The Beginning of the End

The Beginning of the End

By: Mads Christian Hvidberg

Only a year has passed since then, but it feels like a lifetime has passed since the beginning of what appeared to be the end.

It all began in the year 2115. I woke in the middle of the night as I heard my phone ringing.

I got up, and I started to walk towards my phone in the other end of my house.

When I got to my kitchen, I noticed something was completely wrong. I heard a lot of noise and yelling from what sounded like the streets. At first, I just assumed, it was a nearby party, and the yelling came from someone who was headed home.

I continued towards my phone not giving the drunks any attention. It was my girlfriend, and as soon as I heard her voice, I knew that my original feeling about something being wrong was horribly on point. My girlfriend told me to drop everything in my hands and drive north as fast as I possibly could, and I knew it was genuine as her voice was filled with fear and concern. So without asking any other questions, I did what she asked me to.

However, the second I opened the door I was hit by a massive heat wave. How could that possibly make sense, I thought to myself, as it was in the middle of the winter in London. Usually, the winter is a cruel and freezing experience in London, but apparently not tonight.

For a moment, the heat had me stunned, but then I remembered the promise I just made to my girlfriend; I had to hurry heading north. I pulled myself together and hurried towards my car in the streets.

I was stunned again, this time by all the desperate cries from stressed people running around in fear on the street. It seemed that they all were trying to get away from whatever was going on. I quickly jumped in my car and hit a massive queue of cars. Because of the massive queue, I had a lot of time to figure out what was going on, so I turned on the news on my radio.

The first couple of radio stations only said that the situation was under control, and that there was no reason to panic, but then I stumbled over a radio station that was trying to explain why the temperature suddenly changed overnight.

Apparently, the ozone layer had dissolved and the solar beams were now hitting us directly, as we had no further protection. The world was heating up on a global level as a result.

The reason behind the sudden destruction of the ozone layer was that a lot of carbondioxide from fossil fuels among other things had weakened the ozone layer over the years, and yesterday a nuclear facility exploded and polluted the air further. This was apparently too much for the ozone layer.

The reason behind the disaster wasn’t even the most shocking part of the story.

The government was aware that the ozone layer was slowly getting destroyed by the massive pollution, but chose to keep quit as they had no interest in spending money and it would cost society many resources because factories would have to shut down. And so, they knew that if an explosion at a nuclear facility or the like were to happen, it would bring catastrophic consequences for the entire world.

After a couple of hours listening to the radio, all the radio frequencies suddenly turned off. Moment after a flashing light appeared in the horizon. The light came closer, and with it a lot of heat. At this point in time, I managed to avoid panicking unlike many others, because I knew there was nothing to do about it.