

Dear Mother Nature,

I believe today is Wednesday, we’ve been down here for two and a half days. We are all beginning to get impatient as we wait out the hurricane. I still hear the rain crashing down on the pavement above us, so I know the storm is still in full force. Usually, these kinds of storms only last a day or two, at least the ones I and Thomas have witnessed but for some reason, this one just won’t stop. I am beginning to worry a bit because we are already running low on food and water and Sydney just came down with a fever. She is fine, just a little overwhelmed and needs rest but we can’t stay down here forever. I asked Tessa what our food portions look like and she thinks we can only last for two more days. I am starting to worry and try to think of a plan if the storm continues. As I start thinking of some strategies I realize we are in South Dakota right now. I remember passing a sign up to the mountains that said we were in the Black Hills which means we have traveled a long way from home or at least what was our home before the lightning and fires. But then it hit me. Hurricanes only develop on the coasts because it’s when the temperatures of the ocean heat up and mix with the earth’s rotation which causes the thunderstorms to form. So why is there a hurricane in South Dakota?

Kind regards, Lindsey

Image of the hurricane which seemed to be much more aggressive than past hurricanes.

(Video Linked to image explains why).

    After four days the hurricane finally stopped. It went from downpouring to sunshine in an instant. It was kind of odd but they were finally able to come out from the tunnel. As soon as they resurfaced they went straight to the river to find water. After they rehydrated they split into two groups, one going out to hunt for any food they could find and the other group went to see the damage the hurricanes did to the area. But as they began walking around they noticed not a single leaf was on the ground, each tree still had all their leaves. They began wondering how that was possible, with the rain and wind they imagined trees would be knocked down, the river would be overflowing and the ground would be damp from the rain but it was dry. It almost seemed as if there was never a storm in the first place but there was. They watched it with their own eyes before they went underground and they heard it, so why was it like this? They knew they needed to prepare for the next possible disaster so they put it behind them but still in the back of everyone’s mind they were questioning everything.

The underground tunnel the pack stayed in for many days to wait out the storm.

Source: https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/research/a28869956/darpa-underground-tunnel-search/

  It’s been two weeks since the last disaster. The pack is losing hope, and the rest of the sector is completely destroyed. There are still others remaining in the other sectors but not many. The pack needed to come up with a plan to stop the destruction once and for all, in order to restore the country to be free again. In the past two weeks, the pack has learned the truth about the disasters from a few hitchhikers that they met along the river. They told them what the government was doing and that these natural disasters were controlled by the president. They don’t exactly know how these people got all of this information but they didn’t care, all they cared about was what the plan was going to be to destroy the government. Luckily Tessa was a brilliant hacker and Lindsey also had technology experience. With these two, the pack created a plan to switch the gears of the natural disasters. When the next natural disaster hits, the device would be at its most vulnerable state because it’s using up all of its energy on the disaster. So, during that time Tessa and Lindsey would work to switch the system devices so that the next natural disaster would go off inside the government building where the president and his members were watching. And while this was going on the other pack members would distract whatever cameras were on them so they didn’t see Tessa or Lindsey. They only had one shot at this otherwise they knew they would most likely be shot by the automatic weapons in each sector the government controlled. 

 About two days after the plan was created the next natural disaster finally hit. It was a massive tornado that wiped out anyone in its path. The two only had a little time to try and hack into the government’s device, with a single computer and a phone they were able to salvage from the storms and connect to whatever sources they could to get a little power. They somehow were successful and the hacking began. The two went deep diving into the controls and worked for many minutes as the others were trying their best to distract the cameras they knew the president was watching. They were running in and throwing things in the tornado trying to stay alive for the few minutes they needed. Finally, Tessa yelled for the others. She did it! She hacked into the system and now all they had to do was press the enter button to make the switch happen. The seven of them formed a circle hugging each other and crying of hope and happiness. They didn’t know what was about to happen but all they could do was hope.

10-05-2040

Dear Mother Nature,

Today is the 5 year anniversary of the destruction of the government. It’s been five years since the swap worked and the device self-destructed inside the government building. Thomas and I moved in with Julie and Jason in a small cabin on the lake. We are enjoying our life as one big happy family with Abby, Tessa, and Lindsey living in a cabin right next to us. They come over for dinner each night and every weekend we go into town to join the other survivors to reconstruct what’s left of the city, to create a new and improved one. We met with survivors of the other sectors and came to an agreement that we all would have leaders in each sector who would meet each month to talk about the duties of each sector. The people voted me to be the leader, even though I didn’t really want to, but I knew I had to in order to bring peace and justice to each sector. I have to end this here because everyone is calling me down for dinner but I just wanted to say thank you for everything you have done for our world and for holding in there while the government tried to overtake you. We always believed in you and we will continue to work to rebuild what you created here in our country. Through these challenges, we were able to find our true identities and create a new form of hope for our world.

“The fallen walk among us. We must be the light. We are the light” (Mandel 291).

"Survival is insufficient" (Mandel 119). Without trust or hope within our family for the future.

Kind regards,

Lindsey

This is the future of our society (click image to learn more)