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I'm currently working on a project which involves me reading a lot about the history of the 1920s and slightly earlier. As a sideline to this I've been re-reading some of the literature of the time because, well, I might as well be consistent.
As a result I've recently gone back to Arthur Conan Doyle's Professor Challenger stories. Most famous for The Lost World, there are actually about half a dozen of these of varying quality and my favourite is probably The Poison Belt, in which Challenger uses his incredible mastery of SCIENCE to predict the Earth will shortly pass through a belt of interstellar gas which will kill everyone in the world. As nobody will believe him, he and his friends survive by sealing their house and breathing bottled air before emerging into a world in which everyone but them is [Spoiler] not dead but in a comalike sleep for a couple of weeks.
The thing is, they don't act like any normal person would in this situation. All they do is drive around this deserted world commenting on how awful it is until everyone starts to wake up. It's very evocative - it's just not very realistic. Any normal person faced with an Earth in which everyone else was out of action would do things like good works, help the needy, and go on a crime spree the likes of which the world had never seen.
Naturally, I started to think about what I would do in a world where everyone else was unconscious for a few weeks. The thing which struck me first was that if I were going to be the only person awake for a few weeks, the last thing I'd want is for anyone ever to find out it was me. If I commited crimes I wouldn't want to be caught for them, and if I didn't I wouldn't want the press hounding me for my story and doctors wanting to chop me into thin slices to find out why I wasn't affected. So the first thing to do is to get hold of one of those suits they wear in clean rooms - plus gloves and mask and goggles - to avoid shedding DNA about the place, and then get away from major urban centres where I might be recorded on CCTV. Only then could I put stage two into action - helping the needy, doing good works and enriching myself beyond the dreams of avarice.
By 'helping the needy', I mean I might stop and move a sleeping child if it looked like something terrible might happen to it.
Probably.
Well, I almost certainly wouldn't harm the child further.
For the 'good works' I'd break into No. 10 Downing St, kidnap Gordon Brown, strip him, tar and feather him, and shackle him naked in front of the Treasury building with an L-plate stapled to his groin before arranging a group of reporters with cameras in a neat semicircle around him.
Finally, I'd do something selfish and solely for myself. I'd steal in a manner previously undreamed of by humanity. I'd nick a yacht, sail it to France, and lift the Mona Lisa. I'd break into the Royal Mint and the Bank of England vaults and go a bit crazy with a forklift and a flatbed truck.
Of course, in order the muddy the water for my thefts a little more I'd have to pin it on someone else, so I'd kidnap someone - maybe John Prescott - and trundle them round with me in a wheelchair, occasionally stopping to shake him a bit so the crime scenes would be liberally littered with his DNA.
So there's your mental image of a world where everyone is comatose. It's me in an NBC suit, tundling John Prescott about in a wheelchair and taking a shovel to the gold reserves. But still. It's Friday, and nobody works on Fridays, so what would you do?
You've got two weeks of everyone in the world being unconscious except you. Go crazy.
As a result I've recently gone back to Arthur Conan Doyle's Professor Challenger stories. Most famous for The Lost World, there are actually about half a dozen of these of varying quality and my favourite is probably The Poison Belt, in which Challenger uses his incredible mastery of SCIENCE to predict the Earth will shortly pass through a belt of interstellar gas which will kill everyone in the world. As nobody will believe him, he and his friends survive by sealing their house and breathing bottled air before emerging into a world in which everyone but them is [Spoiler] not dead but in a comalike sleep for a couple of weeks.
The thing is, they don't act like any normal person would in this situation. All they do is drive around this deserted world commenting on how awful it is until everyone starts to wake up. It's very evocative - it's just not very realistic. Any normal person faced with an Earth in which everyone else was out of action would do things like good works, help the needy, and go on a crime spree the likes of which the world had never seen.
Naturally, I started to think about what I would do in a world where everyone else was unconscious for a few weeks. The thing which struck me first was that if I were going to be the only person awake for a few weeks, the last thing I'd want is for anyone ever to find out it was me. If I commited crimes I wouldn't want to be caught for them, and if I didn't I wouldn't want the press hounding me for my story and doctors wanting to chop me into thin slices to find out why I wasn't affected. So the first thing to do is to get hold of one of those suits they wear in clean rooms - plus gloves and mask and goggles - to avoid shedding DNA about the place, and then get away from major urban centres where I might be recorded on CCTV. Only then could I put stage two into action - helping the needy, doing good works and enriching myself beyond the dreams of avarice.
By 'helping the needy', I mean I might stop and move a sleeping child if it looked like something terrible might happen to it.
Probably.
Well, I almost certainly wouldn't harm the child further.
For the 'good works' I'd break into No. 10 Downing St, kidnap Gordon Brown, strip him, tar and feather him, and shackle him naked in front of the Treasury building with an L-plate stapled to his groin before arranging a group of reporters with cameras in a neat semicircle around him.
Finally, I'd do something selfish and solely for myself. I'd steal in a manner previously undreamed of by humanity. I'd nick a yacht, sail it to France, and lift the Mona Lisa. I'd break into the Royal Mint and the Bank of England vaults and go a bit crazy with a forklift and a flatbed truck.
Of course, in order the muddy the water for my thefts a little more I'd have to pin it on someone else, so I'd kidnap someone - maybe John Prescott - and trundle them round with me in a wheelchair, occasionally stopping to shake him a bit so the crime scenes would be liberally littered with his DNA.
So there's your mental image of a world where everyone is comatose. It's me in an NBC suit, tundling John Prescott about in a wheelchair and taking a shovel to the gold reserves. But still. It's Friday, and nobody works on Fridays, so what would you do?
You've got two weeks of everyone in the world being unconscious except you. Go crazy.
