About this Project This project is based around horror and the storytelling techniques involved with it. I wrote a short story placed in futuristic Pennsylvania with the focus on the return of polio. For the art section I decided to draw something that depicts a scene from the short story.
The process I originally started off the project by researching how horror works, and how movies, music, and stories can get the scary theme across well. I wanted to delve into creepiness, however some of my ideas that included the horror aspect of it went unused. After getting a good base of what horror is and how it can be used, I decided to start writing my futuristic world in response to things occurring right now. I got very caught up in writing and elaborating on the setting and groups that would affect the world, so my story isn't very complete, and I still feel like there is much for me to develop in terms of setting.
Language Arts: I wrote a short story placed in futuristic Pennsylvania where polio comes back. Art: I did a piece that represents a scene from the story, testing my ability to draw backgrounds, and shade in grayscale with a sense of dimensionality. Synthesis: Combining Social Studies: I decided to research horror and use modern history to help shape the futuristic world into what it is. |
The year is 2025 and in the past few months, polio has quickly been returning to Pennsylvania. Now, however it’s back being much harder to oppose along with the ability to spread to animals and plants and cause mutations in the lifeform it affects.
The return of this deadly disease largely started when the fear of vaccines causing more harm than good was fueled by a large campaign from a York group known as The Seekers of Truth (SOT) in 2020, and since then, they have steadily been gaining followers. By 2023, 64% of the Pennsylvania population were reported to be against vaccination mainly due to heavy amounts of propaganda being pumped out by SOT along with mixes of fact and fiction which proved to be very misleading for people who didn’t fact check the information. The government’s fight against the anti-vaxxers severely lacked, but highly renowned groups of science such as the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the National Academy of Sciences were at the helm to fight against the pseudoscience that SOT spouted out. Although many science groups have refuted many points being made by SOT, they still find a way to discredit some of the scientists going up against them, along with advocating a ban on vaccines in Pennsylvania. In 2024, the ban was put in place, and surely enough, diseases came back in greater numbers, however the new poliovirus alongside it’s mutations came back with the most intensity and affected the most amount of life forms in Pennsylvania. With the modern polio vaccine failing to cure any lifeform, the State borders were closed per request of the White House in an attempt to keep the virus away from neighboring states. All travel from Pennsylvania or to Pennsylvania closed leaving the entire state to stew within the disease with the government attempting to help by stationing heavily armored units just within and outside the borders to make sure nobody escaped with the disease. Research for the cure is localized in a compound in Pennsylvania to not risk any more people getting infected, and is guarded by multiple mercenaries and police officers. The compound, however gets found and destroyed by a cult and causes the research for the cure to slow tremendously, as much has been destroyed. |