The Disaster Town The Government Ignored (Flint, Michigan)
Why hello there, traveler, and welcome to the “Apocalypse Tour.” This is the walking and drinking tour for all those disaster junkies out there, where we observe the locations that had a significant impact on species 947’s collapse (947 were also known as humanity [hyoo·ma·nuh·tee]). We discuss the physical, digital, and psychic locations that contributed to humanity’s untimely end on a tiny planet called Earth in the year 90,423 XE (what humans may know as 2XXX AD).
Today, we are looking at a community that was ravaged by pollution or “death chemicals” due to political incompetence. No, we aren’t referring to East Palestine, for those history buffs out there interested in the pasts of archaic flesh bags. Nor are we referring to the Farsider Dark Matter Incident, where a dogmatic resource monger swapped out its inhabitants’ biological components for precious metals. We are instead speaking of the human community of Flint, Michigan, in the imperial polity known as the United States of America [yoo·nai·tuhd stayts uhv uh·meh·ruh·kuh].
Flint was a city northwest of the human industrial hub known as Detroit. Over half of its inhabitants there had darker skin pigments, meaning they belonged to a lower caste in US society. America had a “hidden,” quasi-racialized caste system, which is a fancy way of saying that they systemically discriminated against citizens with darker skin pigments but pretended like they didn’t. US lawmakers often believed their society was entirely meritocratic while ignoring that Black Americans were far more likely to receive worse health outcomes, have less access to lodging, and earn fewer subsistence tokens known as “money” [muh·nee]. For another historical reference, see the bulged-eyed vs. recessed-eyed caste system of the Pink Jungles of Reylor VII.
The crisis revolved around those subsistence tokens. Decades earlier, the community had been impacted by the withdrawal of a transportation factory owned by a company (or “resource monger”) known as General Electric, which had in the past paid many of Flint’s inhabitants money for assembling ground transports known as automobiles [aa·tuh·muh·beelz]. These vehicles were powered by the very same death chemicals killing 947’s ecosystem. The loss of GE’s factory and the refusal of the USA’s various governments to help people belonging to its lower caste meant that Flint’s local community was low on tokens.
A political leader named Rick Snyder [rik snai·dr]— an Earthling long accused of disliking members of this lower caste — decided to seize control of Flint’s democracy and place it directly in the hands of an emergency manager or dictator, whose job was to prioritize the hoarding of tokens at all costs. In April of 90,350 XE, or 2014, this emergency manager decreed that Flint would switch its water supply from a well-regulated and well-maintained source to one that was not, because it would cost fewer tokens to do so.
This decision almost immediately caused lower caste citizens in Flint to notice a dip in their water quality, but because American society prioritized tokens above all else, these concerns were ignored. There were spikes in incidents of Legionnaire disease, which for non-warm-blooded organisms is a condition that, if left untreated, can cause the organs of species 947 to fail. Tests would soon detect increased concentrations of the element Scooma, known colloquially as lead, which could be debilitating to humans in high enough concentrations. These conditions, however, were not investigated because Snyder’s appointed dictator was worried about what added scrutiny would do for his token collection.
It was not until reports from members higher up than Snyder’s government showed that concentrations of lead were indeed dangerous that some people started to act (note: qualitative data was usually not believed in this society unless quantified by members of the upper caste). The Environmental Protection Agency and Center for Disease Control released reports that this spiritual society would classify as “damning,” and soon the negligence was reported on more frequently in their corporate press.
Yet Snyder was unable to admit wrongdoing, leading to contradictory reports, where some levels of government asserted that the water was safe to drink, (what we may know as a lie) while others asserted the opposite (in other words, the truth). The city voted to reverse the water source in 2015, but the dictator refused to comply. It would take months before they phased out the inferior water source completely. Many of those responsible would ultimately face no legal repercussions for the decision to endanger these lives, and by 2022 in Earth time, most cases against the parties responsible were thrown out in the USA’s inefficient legal system.
This situation may sound confusing, but one must remember that the higher caste of species 947 was very truth-adverse, preferring to construct entire alternate realities rather than admit culpability: a flaw that would seal many fates in the end.
For temporal visitors who want to visit this community, we advise you to respect its inhabitants. The victims of this attack were not responsible for the stupidity of their leaders and often had no political say in the formation of their laws. And so please consider this information before respectfully visiting this part of humanity’s tragic history.
If you wish to assuage your guilt, we advise you to acquire some subsistence tokens and send them over to organizations such as the Flint River Watershed Coalition that are devoted to improving the area’s water quality.
Note — for the humans who have somehow bypassed our encryption protocols, take comfort in the fact that this is a joke from a normal human and not a retrospective on your species’ imminent demise.
DO NOT use this information to stop this future because that would create a time paradox and go against your people’s laws, as well as Medium’s ToS., which I’m told are very important. I AM NOT encouraging you to take the law into your own hands, something I cannot do as an appendageless species.