12-03-2005 08:29									#1
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I'm trying to come up with a theory to explain an event that will be a major part of a story I am working on.



What happens is, everyone on the planet disappears instantly and simultaneously. Clothes drop to the ground, cars will crash, and so on.

Except the thing is, one man does not disappear, he's alone on the planet.


Now my question is, can anyone come up with a reason that this has happened? You also have to explain how they come back (much much later in the future). Don't say Rapture, I have already thought of that and it won't work.

Coming up with new theories is fun, but damn hard.

	12-03-2005 08:33									#2
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What is the Baptist/Christian thing...Left Behind, bla bla...

Anyway, say that happens.

Oh, Rapture, I see.

Well. Let me think.

	12-03-2005 08:38									#3
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The ETs which seeded Earth with life as part of a life-propogation experiment 4 billion years ago have come to collect the results. Humans were of sufficient intelligence to be taken and used as slave-footsoldiers in the War, but not deemed intelligent enough to rebel. All humans within given genetic parameters (possibly chimps go too) are simultaneously beamed aboard the migration ship and carted across the galaxy.

The one man is left behind because he has some kind of screwed up genome, or possibly he was in a lead box at the time, or in space, or in a deep-sea sub. Whatever. They missed him.

	12-03-2005 08:41									#4
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Make it a comedy.

	12-03-2005 08:45									#5
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Deep Thought blue-screens and wipes out the Homo sapiens subroutine. The guy survives because he has transcended and is the incarnate version of The Answer.

	12-03-2005 08:47									#6
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The one guy surviving was the only real human. Everyone else was an illusion created to interact with him for higher beings to study.

	12-03-2005 08:47									#7
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It's not all of humanity that is gone, it's the Survivor who has been transported to another universe, or virtual reality, or replica Earth, or realised dream, or unrealised dream.

	12-03-2005 08:48									#8
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It's a worldwide conspiracy to set up a surprise birthday party for him.

	12-03-2005 09:09									#9
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quote: Originally posted by Verto The one guy surviving was the only real human. Everyone else was an illusion created to interact with him for higher beings to study.

I really like this answer, as it opens up so many avenues to expand upon the story.
Another plausible answer would be that the one individual experienced a "time displacement" where he was temporarily out of phase with the rest of humanity. Later on he came back into phase - the classic questions of Sci-Fi that are "why", "who", and "how" are now easily interjected at this point.



D

	12-03-2005 13:33									#10
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It's all a dream.

	12-03-2005 13:48									#11
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See Night of the Comet for Inspiration:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087799/

Also see the Twilight Zone Episode 8:

Episodes: "Time Enough at Last" (Ep. 8, November 20, 1959) - A bookworm (Burgess Meredith) yearns for more time to read--then a nuclear holocaust leaves him alone in the world with lots of time, plenty to read, and one ironic twist! "

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/t...024139?v=glance

	12-03-2005 14:10									#12
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Someone wished for world peace.

	12-03-2005 17:11									#13
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He became insane. For him it looks like everybody is gone, but in reality they're still there. At one point some people are probably going to drag him to those insane places, but for him it seems like he goes there for himself because something unknown is 'waiting' for him there, could be something he imagines as the answer might be in that place to why the people suddenly left


Or maybe this guy was some scientist working at some secret lab below sea level. One day some secret experiment was taking place where one guy should work down there while everybody else works above (or at least not that far down as him)... and as usual the experiment fails and all organic goes away in a blink of the eye. Only those protected by being far enough below sea level survives
At the beginning it looks like everybody has gone, but later he discovers that the deadly waves of the experiment didn't go all around the world

	12-03-2005 20:19									#14
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Adagio:

You have several options, depending on what you want to do with the novel. Is it psychological or a gothic horror of some kind? A thriller with nuclear superpower wars or whatever? Some elemental or religious struggle between good and evil with a customary twist? A comedy, a sci-fi, or a comedy sci-fi like Hitchikers Guide?

	12-03-2005 20:27									#15
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OK, tyr this: Everyone who had an interesting life, good or bad, was taken to the afterlife by the supreme being, who has suddenly decided he's hace enough of the "reality series" thing and has decide to call all of his homies back to home. The remaining guy was soooooo boring that he was forgotten.

	12-03-2005 20:48									#16
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Being so boring that even a supreme being would forget you is certainly interesting enough to make the supreme being in question not forget you .

	12-03-2005 20:50									#17
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He was put into the holodeck.

	12-03-2005 20:57									#18
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yeah these theories are great, deep and meaningful.

come on, I want something eye-opening

see how hard it is to come up with a new theory

	12-03-2005 20:59									#19
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Could also be a bit like The Truman Show. He just moved to a new city (on some island). One day as he's inside his house, looking out the window (which actually is some very advanced screen) he sees as they dissapear. This reality show is to see how long this guy will survive before he goes insane (or how he'll tackle it)

	12-03-2005 20:59									#20
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Ask a stupid question, get a stupid answer

	12-03-2005 21:01									#21
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quote: Originally posted by Sn00py yeah these theories are great, deep and meaningful. come on, I want something eye-opening see how hard it is to come up with a new theory

Tell us what kind of story it is, then the chance for something useable to be written here is higher! Is it sci-fi, comedy, thriller, horror, whatever?

	12-03-2005 21:04									#22
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A bit like The Quiet Earth. Of course, those people didn't come back at the end.....

	12-03-2005 21:40									#23
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NO NO NO NO!!!NO MORE PSYCHO MENTAL PROBLEM EXPLANATIONS! I ****ing HATE it. I mean the minute, in the movie machinist (SPOILER WARNINGINGINGINI!!!) the dude appears in the car smoking the first time.. I KNEW the whole ending and it was so early in the movie too. Because... this is THE popular thing now. Seems like every movie after fight club does this. It's freaking unoriginal stop doing it. It ruins my movie experience every time after fight club because it's the easy street for the end and unexplainable things. NO THANKS.


The real theory to your story would be, that there was this guy called... well let's call him Dekka, who had this weapon system business called.. HKS (hurt kill slaughter), and he came up with a totally new weapon say called the MongoBlaster, that had this effect. The only way to protect against this weapon was to something something, which Dekka did. And thus he was the only one left. How the people came back, that's because they never died. They just locked up to little molecules on the ground, invisible, until the magnetic lock in the air would give up, which was coded into the MongoBlaster say 7 days for example.. and then the lock would go away, and the molecules would reassemble, and some dudes would now have boobs, some dogs would have 'I LOVE COCA COLA' shirts as their skin etc.

	12-03-2005 22:28									#24
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Sn00py: See my post, what do you want to do with this story? That will affect the theory.

	12-03-2005 22:30									#25
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Nanorobotic weapon which, for some reason, he is not affected by?

	12-03-2005 22:31									#26
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Oh, they come back eh? Hmmm...

	12-03-2005 23:34									#27
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Or how about this:

The guy dies (got shot or whatever) and becomes a ghost. Ghosts (in this story) can't see other humans at the beginning of their 'ghost life'. To see life on the 'other side' you have to learn it which takes some time. Because your mind naturally continiues what you last saw while updating it with what he now can't see, cars and such just crash, because in his mind there's no drivers anymore, and there's no humans to keep clothes hanging in the air so naturally it falls
It also takes some time before he can 'see' ghosts... It takes some time to get used to the 'ghost life'

	12-03-2005 23:36									#28
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* Adagio rereads the above story

Ok, that doesn't make much sense at all

I hope someone gets it without getting too confused, since I don't know how to explain it in some other way...

	12-03-2005 23:44									#29
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Write the story for IRCers :

The world is really a computer simulation, however, it's not "centralised" - there's a network of computers, one for each human mind (either they actually simulate that mind, or create a believable environment for it). The computer this guy's on simply gets disconnected from the rest of the network for a time. Eventually, as the connection is restored, the rest of the people come back... the big problems with this theory are that 1) the rest of the world will keep on running without this guy and 2) one would assume such a simulation of the world to have a different way to handle network failures than just letting every other human body in the simulation disappear...



Seriously, though, writing anything eye-opening for this *is* very difficult. I'm not going to call it impossible, though, because that's the surest way to get some moron to come up with an original, well thought-out, plausible reason and present it well, thus putting all the rest of us to shame...

	13-03-2005 02:10									#30
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quote: Originally posted by Sn00py yeah these theories are great, deep and meaningful. come on, I want something eye-opening see how hard it is to come up with a new theory

I mean, what do you want? The way things are set up, an event of that magnitude pretty much requires one of two things.
A) Some kind of massive intervention from a higher being- Gods, aliens, whatever.
-or-
B) It was a change in perception of the main character.

It's pretty hard to escape one of those two general plotlines, as the posted attempts have generally fallen into. I mean, how else can you explain such a bizarre event?