Massive flashes of thunder and lightning. Giant storms of hail. Floods and tornadoes, destroying entire cities and then washing away the remains. Did you accidentally pick up the Book of Revelation instead of the newspaper? No, you are not mistaken. These are the possibilities students are forced to prepare for in light of Severe Weather Awareness Week, organized by Security Services.
“Normally college students just come to our store to grab energy drinks, snacks or a few packs of ramen,” said Family Fare General Manager Sue Per-Marquette. “But over the past week, we have had to restock our entire canned goods section and bottled water section at least three times. They take almost every type of beans, although they seem displeased with pinto – I’ve heard some murmurings about there being enough of that at the Burton Sizzle Taqueria, whatever that means. Students in tattered Carleton merch and bandanas covering their faces dart into the store, take as many nonperishables as they can carry and sprint right out. They keep mumbling into their radios about trumpets? Is this for a band concert? I have no idea.”
Security services had intended for Severe Weather Awareness Week to be an opportunity for students to become acquainted with emergency protocols for a number of possible severe weather events. While their email was supposed to be read as announcing a series of drills and educational resources for these weather topics, some especially zealous students who like to skim the emails in their inboxes started to connect some dots.
“It was so cold one day, then hot and sunny the next and then all of a sudden there was rain and fog! This is obviously the battle between Good and Evil that must happen at the end of the world. And did you READ that email? Floods, hail, tornadoes! The great catastrophes are here!” said Armie Geddon ‘26.
On Thursday afternoon, the eve of the supposed greatest woe of the Severe Weather Apocalypse, the testing of the Carl Alert system, the well-stocked crew of Carleton’s most dedicated millennialists piled into the most secure, devil-proof place on campus: LDC at exactly 1:01p.m.
“LDC was packed to the gills with people for all of common time on Thursday,” said Enda TheWorld ‘28. “But by 1:01, the place had entirely cleared out. Were people fleeing? Were they raptured? Had the Serpent or the Beast or the Dragon already marked all of them? Either way, the Devil is warded off by circles of salt, and we didn’t even need to prepare one of those because the zucchini has enough salt to prevent any evil spirits from entering.”
Sources close to The Carletonian have confirmed that the doomsday preppers are still staked out in LDC, subsisting on chicken breast cooked so thoroughly that it is considered “preserved meat.” In the meantime, Religion Professor Sonja Anderson and her students in RELG 322: Apocalypse How? have utilized this opportunity by taking shifts studying the pack of students and taking pictures for a scrapbooking-style section in their illuminated manuscripts of the book of Revelation.
