July 2008 QUOTE OF THE MONTH: "In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks." - John Muir, Submitted by Dana Dizon, Richmond High School

The End…For Real
 
By Jael, Naomi, and Dajoune
8th grade
Creative Arts Charter School, SF

"It all ended when I was young. In the year 3950, there were 7759 people left on the earth. The Earth took a turn for the worse. Dangerous things started to occur frequently. Floods, tsunamis, hurricanes, tornados, earthquakes, lighting and thunder attacks, meteor showers, diseases, volcanoes, oil spills, avalanches, snow blizzards, heat waves, and famines were happening left and right. They were destroying the Earth day by day. The universe was changing and all the humans could do was sit there and wait for the walls of humanity to come crashing down on them.

Now let me tell you how the human world fell apart.

In Antarctica, global warming destroyed this continent; the ice caps and glaciers melted and all the inhabitants drowned and are extinct now. This started a domino effect of disasters.

In Africa, heat waves and droughts killed most of the African population and if there were any survivors, the huge flood that followed finished them off.

In South America, climate change brought many diseases. Bird flu and malaria spread quickly all the way up to Mexico, rapidly killing off all of Latin America. Within a short time there were all gone, leaving only barren land, on which no one would dare set foot.

In Asia, there were five tsunamis, eight hurricanes and twelve earthquakes in six months, shattering the continent of Asia for good. There were only thee survivors.

In Australia, let's just say there are really "down under" now. Massive floods occurred in Australia to the point where people who lived on this amazing island were swimming with the fishes now. Now there is only one survivor, living on a boat.

In North America, mayhem started to occur in every started. In the west, earthquakes started happening more frequently; people didn't even have time to stand up before the next one would occur. Soon after that, because of the earthquakes, a wave of giant tsunamis came every other day until everything was wiped out. In the midlands, tornados tore apart every town to the ground. In the east, hurricanes came again and again until everyone was soaked to the bone, everything was blown away, and there was nothing left. All the people were hit one by one and all they could do was watch their neighbors die off. They were caught unprepared; they were goners. All but two young ladies who somehow knew this would happen and hid themselves in a shelter.

In Europe, there was a major famine that killed a lot of Europeans. The famine made life difficult, people died, animals died and the result was there was hardly any food. So when the second famine started, it was pretty much the end of Europe. There was only one survivor, who managed to store enough food to live on.

And that's how the world's population came to be a total of several in the year 3999.

When I awake, I found myself here, on our planet. Your people saved the last human live. I remember waking up just in time to see my planet explode. Luckily I wasn't on it, like the rest of my kin."

"Human, how did it all start, you know, the Earth ending and all?" a young alien girl asked.

"Some say it was God, some say it was our stupidity, but I say it all started with that Bay Area oil spill." I paused; this was very hard for me to talk about.

"I remember reading an article on how to save our planet written back in 2007 by three eighth grade girls. No one listened to them; instead they were laughed at. The article ended up in the Book of Loonies. If only we had listened to them, maybe none of this would have happened. Maybe the human race would still be alive. We should have just listened to youth for once. Oh well, at least I have you, my young alien friends."

And that was the story of the only survivor and the end of the planet Earth, as we know it.