Chance of Life

...The struggle was not against a human enemy, or for victory.

The struggle, for those who survived "The Day", was to survive the next.
Alas, Babylon, by Pat Frank

The Road by Cormac McCarthy was a novel about a post-apocalyptic era on

earth. It began with two unnamed people, the father and the son, and their journey
to the South through the devastated world. The man took care of himself just
enough to be able to look after and care for his son. They struggled to survive the
harsh weather with little food and material. In the end, the father got very sick and
died shortly after they reached the ocean and the son went on a new journey with a
man he met. Few living things remained on this planet but everything else was
gone. The ocean was not blue but gray and full of ashes, the trees have burnt down
and all that remained were branches and the ashes. The world was Barren, silent,
and godless. [27] The unspecified cataclysm has caused the earth to change
dramatically, making it impossible for existence of new life. The Road is not a
science fiction without real scientific data to back it up. Though it is not explicitly
communicated to the reader, McCarthy vaguely hints at the hard science regarding
the cataclysm and its effects.
Throughout their journey, the father and the son were constantly looking for
food and water and other necessary things. They searched at every house they
encountered. Even though it was scary to go into the house not knowing what could
be in there, the father took the chance and went in anyway hoping to find food. The
father knows they cant stay long without food. How long do you think people can
go without food? Maybe a few days. [960] I know youre scared. Thats okay. I

think there may be things in there and we have to take a look.[1308] They were
desperate to find food just as others were in the story. The father and the son
witnessed a terrifying scene when they discovered people trying to feed on an
infant. What the boy had seen was a charred human infant headless and gutted
and blackening on the spit. [1901] Food is the ultimate driver of life on earth.
Autotrophs produce food that herbivores feed upon; primary predators feed on
herbivores and primary predators are consumed by secondary predators. The
autotrophs and heterotrophs depend on each other for their survival. Decomposers
break down the dead back to the soil for the primary producers to use and make
food. The ecosystem relies on the food chain to maintain its stability; when one or
more of the element from the food chain is affected, it causes an imbalance in the
ecosystem. If there are no plants, the herbivores have nothing to eat and they will
start dying; when the herbivores die, the carnivores will start dying too. This
imbalance leads to Charles Darwins theory of survival of the fittest and this
eventually leads to extinction.

Therefore food is the main driver of life on this

planet. In the story The Road, there is a significant amount of shortage of food
because fire had wiped out everything turning it into ash. Without food, there will
not be enough resource to keep the living things alive.
Fire had wiped out most of the things that existed on this planet, leaving
nothing but ashes. What remained after the cataclysm had impacted the world so
profoundly that earth could not produce another living thing. The atmosphere had
become so polluted that the man and the son wore facemasks to filter out the air
that they breathe. with rags stuffed into the toes and they had fresh sheeting for
face masks.[2036] The blue ocean, the rain, the snow, all have turned gray. No
tracks on the road, nothing living anywhere.[272] Ash mostly contains high

concentration of carbon that pollutes the atmosphere and destroys the quality of air.
When carbon from the ashes reacts with water molecules in the cloud, it yields
carbonic acid which then turns into an acid rain. This toxic precipitation destroys
plants and crops. It also has adverse effects on the soil and forests in the long run.
This disruption of nature causes a shift in the natural balance of life. In The Road,
the man and the son struggled to keep going in the cold and harsh temperature
throughout their journey. It is cold enough to crack stones.[3] This cold
temperature is a direct result from the carbon present in the ash. This molecule
causes global warming that leads to the melting of the polar ice caps. Besides being
a source of fresh water for oceans and seas, the polar ice caps reflect heat and
sunlight back into space thus regulating the atmospheric temperatures on earth.
When the ocean gets warmer, the heat from the ocean flows upward into the polar
air, creating a high pressure system. This pressure forces the polar air to move from
the Polar Regions downwards towards the other continents dropping temperature
and making winter condition more extreme.

The boy and the man are headed

towards the coast because they want to escape the freezing temperatures and snow
of the mountains. They were moving south. Thered be no surviving another winter
here. [28] Extreme temperature kills plants and prevents further growth and
development thus leading to extinction of the living things. Life on earth is able to
continue its existence because of reproduction. If there are no living things
reproducing, there will be no presence of a new life.
The book describes what the earth looks like but never mentions what exactly
happened. Everything in the world was burned down and ashes were all that mostly
remained. The most convincing explanation of what could have caused the
cataclysm is an asteroid impact. A decent size asteroid is capable of destroying and

burning down an entire planet. At the moment of impact, it has the power to flatten
out everything for one hundred to two hundred mile radius but the shock wave has
enough power to burn and destroy the entire planet. This explains the huge amount
of ash that is present in The Road. The impact will also send debris up in the sky
blocking the sun for decades. The child is only six years old and was born after the
apocalypse which means the sun has been blocked for at least six years. Also, an
asteroids location and path can be easily be determined for any given time by
using physics; this means that the people saw the asteroid coming and prepared for
it. The father and the son found a bunker that was full of food, water, and other
important materials necessary for survival. This means that regardless of whatever
destroyed the earth, the people who made that bunker were well aware its
imminent arrival. Another important detail about an asteroid impact is that when it
nears earth, it looks like a very bright star. The father indeed had seen a bright light
and mentions it when he had a flashback. A long shear of light and then a series of
low concussions.[491] After a careful examination of the description that the
narrator gives and comparing it to scientific facts, it can be concluded that the
cause of the cataclysm was in fact an asteroid impact. The impact wiped out most
of the living things and the ones that remained have a low chance of survival.
"Once there were brook trout in the streams in the
mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current
where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They
smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional.
On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the
world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not
be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where

they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of
mystery."
The last paragraph from The Road is a reflection of the world as it once was,
before man arrived; how without man, the world had its own complications and
mysteries, beautiful and simply wild. This paragraph refers to what once was, in
contrast to what the boy never will know and what perhaps we take for granted,
"the bigger picture" that nature's giving us. Sixty-five million year ago, an asteroid
impact wiped out the dinosaurs but yet, new life continued to exist. Will we, as the
current stewards of the planet, follow the same path of extinction or will we be able
to continue on, making the best of what little we have?

Works Cited
"Discovering the Effects of Carbon Dioxide Levels on Marine Life and Global
Climate." Discovering the Effects of Carbon. Web. 12 Apr. 2012.
<http://soundwaves.usgs.gov/2007/01/>.
"Food Web." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 04 Dec. 2012. Web. 13 Apr. 2012.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_web>.
"What If an Asteroid Hit the Earth?" HowStuffWorks. Web. 15 Apr. 2012.
<http://science.howstuffworks.com/nature/natural-disasters/asteroid-hits-earth.htm>.