The Twilight Zone warned of a climate crisis...in 1961.
The scariest stories are often the ones that could come true.
That’s why so many episodes of Rod Serling’s ‘60s classic anthology series, The Twilight Zone, are remembered and continue to resonate with audiences some 60 years later.
But there’s one story that feels all too real to me, even though the episode aired 35 years before I was born.
The Midnight Sun, which premiered on November 17, 1961, told the story of two women struggling to survive as the world ends. Far from a zombie apocalypse, humanity’s demise would come after the Earth fell out of orbit and started spinning closer to the sun.
The episode opens on what is simultaneously the hottest day in history and the coldest for the rest of time. An artist named Norma is painting as the thermometer in her New York City apartment reaches 110 degrees. She should be getting ready for bed soon. After all, it’s midnight.
"There is no more darkness," Serling narrates in his charming yet frightening voice in the opening act. "The people you’ve just seen have been handed a death sentence."
Everyone in the building—aside from Norma and her building manager, Mrs. Bronson—either left for Canada to find cooler weather or had already died in the month since the Earth fell out of orbit.
With water usage limited to an hour per day and the growing frequency of power outages, there were few, if any, ways to beat the heat.
The water in the world’s oceans was already dried up, preventing the imports and exports of food and water across the globe.
Pouring a cold glass of water, not even a quarter full, Norma had no idea that within a few days she would no longer be able to lean over her windowsill without burning her arms and elbows. She could now only dream of shadows on the sidewalk, the sound of automobiles and the feeling of a drop of rain on her forehead. On the radio, an anchor announced that with no more law enforcement, citizens were on their own to defend themselves against looters.
Fleeing was, in many ways, as dangerous as staying. With fuel shortages leaving many drivers stranded on busy highways, Norma sheltered in place, like many Americans who today would lack the savings to flee their homes in the event of a natural disaster.
By the next day, temperatures reached 120 degrees—or 49 degrees Celsius—and the women were growing weaker. (In 2021, the community of Lytton, B.C., would go on to break the record for the hottest temperature in Canadian history, 49.6 degrees Celsius. More than 800 died over the course of the week-long heat dome on Canada’s west coast.)
The women would soon encounter a man driven by desperation, holding them at gunpoint while he drank and showered himself in the last litre of water in the building. Before running off into the distance, the man, who began coming to his senses after getting some hydration, explained that he lost his wife during childbirth due to the heat, which caused him to lose his mind.
The extreme heat would continue to cause confusion, uncertainty, fear, brain fog, fatigue, irritation, anxiety, and paranoia.
"Norma, what if it shuts off and never comes back on again?" Mrs. Bronson asks about the electricity that is being turned on for shorter durations each day. "It will get so much worse."
As the temperature surpasses 130 degrees (54 degrees Celsius), Mrs. Bronson becomes delirious and ultimately dies from heat stroke. The thermometer on the wall shatters as Norma’s oil paintings begin to melt.
But when Norma collapses and it appears she has succumbed to the heat, she’s awoken by a doctor. Her nightmare of the oceans drying up and the Earth overheating was nothing but a fever dream...mostly.
Earth was in fact spinning out of orbit, but in reality, it was spinning away from the sun. There is a blizzard outside, there is no more daylight, and each day brings with it a new record-low temperature. Norma won’t burn up. Instead, she’ll freeze to death.
"The poles of fear, the extremes of how the Earth might conceivably be doomed," Serling says in his closing narration. "Minor exercise in the care and feeding of a nightmare, respectfully submitted by all the thermometer-watchers—in the Twilight Zone."
As the frequency of natural disasters and extreme heat events grows, the story of The Midnight Sun becomes all the more real for people across the globe. While Norma and Mrs. Bronson could lament the fact that their impending deaths were out of their hands, the cause of the climate crisis facing humankind in 2022 is much the opposite.