After a small investigation into the concept of moral dilemmas in English, my class (Year 10AB English) was challenged with the task of ‘The Bunker’.
‘The Bunker’ is a moral dilemma scenario taken from the film ‘After The Dark’, where a group of students are forced to decide who should survive a global nuclear winter by entering a bunker with space enough for only ten people.
In our class it worked like this: twenty four students were each assigned a profession, for example, a Plumber, a President, a Fashion Designer. Then the class had to unanimously decide on the ten people who were to live in the bunker and survive the atomic war based on these professions. Any person not voted for would not be allowed in the bunker and therefore not survive the fallout. The votes were ultimately decided through students’ reflections and conclusions about how helpful a person's occupation would be in the post-bunker world and also throughout their lives within the bunker.
The first noticeable motive behind who was, and was not, voted into the bunker was how a person's occupation benefited the group’s overall survival. With this in mind, the Structural Engineer and the Electrician were quickly voted in. Noticeably though, once we considered post-bunker survival, the Organic Farmer, the Soldier and Electrical Engineer were quickly included However decision on profession alone was abandoned when the argument of post bunker reproduction was raised. It was evident that many male members of the class found the ‘occupation’ of ‘Kylie Jenner’ to be appropriate for the bunker! However, this motion was denied and she was replaced by an Orthopedic Surgeon. The choices of each occupation were not necessarily right or wrong, and that was the whole purpose of this moral dilemma.
Overall, this (somewhat morbid!) experiment tested our rationality, our logic and our values. It produced some really insightful and fun moments, although we all concluded by agreeing that we never wanted anything like this to ever happen in reality!
Makayla Hobbins - Year 10
