Reviews
What struck me even before I read the story was the title. I found it very enticing and it caused me to read the story. They call the place they live in, the nest. It is their apartment or whatever left of it, covered with blankets and rugs to stay warm and to keep the oxygen in.
If the earth does not get any sun light, the earth’s temperature would reach -150°F in a couple of months. People, animal and plants cannot survive at this temperature. Oceans, seas, lakes, rivers and other water sources will all be frozen. Because of this reason, the oxygen levels will drop drastically, causing the earth to become a ghost planet since there will be no life on it. The author mentioned that people were trying to keep the fire alive, but under that condition, it is impossible to keep the fire alive since with the lack of oxygen, they cannot have fire. Another issue is that at this cold temperature, all plant life will die and no agriculture will be accomplished. There will be great famine because of the freezing temperatures. In a short period of time, food will run out and people will die. The cold temperature freezes all of the liquid water that people can consume which makes life impossible. The author says people were breathing pure oxygen because of the extremely cold atmosphere that was separated due to density differences . If the oxygen level in the atmosphere increases just a little bit, people cannot live because our body cannot process pure oxygen. The cold temperature and lack of sunlight makes it impossible for the oxygen levels to increase. Another important issue is that without sunlight, there will be no power sources because of extremely cold temperature. Overall, this story is pretty boring to read because of illogical themes. It is true that we cannot survive without the sun. Because of the sun, we have water, different climates instead of extremely cold temperature, adequate oxygen levels etc. With the sun, we can have and operate energy sources. Without the sun's force of gravity, the earth will lose its orbit around the sun and it will travel in the space in one direction. This will cause the earth get cold in a short period of time and will get extremely cold in a couple of months. We will lose foliage ; animals and people will die because of cold temperatures. The food chain will also be broken and this will make the earth an uninhabitable dead planet. I would not say this story would finish well. You know what? It finishes with a happy ending. People from LosAlamos searching survivors find protagonist family and want to take them to some kind of nuclear base where they can survive for thousand years. Even if there would be such place, leaving there would kill people right away. This story is from 1950's. So many things have changed since these years (64 years). The story may have fascinated it's audience at it's time but only thing that made me think is that the Sun is the earth's main life resource and nothing can continue functioning without it at all. |