The Testing

The great war that ended life as was known is called the Seven Stages War. Cia explains this refers to “the Four Stages of destruction that humans wrought on one another and then the following Three Stages in which the earth fought back” (62). The “fighting back” seems to primarily consist of “earthquakes, tornados, and floods” alongside the human-initiated “corruption of the earth” (62). The evidence of the damage caused to the planet is on display throughout the entire novel, from the scarcity of edible food and potable water in the colonies to the need to ration water and electricity—even in the city.

The novel highlights the scale of destruction particularly through Cia’s grief and astonishment at the state of the world she sees as she and Tomas travel back to Tosu City. In Chicago she describes a “wide river of dark, swirling water” that is not worth testing as it “is not drinkable. No amount of basic purification chemicals will make it so” (155). The earth is equally poisoned, as Cia notes offhandedly when they discover edible clover early in their journey; Cia’s father had told her it was “one of the few plants that never had trouble growing no matter the condition of the soil” (164). The water is polluted not only by death, debris, and radiation, but also by remnants of biological warfare, such as the “chemical cooked up by the Asian Alliance that causes the cardiovascular system to overload” (175).

These toxins and the radioactive weapons have mutated the people and animals that survived, turning them vicious. Cia notes the following:

Some of the animals developed extra limbs or lost their tails. Others lost their fur or gained skin almost impenetrable to weapons. Regardless of the change, every mutated animal became vicious. The smallest rodents with their hairless bodies and oversized ears would attack a human no matter its size (203).

The mutated humans Cia encounters are changed, too:

They are must faster than I am. Whatever chemical reaction warped their bodies and twisted their fingers into claws has also given them incredible speed. They run with their bodies bent at the waist. Their arms hang low to the ground. Their all too intelligent eyes are fixated on me (231).

A crater shocks Cia in another city. She describes it as follows:

a deep crater that stretches as far as we can see. […] All that is left of a place where people once lived and worked and thrived. […] Miles and miles of scorched emptiness. While the land behind us is corrupted, there are still plants that have adapted. Things live. In front of me there is not a speck of plant life. Nothing lives here. […] The earth is resilient, but it is hard to imagine a time when this place will be anything but a terrible reminder of what we as a people can do (254).

As the candidates confront this landscape, they discover the difficulty of surviving an inhospitable planet. The food supply has been tainted. The water is poisonous. The heat is punishing and extreme. Though Cia’s ability to adapt and survive is remarkable, the novel paints a picture of how delicate the balance between humanity and nature truly is. Humanity is more than capable of causing irreparable damage to the environment, and thus irreparable damage to the innate human ability to live and thrive. Though this novel does not directly address climate change, the depiction of the post-apocalyptic Earth speaks to those anxieties and looming possibilities for devastation.