I will never forget the day the world ended. It was a day like any other; nothing special about it; and there was no reason to believe it would be the last.
It was the end of winter and because I can’t get out of bed before the sun, I slept late that morning. When the sun finally began to peek through the curtains of my window, I rose.
As is my usual routine, zombielike, I went to the kitchen and started the coffee. I am not known for my patience and those who know me well can easily imaging me standing in front of the coffee pot waiting for it to dispense its magic elixir as I screamed in frustration, “Hurry! Hurry!”
When the magic brew finally dispensed into my cup, I took it to the living room and turned on the television curious to find out what was happening in the world.
Everyone thought the end would be caused by some cataclysmic event, but if you believed the television reports, it wasn’t. The end of the world came about because of a virus.
But it was not the same virus that everyone thought it was. Within that virus was another infection for more insidious than the the one that caused people to fall ill. The congestion, sore throats, and respiratory distress were not the culprits of civilization's collapse; it wasn’t even the deaths that came about a result of that particular pathogen. The virus infected people with something far worse.
F. D. Roosevelt famously said, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself,” but 80 years later, people forgot his words. They did not realize that fear was the infection and they succumbed to it. They allowed it to fester within them. They spread it to others through their words . They spread it to others through their deeds. It seemed nobody was immune. From fear to panic to hysteria to anger to blame to hate until finally, the world collapsed in on itself.
Nobody suspected that the collapse would be begin with sniffles and lack of toilet paper.
How were we to know?