UNSCRIPTED

For centuries, the gods accepted humanity’s non-stop feed of foolishness, allowing their growing addiction to likes, shares, and the all too frequent fish-lip selfie. But there’s only so much a god can take. One day, after yet another viral trend—this time involving humans pretending to be squirrels and storing food in their cheeks—their patience snapped.

The gods came together to intervene, swiping left on the idea of another plague because been there, done that. Left again on fire because, with climate change and California, that market’s cornered. Hmmm, a flood! It felt poetic, cleansing, universal. Plus, the idea of drowning everyone’s devices brought them a sadistic joy.

Warnings were sent, of course, but no one paid attention. Except for one person, Taylor. Not that Taylor, a 47 year-old social media manager of sorts. She spent her time trying to explain why going viral wasn’t a sustainable business plan. The gods didn’t choose Taylor because she was good hearted—they chose her because she’d just won a yacht on the reality TV show Keeping Up with the Catastrophes. An ironic prize for someone who hated boats.

The rains came, and the world turned into a rather large outdoor waterpark. #floodlife trended just before everything went slippery.

Meanwhile, Taylor thrived. Her time offline had prepared her for survival in ways no one could have predicted. She grew basil in pop cans and perfected the art of catching rainwater in a cracked wine glass that said, “It’s Wine O’Clock Somewhere.”

By the time the waters receded, Taylor had become a hero. She laid down the first rules of the new world:

1. No selfies.
2. No food pics unless it’s genuinely impressive. If it took less than three hours to make, no one cares.
3. And absolutely no more posts saying the flood was staged by the deep state to distract from UFO sightings, or the like.

The gods smiled. Humanity was back on track, for now.

Honestly, Taylor’s rules seem practical and long overdue if you ask me, but humanity’s talent for pushing the gods’ limits isn’t new. It’s right up there with the number of iPhone models if you count all the times ancient civilizations wrote about their God/s wiping the slate clean with a flood. It’s a bit comforting though, innit, to know that humans have been testing divine patience for all these years.

After reading the Epic of Gilgamesh and noticing some striking similarities to the Bible, I started digging into other cultures. Turns out, there are plenty to choose from. The Sumerians, Greeks, Hindus, Mayans and many more all have their own flood stories, and they have a lot in common: people screw up, the god/s snap, and water is the most plausible punishment and solution—or as the kids call it, rage quitting. What’s really quite interesting, though, is how different cultures spin the flood story and what that might say about them.

Take the Epic of Gilgamesh, one of the oldest stories. Here, the gods decide humans are too noisy (a relatable complaint for anyone living in an apartment with neighbors who have dogs that race back and forth into the wee hours of the night) and send a flood to quiet things down.

Then there’s Noah’s Ark, where God unleashes a flood as a solution to the world’s wickedness, with a single decent man, and his family, tasked with saving life on earth, and repopulating, ahem.

Compare that to the Hindu myth of Manu, where the flood feels less punishing and more practical—a natural disaster humanity is warned about, with Vishnu stepping in to offer survival tips. I don’t know about you, but Vishnu handing out survival tips sounds like the ancient equivalent of that one overly prepared family member who’s been stockpiling canned beans and water filters for years, waiting for doomsday, or the zombie apocalypse, or whatever you like to call it.

But why water? Why not fire, famine, or dodgeball with asteroids? Maybe it’s because floods were what they knew. Early civilizations depended on rivers like the Tigris and what my 8 year-old son calls the “you-fart-hades.”These areas offered fertile lands but also came with risks. Too much water and they were drowning hazards. Without science to explain storm surges, floods became divine acts. Too much water? Clearly, the heavens were angry.

Maybe these stories were survival guides of sorts. Live responsibly, honor the gods, and don’t push your luck. If you do, the gods might not hit ctrl, alt, del again. It’s a watery trend. Test the gods’ patience, you know how it ends.

Noah’s Ark ended with a promise and a covenant—a rainbow across the sky. Gilgamesh concludes with  immortality for Utnapishtim. There’s something compelling about the endings of flood stories. They weren’t just about the death and destruction; they were about what comes after. The happy ending, the everlasting life, the promise of hope—the flood was not meant to be the end, but rather the beginning.

Whether ancient myths or modern fears of rising sea levels, the message is eerily consistent. Humanity has a knack for messing things up and then surviving just long enough to do it all over again. The flood stories remind us that destruction is inevitable, but so is renewal. The question is, what do we do with that second, or sixteenth, chance?

The gods might be watching, and history proves that they won’t keep their patience forever. Let’s not make them rethink the asteroids.