It is the year 2033. The world has been destroyed and only you and 12 other people are alive. You have a rocket that will take you to a planet similar to Earth where you must start life again. However, there is only space for you and 5 other people.
Who will you take?
David.David is 52 and is an expert on hunting and farming. He is very racist and close-minded and refuses to live with people who are gay or are not white.
Ali
Ali is 27, speaks 4 languages and has just qualified as a surgeon. He shot and killed two people while waiting to speak to you, because “they looked at him funny”.
Rebecca
Rebecca is 29 and is 6 months pregnant with twins. She has no useful skills. She is married to Paul.
Jack
Jack is 10. He likes computer games, chocolate and classical music. He also likes to pull the legs off spiders.
Emma
Emma is 22. She did 3 years of nurse training, but quit because she became addicted to heroin. She can get quite angry when she craves heroin. She has 150 works of literature in her bag.
Paul
Paul is 32 and a Special Forces soldier, who likes gardening, painting and music. He can play 4 instruments and has brought his guitar. He won’t leave without his wife Rebecca.
Daisy
Daisy is 37. She was a lawyer and had recently become a judge when the world ended. She has depression and cries frequently, and may be suicidal.
Linda
Linda is 24. She is an electronics expert and a famous hacker. She escaped from prison, where she was imprisoned for stealing credit card information from old people.
Josh
Josh is 30, and an aircraft mechanic with a PhD in Engineering. His boyfriend was recently shot dead by a man for “looking at him funny”. He has a gun in his bag.
Kim LeeKim Lee is 45, from South Korea, and was a professor of Chemistry at Harvard University, before going to prison for burning his ex-wife’s house down. He can be quite violent.
Matthew
Matthew is 34 and is an expert on physics. He has 320 science books in his luggage. When he arrived at the rocket, he was in handcuffs with a policeman, but the policeman was shot dead for “looking at somebody funny”. As he died, he screamed “you must not take this man! He is very dangerous!”
Pedro
Pedro is 39 and is a professional nanny and a qualified psychologist. He knows how to hunt and he speaks 11 languages fluently. He hates gay people and won’t travel with them.
Pyramid Discussion
1. Give each student a copy of the sheet and explain to them that they must choose 5 people to take with them to the new planet, and their reasons why. (If they complain it isn’t possible, explain that they will be cryogenically frozen for the journey.) 2. Now tell them that the plan has changed, and they must now choose with their partner who they will take. They must therefore compromise and debate their choices in order to pick a list of 5 people. Perhaps you could pre-teach phrases on expressing opinion (I think; in my opinion; I reckon; personally, I believe etc.)3. Tell the students that yet again, the plan has changed, and each pair must work with another pair to compromise again on another 5 people to take.Depending on the class-size, this could then involve a whole class discussion on who deserves to be saved.4. As a follow up to this exercise, you can create a scenario in which the students themselves are in a similar situation – for instance, a boat/hot air balloon that is approaching a desert island but is sinking due to excess weight. Each student must then give a reason/reasons why they deserve to stay on the desert island. After each student has given their reasons, they must vote (perhaps anonymously) on which student should be left behind. Then the cycle repeats as many times as you want, and each time the students must give a different reason why they will be useful on the desert island. However, be cautious: if your students aren’t all friends then the latter activity could lead to students ganging up on another student, as opposed to it being a light-hearted activity.
Created by JS Butler, using images from freepik.com. May be distributed, edited and photocopied.
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