What would a post-apocalyptic world look like? | Teen Ink

What would a post-apocalyptic world look like?

April 21, 2011
By forrestsp GOLD, Cordova, Tennessee
forrestsp GOLD, Cordova, Tennessee
16 articles 0 photos 0 comments

Undiscovered, a land in the heart of Volcano De Mort, a small village survives. A cold frost has destroyed everything turning the world into an orbiting chunk of permafrost. The return of the ice age has brought forth many problems in the only existing people group called Dar-el-Beida. The Dar-el-Beidas were used to the scorching days and the warm nights. Now that the second ice age has hit, they have to adapt or die. The population is 43 people. There are 30 females in the group and only 13 males. This is because the life expectancy of a male is around 23 due to the manual labor they have to accomplish in the harsh weather. The life expectancy of a woman is 35.The Dar-el-Beidas are a very strange religion, they pray to the volcano. The volcano on the island is the center of their lives; they depend on it for warmth and shelter from the extremely cold winds from the west and the dangerous wildlife constantly roaming around the area for food. The volcano is now loosing a lot of its warmth and becoming dormant. The tribe constantly has to move in closer to the crater of the volcano for warmth. Soon enough the volcano will loose its warmth and the village will have to make some decisions about where to go. But they are slowly adapting, using blubber from different animals to warm themselves. The Dar-el- Beidas language is based on two of the five romance languages Spanish and Italian.
There are four small villages and one main village (capital) where all the trading is made. Three of the four small establishments are in little caves on the sides of the giant volcano. The trade village is located in the middle of the crater. It’s the warmest and only the leader of the tribe and three of his favorite wives get to stay in the very center of the warmest part. The other people who come by the trade village are just there to simply trade. The only city not located in the crater of the Volcano De Mort is a small group of the most elite warriors called Soldados De La Buscada. The village is there to protect the top of the volcano from being attacked by the starved crazy animals that would only dream to get a taste of the Dar-el-Beidas flesh. When a Polar Bear or any one of the wild animals come by and get killed by the Soldados De La Buscada, they skin them and save them for a week until the other group of elite warriors come back for their turn. When the Soldados de la Buscada are on their way back up the mountain for their week long break they return to the trade village and are able to sell the polar bear meat or walrus blubber that they have gained from the past week. You would think traveling would present a problem, but its not. The last village at the bottom of the volcano is the entrance to a frozen tunnel that leads the warriors through all the villages and comes out near the trade village.


There are only a few animals that are able to live in the ice age environment with the Dar-el-Beidas. Paráfaro is a bird the size of an elephant. It has long claws for cracking the frozen ocean water. It has large talons for reaching into the ocean and grabbing walrus out of the water and a sharp beak for ripping open the thick blubber so it can eat the warmer part first. The Paráfaro Bird lives in the small caves of the mountains between the Rio Frio (Frozen Lake). The Polar Bears are one of the most dangerous animals you can encounter. The white fur helps them to blend in, but it wouldn’t matter if they were pink because it comes up behind you stomping around on all fours. Before you can turn it has already mauled your face off. Walrus are also dangerous. You could be walking around on one of the glaciers and it would break through the ice and try and bite you with its tusks. But the wild animals are not all that bad. The Dar-el-Beidas never go a day without stuffing themselves with food. The reason is because to the North East of the volcano is a huge glacier cave that serves as the breading ground for the animals. The animals do get hungry though; the polar bears eat their young sometimes to keep themselves from starving.
There isn’t much of the island used by the Dar-el-Beidas. The northwest of the island has broken off into an archipelago that is way too cold for anything to live for more than a few hours. The Dar-el-Beidas didn’t all used to live together on the volcano. A long time ago the founder of the tribe was being persecuted and fled his country of Chile. The authorities tried to capture him, but he lost them. He swam across the Viejo Ocean onto one of the small islands and crossed the Salva Vida Strait. The country of Chile never found him. When he died, the Dar-el-Beidas moved towards the volcano and threw his body in the lava. Years later the volcano became dormant. Now the Dar-el-Beidas have no way of burying their dead so when somebody does die they throw them off the volcano and honor the circle of life by letting them be eaten by the animals.
The government of the Dar-el-Beidas is strange. They have one leader, the bravest man of the group. He has to do two tasks to become the leader to the Dar-el-Beidas he has to slay a Polar Bear, cut out the heart with his hands and feed it to the respected men of the tribe. If the tribal men feel like the heart of the polar bear was pure, he has to retrieve an egg from the giant flying bird called the Paráfaro. The leader does not command everything though; he has a council of one woman, one warrior, his own son, and the oldest male in the group. He wears the fur of the polar bear he killed on his head so people will know who he is. The Dar-el-Beida men are broken down into four different categories. If he is wearing a blue arm band, he is a small child who helps his father in his job. If the band is yellow, the man is a merchant. If red, he is a warrior or hunter. The Dar-el-Beidas are peaceful people. But there is also one more band left, the shameful band. In the history there was a man who did something awful and nobody speaks of it, so nobody remembers. Whatever it was that he did, it cursed his whole family. So every male in that bloodline is given a black bracelet and has to work all his life carrying blocks of ice from the frozen lake up to volcano.
The life of the Dar-el-Beidas is anything but peaceful. The surroundings of the Dar-el-Beidas are anything but peaceful. Overall the Dar-el-Beidas do not have it easy. Hopefully they will have the strength to make it through this another ice age. They need to speed up their technology or they will not survive, especially since the guy with the black armband is spreading rumors of a large dog with teeth like the walrus!


The author's comments:
What would a post-apocalyptic world look like to you? It was a question posed to me a few eons ago, I'm still surprised I have this; a middle-schooler's take on the re-birth of humanity.

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