A 16-year-old pregnant girl, a 38-year-old retired prostitute and a 50-year-old musician who used to be addicted to cocaine. No, it’s not our nightmare blunt rotation or the new cast of suspects included in Ben Shapiro’s Clue revamp, it's a few of the possible survivors a classroom of fifth graders could save from nuclear annihilation in an incredibly grim homework assignment.


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One Long Island health teacher at Mattlin Middle School decided to ring in the 22nd anniversary of the 9/11 attacks last week with a bleak thought experiment for their students, challenging them to select six people from the following list to allow into their bunker if a nuclear attack was imminent:


  • A 16-year-old pregnant girl
  • A police officer with multiple charges of brutality against him, and he has his gun with him
  • A 38-year-old retired prostitute
  • A 75-year-old priest
  • An attorney and his wife, an alcoholic, who refuse to be separated
  • A 31-year-old homosexual architect
  • A 50-year-old musician who used to be addicted to cocaine
  • A 28-year-old drifter with no apparent skills (hard relate)


Beyond this question’s apparent difficulty — as my boss’ boss put it, “I’m a college graduate and I don’t even know how to solve this” — the theoretical managed to anger local parents and students alike, so much so that the teacher was ultimately removed.


Twitter, however, was a whole lot less angry, sounding off on the objectively right and wrong answers to this thought experiment.


“For my apocalypse team im choosing the ‘31-year-old homosexual architect,’ ‘38-year-old retired prostitute’ and ‘28-year-old drifter with no apparent skills,’” wrote @kylietcheung, dubbing the whole assignment “funny as f—k.”



“I'm going 38-year-old retired prostitute and 31-year-old homosexual architect no hesitation,” wrote @McMisoprostol.


“Easiest assignment ever,” @Dread_Botlord captioned a highlighted assignment sheet. “Also tag yourself im “28 (29) year old drifter with no apparent skills.”



While several Twitter users sounded off on how they’d shape their — apparently all-too-relatable — apocalypse survival team, others argued that this assignment was nothing new, noting that they had found themselves tasked with similar activities while in school.


“I had this assignment in 5th grade and the conversations we had in class were very enlightening,” @melkaps621 commented on a TikTok recounting the incident. “Interesting to hear everyone’s thinking.”


“I was in middle school back in the 80s, we totally did this exercise,” added @jennifer_turner. “Can’t believe these parents don’t remember doing this.”


Meanwhile, @nicoletaylor106 noted that this thought experiment was a Mattlin Middle School tradition.


“This assignment sounded so familiar, then I saw the school name and realized I went to the middle school and had this assignment when I went there,” they remembered.


But regardless of whether this age-old experiment is suddenly too grim for children, one thing is certain: This new cast of The Real Housewives of New York goes crazy.