Vanishing Concerns

If this really happened, we would give it a name. The instantaneous disintegration of every child and of hundreds of millions of adults, everywhere, at once. The lethal aftermath.

And the psychological aftermath. The panic and fear and realization that everything had changed. Every parent on earth simultaneously experiencing every parent's worst nightmare. "I only turned my back for a second and she was gone." "He's not in his bed, where is he?" In an instant, the world is transformed from the home of 6 billion people to the home of only 4 billion, most of whom would be suffering from some form of traumatic stress.

"Things don't just disappear," my mother used to say. But in this story, they do. People do. And in addition to the shock, grief, loss and horror, this is something else everyone would have to cope with. They could no longer take for granted something they didn't even realize they had been taking for granted. The possibility now has to be considered that you might at any second vanish without trace or explanation. A third of us gone, the remaining two-thirds would all feel the carpet had been yanked from beneath our feet.

So if this really happened, we would need to give it a name.{read the full post}

[via slacktivist]