The Last Day of the Week

THE LAST DAY OF THE WEEK

It had been an incredible week--disastrous. Had the media been doing its job properly, people would not have been nearly so surprised. Furthermore, had the media been doing its job at all, they--that is, the journalists of both print and the airwaves--might have reported at least some of the following newsworthy events on this, their last day of operation:
A massive earthquake in Chile killed a full three-quarters of the population of that skinny, little country; 85 percent of Central America was devastated by similar tremors and aftershocks; and in North America, California was finally swallowed up by the San Andreas Fault.
In Europe and Asia--in Italy, Greece, Turkey, Japan, the former Soviet Union, and Oceana--the Pacific Islands--the entire so-called "ring of fire"--volcanos took out large portions of those populations as well--tens of millions; no, hundreds of millions.
Seismic activity worldwide set off a chain of related catastrophes around the globe: bridge failures, tunnel collapses, highway bucklings, dam breaks, mine cave-ins, power outages, toxic waste spills, nuclear reactor leaks, radiation poisonings, broken water lines, and more--much more--bringing just about all commerce to a stand-still. Tidal waves swept across the oceans, inundating thousands of cites along the world's coasts, killing in a variety of unprintable ways more hundreds of millions; freighters and other shipping vessels crossing the ocean corridors met tragic ends as giant waves battered them about mercilessly--until they sank.
Typhoons tore into the East--in China, Japan, Indonesia, Micronesia, Melanesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, India--wiping out huge numbers of the inhabitants there--hundreds and hundreds of millions--billions perhaps, if the final count could ever be made; in the eastern Pacific--all along the Central and South American coasts--monsoons ravaged those areas, leaving a path of more death and destruction; in the Caribbean, the Gulf of Mexico, and all along the Atlantic seaboard of the U.S., hurricanes killed countless more millions, as well as inflicting untold damage to property.
Speaking of the U.S., tens of millions in the southeast and Midwest met with horrific deaths as unseasonable tornados struck at random, carrying off and then dumping everything in reach. Lightning picked off more than the occasional golfer and water skier; ironically (perhaps), those claiming to be the greatest defenders of the planet--the hikers and bikers and bird-watchers--were not spared their own terrible fates: tens of thousands of nature lovers were struck--electrocuted and/or burned to death--on the trails of the great mountains of the world.
In Northern Africa and the Mid-East the decades-long drought tightened its grip as temperatures soared well above 60 degrees Celsius (140 F.); dust storms buried entire cities, towns, villages, people, infrastructures, and contaminated what few water sources remained, essentially killing everyone.
In the Arctic--and Antarctic--climates reeled to the opposite extreme: all across Siberia, Scandinavia, Greenland, Iceland, Canada and Alaska, and Antarctica, cold snaps the world had never experienced before--either in recorded or non-recorded history--wiped out all life support--and, hence, all life. Blizzards in northern Europe and Asia, northern North America and southern South America immobilized entire regions as well, leaving millions exposed to the elements. No one survived as temperatures plummeted--when the wind-chill factor was taken into account--dangerously close to Absolute Zero in what were once heavy population centers.
Farther south, in the temperate zones, inhabitants there found no relief as rain-spawned floods swelled rivers over their banks; Damage was thorough; destruction was complete; suffering was entire; pain relentless. Those few who miraculously escaped to higher ground were left homeless, only to perish later in a variety of terrifying ways: slow, agonizing deaths from injuries due to the lack of medical attention. Or, surviving that, their bodies became so weakened that they offered little resistance to the infections and the rodents and insects that swarmed in the aftermath.
The list of the natural disasters could go on. But the human element played a significant role in the world-wide demise as well. Pollution--of the air, the land, the water--poisoned and killed the weakest members of society--hundreds and hundreds of millions. Even though most highways had been destroyed, the death toll from automobile accidents on the remaining roads continued to mount. In the air, whether mechanical failure or human error (a difference?), thousands of aircraft, both commercial and private, fell from the skies, setting records for single-day fatalities.
But perhaps the greatest tragedy of this remarkable week was the human spirit's capacity, even in its waning hours, to keep right on killing one another. To the very end, human beings proceeded, in a very deliberate manner, to butcher other human beings. Wars--of aggression, of liberation, civil--laid waste to the last remnants of dying nations; summary executions took care of the rest. On a smaller scale--though one no less deadly--street violence escalated and intensified; neighborhoods crumbled; communities exploded: individuals succumbed. Burglary, theft, murder, rape, looting, and every imaginable kind of vicious brutality reigned supreme. The domestic front was no exception: in homes, family members preyed upon family members. In a word, savagery was the ruler on this, the last day of the week.
Most of the casualties on this front--fatal or just short of--were the result of the most simple, yet most popular and effective weapons available--guns. Those without access to these modern devices were forced to rely on their own ingenuity (which they did) by turning to the more primitive methods of the past: strangling, knifing, beating with the fists or blunt instruments, whipping, or simply just kicking people to death.
Of course, world hunger and its accompanying afflictions continued to take their daily toll, no longer, of course, the result of food scarcity--which the economists had been saying all along was just a scare tactic of the doomsday mongers (some, they added, who were no more than left-over communists, who could not be trusted or taken seriously, anyway). The problem, these economists repeated, was not overpopulation--or a lack of food--or a faulty economic system--but rather just an ineffective means of distribution, often the result of greed on the part of evil despots. The system itself, they said, was still viable.
And finally, at week's end, the closing moments of the human era were played out with a courage consistent with its history: the last man, whose name was not Adam, met his end by his own hand.