An apocalypse straight out of The Last of Us—an infection that has turned those

An apocalypse straight out of The Last of Us—an infection that has turned those it didn’t kill
into aggressive, hungry zombies—has decimated the world. You and a small group of others
have survived, but you are constantly on the run, moving from place to place in the city. You
have a dream of finding a safe area, somewhere, that you can fortify and protect, where you
can begin to build a community that will last—a place, in other words, where you can safely
begin to rebuild society.
One day, as you’re wandering through the wreckage of the city, you find yourself in a place
that is barely recognizable from your former life: the campus of your university. It’s
a burned-out ruin. Everything looks potentially dangerous, but you decide to search a few
places in the hope of finding supplies. You and your companions head for the library, which is almost entirely destroyed except for one wing of the second floor. You head into what’s left of
the second floor looking for whatever you can find but
mostly you come across destruction: a smashed piano, lots of broken glass, and heaps of busted
office furniture and equipment, some of which looks like it was used as a barricade. But wait,
look! There, in the corner of what was once a classroom, you see a dusty, crumpled box. Inside
it are books, somehow miraculously preserved, undamaged by the elements.
You hear the clicking and snapping of zombies, not far around a corner and getting closer and
closer. You think to
yourself with a shudder. In the few seconds you have before you and the others get the hell
out of there, you think about that dream you have of your future: a safe place to live and set
about rebuilding a new society. You’ll need books for that. (The internet was of course one of
the first things to go during the apocalypse, so physical books are once again your only option
for knowledge.) You have just barely enough time to grab a few of the books, since trying to
carry the whole crumbling box might be awkward with zombies pursuing you. The books you choose are “Genesis”, Niccolo Machiavelli’s “The Prince”, and Emily Wilson’s translation of “The Odyssey” Why would these be of the greatest value to you, as a future
leader of what’s left of humanity, and to those who will (hopefully) come after you? Why do you choose these books to survive the apocalypse and contribute—somehow—to the
foundation of a new society?
Now run! And then get to safety and write a five-page essay in which you explain why you
chose these books. What is it about it/them that made you think to yourself, in that
hopeful split second, “It’ll be important for me and future generations—for the future of
humanity—to read and talk about this?”
link to texts: https://ia800900.us.archive.org/22/items/NewRevise…
https://apeiron.iulm.it/retrieve/handle/10808/4129…
https://melissasmitchell.weebly.com/uploads/4/3/0/…