World War C

We grew up reading about world wars, cold wars, how the next world war would look like, its scale, use of nuclear weapons, biological weapons, impact on economy, world trade, international businesses. relationships.

We grew up watching movies on apocalypse, end of the world, animals taking over the world, for that matter zombies taking over the world.

We grew up watching discoveries made by our scientists in space and beyond, inventing quantum realities, making machines intelligent, reaching new heights in every field possible.

Nothing was left undetected, nothing felt un-achievable, we, the Humans, were on top of the food chain. We were invincible !

Soon we started to destroy things as we touched. We cleared out forests to make way for cities, we developed our cities with only our convenience in mind, we filled our oceans with filth, we polluted our air with all sorts of poison, we even polluted our nights with all the blinding lights.

We sold anti-pollution products to save ourselves, we sold treated water to save ourselves, we sold ourselves to luxuries and pretended to care. Our efforts to save were masked by our desires for better and comforting lives.

And then came a day when nature had enough. It was time for nature to save itself from the atrocities of the predator species.

It did not take nature much to retaliate. One tiny mutation of cells and the humanity was down on knees, avoiding touch and hiding behind closed doors. It is nature against man in the new world war, World War C. Covid-19.

If you saw Atlas, the giant who holds the world on his shoulders, if you saw that he stood, blood running down his chest, his knees buckling, his arms trembling but still trying to hold the world aloft with the last of his strength, and the greater his effort the heavier the world bore down upon his shoulders – What would you tell him?”

I don’t know. What could he do? What would you tell him?”

To shrug.

-Ayn Rand (Atlas Shrugged)
https://medium.com/@simransimrann/world-war-c-605edf647e41