The End of the World
Who would have ever believed this was the way the world would end? Not me. That’s for sure. Nuclear holocaust, pandemic, global warming — you bet, but not this.
Betsey’s two children could hardly remember the world as it was three years ago. Bobby was eleven. Suzy was nine. Betsey worried about what would happen to her kids. She and her husband Bill were doing their best to prepare them.
Bill and his father had built a cabin deep in the woods of Brown County, Indiana, twenty-some years ago. The family had moved there at the beginning of the end. Thank goodness for Bill’s foresight. They moved belongings and supplies to the cabin before the collapse, before there were no more vehicles.
The cabin sat on a five-acre spring-fed pond. Betsy always wondered if five acres was a small lake or a big pond. They had a fireplace and a wood-burning stove with plenty of accessible wood. Besides the pond, Bill and his dad had a well dug.
There was an old-fashioned metal pump outside the cabin with a steel tub for bathing. The outhouse sat about 25 feet away. There was a gravel path from the cabin to it.
The collapse began on the coasts — all the shores in all the world.
First, communication came to an abrupt halt, then transportation. Buildings collapsed, cars and trucks fell apart, cables tumbled, and pipes vanished. The Johnsons made it out when the first news came from Hawaii. Bill took vacation days. He said it was just in case, but he loaded the truck like he was a survivalist. He never went back to work.
Bill had kept the cabin well provisioned. Every fall, he spent a week at the cabin during deer season. Last year was the first that Bobby went with his father.
Every summer, the family spent a week fishing. Well, Bill and Bobby fished while Betsy and Susy lounged, either on the shore or on floats in the pond.
Betsy didn’t know what she would’ve done without Bill. He was amazing. The grounds had a game cleaning station and a smokehouse close to the water pump. He caught bluegill, trapped rabbits, and shot a deer. He cleaned and smoked what they didn’t immediately eat.
Wild edibles had always interested Betsey. She brought a book on edible wild plants in Indiana. She was getting pretty good at foraging. Yesterday she’d found sassafras. She dug up roots for tea and grabbed leaves to dry to make a spicy thickener for soup.
The kids were resilient. Of course, they missed their phones and friends. But Bobby enjoyed learning survival skills from his father. Susy was learning how to forage and cook.
Betsey remembered watching a documentary about plastic in the ocean. There was a gigantic mass of floating plastic in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. But what was more concerning were the plastic microfilaments in the arctic ocean. These filaments were the byproduct of laundering poly garments. Our clothes were clogging the oceans.
Plastic was everywhere. It was in everything. The Johnson’s home in Greenwood had vinyl windows. It had PVC pipes, plastic fixtures, and plastic floors. Their devices were plastic — phones, laptops, and pads. Half of her car was plastic. Plastic was everywhere; plastic-covered wires, artificial limbs, and implants.
When Betsy had first heard about the plastic-eating bacteria, it seemed a great idea. It could eat the pool of plastic in the Pacific and the microfilaments in the Arctic waters. It was the answer to yet another environmental problem that humankind had created.
At first, that’s what it did. But when the bacteria had cleaned the oceans, it looked for more plastic. It found it, and it consumed it. The bacteria ate everything with plastic components, and that was just about everything. The bacteria were eating all the plastic in the world. It had become a world without plastic.
So, here’s where I got the idea for the story. “Over 300 million tons of plastic is produced annually across the globe. Of this, around 50% is destined for single use. More alarming is that a mere 20% of this is recycled, resulting in over 8 million metric tons ending up in our water systems. This poses massive problems for marine fauna and their ecosystems. Encouragingly, scientists have found a naturally occurring, plastic-eating bacteria that breaks down inorganic material, such as plastic, opening up a new area of study not previously considered.” — How Plastic-Eating Bacteria Can Save Our Oceans