Summary Of Neal Stephenson's Seveneves

Since the time I wrote a journal, I was in the middle of the first section of Neal Stephenson’s Seveneves. Now, I am on page 652 and also in the second section of the novel. This section focuses on humanity five thousand years after the destruction of the moon. It focuses on Kath Two, a woman whose job is to survey the New Earth for any anomalies in the atmosphere or on the ground. The anomalies can range from mutated birds to misbehaving people. However, before focusing on Kath Two, I must first commend the people who saved humanity in the first place. The Cloud Ark, or the plan to save the human race, was not very successful to say the least. It was about as successful as John McCain’s presidential bid. In other words, it was not successful …show more content…
She was useful of the Old Earth, or pre-destruction Earth, with her charismatic speeches and bipartisan appeal with the political parties of old, but now, she is useless. JBF was never educated in any scientific field. So, she devised a plan that she hoped would gain here notoriety in the community of the Cloud Ark. She planned on sending the human race to Mars, an unstable planet with no resources whatsoever. She was even confident in herself, saying, “Godspeed, Ravi. I look forward to hearing your first transmission from the surface of Mars,” (Stephenson 482). Of course, as stated before, her ‘plan’ would lead to the deaths of over ninety-five percent of all of humanity, and that was thanks to two flaws in her plan. One flaw, of course, was that JBF did not understand science. She proposed that the trip to Mars would not take any time at all, and thus the group of people going to Mars did not need a sustainable food source. Instead, she took what see had stolen from the Cloud Ark and distributed it among her fellow crazy people who thought going to Mars with a scientifically uneducated POTUS was a fantastic idea. The other flaw was that she took her followers for granted. She failed to appreciate them adequately. In doing this, her followers rebelled against her in a yearlong war over resources and power. In the end, JBF was responsible for the deaths of about 1200 people all because she took …show more content…
Never give up. It is such a simple idea. But, it is also a powerful idea. Looking back at the beginning of the novel when the moon exploding was breaking news, people thought that life was done. But despite the efforts of some people, like JBF and Aïda, the human race survived. When the scientific community found that the world would be destroyed, they did not give up. They created a massive and seemingly impossible project to build a space ark to save the human race. Without the efforts of scientists and even general people who did not give up, humans and all of life would be extinct. One extremely vital point in the life of the Cloud Ark was when Dinah and a couple of colleagues set out to retrieve water from a comet passing by. Every person on that ship except for Dinah ended up perishing. It was safe to say that during that mission, “Dinah had been through many emotional ups and downs while retrieving Ymir,” (Stephenson 491). Ymir was the ship attached to the comet that was once piloted by another team of scientists, all of whom met fates similar to people who died in Hiroshima due to the intense heat of the sun. Yet, despite what Dinah had been through, she never gave up, and ended up bringing the need water to the Cloud Ark so it could survive and sustain humanity for thousands of years. Now that is the power of not giving