10 Minutes Past Midnight

We were all warned. The Doomsday Clock is nearing midnight but I don’t think any of us really paid attention. The furthest it had been from midnight was in 1991; sitting at 17 minutes to midnight but it steadily declined after that. 

When we reached 2019, I think the Earth fought back. We had polluted Her for so long and we had given Her no choice but a global pandemic. Pandemic X, that’s what they called it. They had also warned us about that for since the Spanish Influenza in 1918 but with every new virus we continued to think that Pandemic X was just a myth. Scientists also warned that if we didn’t try and reverse climate change within the next 50 years then it would be too late but we didn’t listen. 

We never listen. 

By 2021, with the lack of cars and planes and people polluting the planet; it actually looked like we might be stepping away from the ledge! With global carbon emissions dropping by around 17%…but it wasn’t enough. In January 2021, the world sat at only 100 seconds to midnight. The threat of climate disaster and nuclear war was drawing ever closer. The global pandemic made some complacent but others saw the truth of it. We were polluting our oceans at an unprecedented level, hundreds of animals and plants were going extent and yet…we still didn’t stop!

2030; the clock sat at 10 seconds to midnight. People had only started to see their ways. Nuclear bunkers and shelters were in high demand as global heavies threatened to send us into World War 3. 

Just about every half rich country had nuclear warhead supplies and some were even continuing to test them in secret outer space or in underwater explosions, which wasn’t exactly helping the climate crises. 

2035; most people had monthly or bimonthly blood tests to check their radiation levels, there was even talk of putting Potassium Iodide in water supplies but too many people complained that they didn’t want something foreign in their bodies. It was the Pandemic X Vaccine scenario all over again. 

2045; all children now take Radiogardase (Prussian Blue) supplements to help rid their bodies of the radioactive particles in the air. All crops and animals for consumption had to be farmed in large bio-domes to a avoid contamination. Rare plants and animals are also protected this way. 

Then it happened. 

We went one step too far. 

A step we couldn’t take back. 

2050; all out nuclear war. Anyone who didn’t live in a bunker or community shelter didn’t last long. The world governments, WHO, CDC and UN all advised to stay in your bunker or shelter until told otherwise.

***

100 years later:

“Nora! Have you taken your vitamins today?” My shelter mate calls. She was ever so slightly OCD when it came to making sure the whole shelter had taken the supplements they needed and keeping an inventory. 

“Yes Viv, I’ve taken them,” I reply as I stand up from my desk in my cramped but comfortable quarters. 

“Even your Vitamin D?” I roll my eyes and turn off the light. 

“Yes, mother,” I joke as I let the curtain, that acted as my door, swing closed behind me. 

“Don’t call me that,” Viv mutters as I enter the open kitchen and dining space. “I’m only 10 years older than you,” she says as she takes a playful swipe at my head. 

“Everyone knows, 10 years in apocalypse time is like…80 years,” I joke and I hear a few laughs from people sitting around the cafeteria style tables. Viv ignores all this and goes back to counting vitamin tablets. I grab an apple from the fruit bowl and join one of the tables of people. They were talking about Georgie who was in labour in the med wing; she’d been in labour for nearly 12 hours. I was just glad that the med wing was further away from the living quarters so that we couldn’t hear her screaming. 

“My mom used to talk about her grandmothers farm where she had sheep and goats. They just grazed openly in the fields, drank from rivers and puddles,” Alfred said to the group. 

“I wonder what rain tastes like?” Abbie wondered and we all sat in silence as a faint labour scream echoed through the halls. 

“I’m guessing it tastes like water?” I said around my bite of apple. 

This started a pointless discussion about if different types of water had various tastes. I looked up at the grimy ceiling with rusty pipes leading here, there and everywhere. They would make a clanking sound when someone ran a tap somewhere in the shelter. But it wasn’t really the ceiling I was looking at; I was looking passed that, imagining the world above. 

Was there still grass? Did rain still fall? Or did the fallout change the climate so much that nothing grew? 

The bio-domes where covered in black now. I think it’s ash and who knows what else? The light to grow the plants and keep the animals on a schedule was all artificial now. 

I got bored of the arguments and went for a wander. I traced my finger along a small hairline crack in the wall. It had been there as long as I could remember, it used to worry me; what if the bunker is collapsing? But nothing happened. Nothing changed in this bunker in its 145 years of being built. The occasional room got repainted when it obtained a new owner but that was all. I passed by the library and the school, it was a Saturday so no kids were there. It was the brightest, most cheerful room in the entire bunker. Covered in bright coloured handprints of all the children who had been taught there. I spotted mine; it was the only one in black paint. I took the left path to the gardens and the entrance to the domes. I could already smell the fertiliser as I took the steps to the next level. 

The gardens on this level were mainly artificial with really only the roses and stronger smelling flowers being real. I took a moment to savour the smells before leaving. Before I could enter the next level with the domes I had to place protective plastic coverings over my shoes and watch through a sanitising mist. 

Dome 1 is for ground fruit and vegetables, Dome 2 is  trees and Dome 3 is crops like wheat, oats and barley and Domes 4 and 5 are for the animals. I started my normal walk around the edge of the neatly lined rows of various fruit and veg, then through the trees and crops, stopping short of entering the animal domes as the smell wasn’t extremely pleasant. On my way back through the tree dome I noticed a small patch of light at the top right edge of the dome. I panicked at first; thinking it was a breach in the dome wall but as I got closer I saw that I was just a small section of tarp that had somehow become clean. I had to lay down on my stomach to see out and almost instantly regretted that I had. It looked like the world had lost its colour. Everything was dead and covered in ash and soot. The scientist estimated that we would need to remain in our shelters for a minimum of 500 years before the climate had regained control and nature had begun to stabilise. It was a day I knew I would never see and the gloomy outlook made me lose the little slither of hope that I had of the scientists over exaggerating but I looked like this were right. 

Just as I was about to stand, the clouds broke to let a tiny amount of grey tinged sunlight through. That light was just enough to illuminate a small patch of grass that I hadn’t seen before. A patch of green grass with a little daisy growing in the centre. I couldn’t fully understand why I started to cry. 

Maybe it was that slither of hope returning? 

I lay watching the daisy until the sunlight faded again then practically skipped back to my quarters. My shoulders felt like a weight had been removed and even my soul felt lighter. 

It was only one patch of grass and a single daisy but it was enough to spark life back into me.