Chapter 16: Grabbed at a Seminar

While resolving the difficulty we had in the Middle East with a terrorist group, Bob, Sharna, Clara, and I made the threat of the meteoroids known to the Middle East’s governments. We suggested that they keep this information a secret for now, but knew that would never happen. We heard a few reports that discussed what we had told the governments’ representatives, but the newspaper reports labeled us crackpots.

We knew that the crackpot label would not last. We decided to inform the rest of the world’s national governments about the meteoroids and virus. The governments would need time to try to develop a vaccine and to prepare shelters. The governments had four years to do what they could to prepare for the future catastrophe that loomed over the world. From what I had previously observed of politicians, they would make a large number of speeches, spend a great deal of money, create a chaotic environment, and in the end do nothing helpful to aid the average citizen to survive the oncoming disaster. That’s not to say they wouldn’t do anything, but what they would do would be primarily for their personal benefit.

In my opinion, the world’s best hope for survival was the World Health Organization (WHO). WHO had the knowledge, resources, and facilities to develop a better vaccine, especially if they worked with Bob and Sharna. The only problem was they did not have the funding necessary to do the research. Clara and I decided that we would brief WHO on what we knew, and offer our aid in developing a vaccine. In the meantime, the Ark Foundation continued our efforts to prepare for the day the meteoroids arrived and our private research group continued to work on a solution for a better vaccine.

My Bond Mates Julie and Samantha Anders were the Co-Vice Presidents of the Habitation Department, which was responsible for locating people to reside in the Ark. When we started defining the guidelines for Ark admittance, it became apparent that the task was not as simple as it initially seemed.

Our original thought was to only accept V984 Generation people. However most of the V984 Generation people were less than 40 years of age and many of the skills we needed required many years of training and extensive experience; thus, a sizeable portion of our work force had to be from the V983 Generation.

The environment within the Ark would result in many families crowded into a comparatively small space. It was therefore imperative that the people we brought into the Ark were reasonably compatible personalities, or at least people who were capable of getting along with a variety of personality types.

When we started looking at the specific criteria for gaining admittance into the Ark, it became apparent that we would have a hard time locating acceptable people who would be willing to accept the restrictions imposed on them. Assuming of course that they did not know about the virus.

The first thing we had to do was define the personality traits and family dynamics that would be appropriate for the situation that would exist during the time we remained in the Ark and after we returned to the surface. That task seemed overwhelming at first and we knew it would be extremely difficult. For example, in our current society the acceptable family dynamic was one man and one woman in a relationship, a ratio of 1:1. The male-female ratio of the world population after the virus was anticipated to be one male to every six females, a ratio of 1:6, and it may be higher than that. We knew we would have to transition the Ark Society’s view on polygamy during the time the families were living in the Ark. We also knew that while men would be difficult to locate and recruit after the virus, women would be more readily available.

Our plans were to have a male-female ratio of at least 1:3 in the Ark for all Bond Groups, and to encourage higher ratios. We decided to recruit four women for every man and hope the male-female ratio of our family groups would average at least 1:3. Recruiting at that high of a ratio and expecting a lower ratio in relationships meant that there would be many single unattached women in the Ark. That spelled trouble to me. We would need to have some form of ‘dating organization’ to help single women who wanted to be in a relationship find a Bond Group that was compatible to their personalities. The Reppa Bond Group would be a good model for the other Bond Groups since we already had a 1:9 ratio, and I suspected it would increase even further before the meteoroids arrived. While I didn’t mind our Bond Group being used as an example, I definitely did not want to recruit more Bond Mates; however, I also knew increasing the size of our Bond Group was a goal of my Bond Mates.

The second part of the Habitation Department’s goal was to have compatible personalities. We had to establish a set of acceptable personality characteristics. We also wanted to eliminate certain characteristics related to anger, aggression, mental health problems, and other negative mental, physical, and emotional characteristics. However, we knew some of the traits such as anger and aggression were positive traits under certain circumstances as long as the emotion was controlled. This of course meant that we had to evaluate every applicant to ensure they satisfied our mental, physical, emotional, and personality criteria. We accomplished this by tailoring an existing personality test to meet our unique needs.

Age was also considered an important factor, and we initially decided to cap the age limit at 50 years old. We later reconsidered this when it was pointed out to us that people over 50 had the life experiences that were necessary to balance the inexperience of youth. We finally decided to set the balance at about 90% under 50 years of age and 10% over 50 with no upper limit on age.

We looked at several characteristics, such as corruption and dishonesty, but were never able to decide on an acceptable way of measuring the amount of these characteristics in our applicants. We decided to take our chances with these characteristics and handle any situations that came up on a case-by-case basis. In one meeting, Harry and Sam became very angry when someone put forth a motion that we ban politicians and lawyers as undesirable people; at least until we all started laughing at their reaction. They swore to get even with our prankster.

Surprisingly, married couples versus single people became one of the more volatile topics that we discussed. Everyone was in favor of accepting single people, but we were split on accepting married couples. The main objection to married couples was their ability to adapt to a polygamous environment. There were two main factors against married couples.

Our society believed that a marriage should be between one man and one woman, and that there would be resistance to violating this social rule. It was also believed that wives would view the addition of additional women to their marriages as their husbands cheating on their marital vows. Either of these factors or both combined could cause major problems in the Ark environment.

We knew that children were an important factor in the formation of the Ark Society culture, so if we didn’t accept married couples, how would we recruit and care for children. This was one of the major factors that led to us deciding to accept married couples and resolve any problems as they occurred.

The Habitation Department eventually refined the criteria for admittance and determined the means that would be used to determine if specific applicants met our criteria. The next step in recruiting was for Julie and Samantha to come up with a means of publicizing the Ark, and inform the world of what we believed would happen when the meteoroid shower arrived. The campaign they developed was to be initiated about three years before the meteoroids arrived and it focused on making the World’s governments aware of what would be happening when the meteoroids arrived. The real intent of this publicity program had been the brainchild of the publicity company that had been recommended to us by Charlie and Tim. The program was really clever for it explained what would happen while it also focused the general population’s attention on what the Government would be doing for them. We had gotten so accustomed to expecting the Government to take care of us that we used this expectation to shift the public’s attention from the Ark Foundation to the Government.

Julie and Samantha’s publicity campaign had six major goals. Make people aware of Bob and Sharna’s existence. Make people aware of the meteoroid shower and its accompanying virus to include the effects the virus would have on humanity. Inform people of the Ark Foundation. Motivate the Health Agencies to start working with the Ark Foundation to develop a serum that would help immunize people against the virus. Focus the world’s national governments on developing emergency groups and plans to deal with the catastrophe that the meteoroids and virus would cause. Point the people to the Government as their main source of protection and care.

We all agreed that our campaign had several problems. The biggest problem was we believed the governments would fail to respond to the situation in a timely manner. We believed that when they did respond, their response would be inappropriate and inadequate. It may also be difficult to get people to apply to us at the same time we are also telling them to talk to the Government. What we were trying to get them to do is send us an application and then focus their attention on the Government.

Our people had studied the coming tragedy. We realized that many of the things we could do to help others would lead to our not completing the Ark in time and the elimination of the human race. Our assessment of the situation was with early enough notification, the governments would try to construct shelters, but it would be impossible to provide enough space for everyone regardless of how much time they had. When we looked at it from the point of humanity’s survivability, the shelters were not necessary if you were willing to accept the estimated 5-10% mortality rate the meteoroid impacts would cause. The real problem was the virus.

According to Bob and Sharna, it was possible to create a vaccine. Production of the vaccine was a complex process and the vaccine had to be administered at the onset of the symptoms or just before. It had a short shelf life and an immense amount of vaccine would be needed to inoculate the entire world’s population.

When these factors were examined, it was apparent that it wasn’t possible to produce and distribute enough of Bob and Sharna’s vaccine to save the bulk of the world’s population. We examined numerous alternate scenarios for saving people, but the reality of the situation was the entire world would become ill at about the same time, and everyone would need to be inoculated within a very short period, which was impossible. When we factored in that the people would need treatment during the period when the fear, panic, and chaos caused by the meteoroids hitting the planet was at its highest, there was no way that a sizeable portion of the population would receive the inoculation and follow up medical care that was needed to survive the virus.

From my perspective there were two key factors relating to the timing of our notifying the world of the meteoroids. We needed enough time to recruit inhabitants for the Ark, and secondly, given too much time the governments or public would try to take control of the Ark. Bob and Sharna had made it clear to me they would not allow either of those events to happen.