Shining Star

Alright, here's the supernova scenario which caused so much writer's block the first time I actually wrote it. I guess it was too emo for me.

The Angst Guy, a prominent contributor to the Daria fandom has offered a few shared world ideas and I've already done a few. One such idea of his is"Shining Star", a world where Van Maanen's star explodes, causing IMPENDING DOOM, the details of which are lovingly described on his website at: www.theangstguy.com/supernova/shiningstar.html

A malicious alien recieves a call from AT&T in the early 70s and decides to Make an Example of the humans for inventing the call center. After a brief stop at Maggott's Siege Force rental to purchase some moon-cracker missiles he blows up Van Maanen's star.

26 years later, the lethal radiation hits on August 18, 1996 at 5:42 PM. The first sign of the doom is anomalous radiation readings from orbital probes followed by losing contact with the satellites. The few NASA employees with actual science backgrounds or have watched a PBS special on supernovas know what's going on and all decide to kill themselves to avoid what's to come.

The first sign is loss of contact with the sattelite network and radiation detectors on earth going wild.

The second sign is that human beings on the side of the earth facing Van Maanen's star, which given the time of day would be people living in the western hemisphere experience a massive blast of radiation. Anyone or anything that isn't protected by any sort of shielding. The damage ranges from "instant death" to "nauseous. The only warning sign that more is to come, is massive auroras all over the night side of earth.

Once the UV flash has hit the western hemisphere, the world's electronics are all fried by the massive radiation burst. The destruction of the world's communications and power systems is only the start of worse to come. Within days, the atmosphere's ionization creates a new smog.

The change of the atmosphere's odor, isn't the most pressing problem. The destruction of the protective ozone layer is of more immediate concern to the survivors. First you have the problems of radiation burns combined with food animals or crops being destroyed. The damage done to the biosphere at this point is worse than your typical mass extinction.

By this time, the atmosphere has become virtually unbreathable for humans and other relatively sensitive creatures thanks to the new toxic smog created by the ozone layer's collapse and new chemical reactions. Even the humble cockroach is finding it hard to survive.

A few months after the supernova happens, the real trouble begins. The cosmic ray and muon rain destroys much of the remaining biosphere. The 90% of humanity who died in the first month were the lucky ones, as the survivors found themseles dealing with cancer, respiratory problems and worse from unbreathable air, blue light, radiation.

The supernova's side effects manage to go beyond just producing toxic smog but as far as making a new ice age. The brown-orange polluted smog. This results in massive amounts of DOOM and ANGST, which I don't feel like describing since writing "And then they resorted to cannibalism after turning the skin of the survivors into leather coats" repeatedly just gets old.  Also, the extinction of the last few survivors who held out in the swiss and russian deep mineshaft artificial caves.

Penguins in antarctica go extinct due to Antarctica suddenly becoming too cold even for them. The non-antarctic ones get easten by desperate surviving humans. The last penguin dies 5 years after the supernova hits earth. Even before it was raped to death by a maddened survivor(one of five humans left on earth by then), this penguin had already become a diseased lump of flesh that was slowly dying from the inside out.