It’s dawn, July 12^th, 2012, the day that nearly all 7 billion of the Earth’s human inhabitants decide to start killing wild animals for their dinner. (To be exact, the human population is actually 7,025,629,572, according to the current population clock…but who’s counting?)

All at once the teeming, unnaturally overcrowded human population leaves the congested towns and cities—fully armed—to take to the fields and forests in search of the last vestiges of wildlife out there. For many, the only animals besides pets they’ve ever seen are the ones that come sautéed, grilled, fried or fricasseed, but hunter propagandists have convinced them that they’ll be better environmentalists if they join the war on wildlife. Some are surprised at how easy thier devolution back to the savagery of hunting is for them.

It doesn’t matter if an animal is considered big “game” or “vermin,” protected or prosperous, not a single non-human is safe from Homo sapiens’ new-found devotion to their old ways. The first to get hunted to extinction are the critically endangered species, like the white-tailed prairie dog, the black-footed ferret and the California condor in the U.S., the Panda in China or the Okapi in Africa…

By noon, only a fraction of the seven billion have made their own kills, and the per-person success rate is already dropping. Instead of each new hunter killing their own wild animal, people start teaming up and sharing their kills, yet there still just isn’t enough wildlife left to go around. Naturally, they begin to turn their weapons on one another…

The authors of those trendy new pro-hunting books that extoll the virtues of killing wild animals for dinner—finally seeing the error in their ways—try in vain to call off the seven billion new super-predators, telling them, “We didn’t mean for all of you to start hunting, just a select, entitled few!”

(Upwards of 60 billion factory-farmed animals are killed across the globe annually, including 10 billion in the US alone, to appease hedonistic human carnivores. How far could anyone expect the Earth’s few remaining wildlife populations to go in feeding each and every obdurate meat-eating human?)

By the end of the day, the bloodlust is satiated, but the Earth is virtually a lifeless wasteland; every animal species has been hunted practically to extinction. Only now do the masses look around for a fresh, new answer. They’re ready to listen to a vision for a truly sustainable future that doesn’t involve killing animals for their dinner.

A vaguely familiar message comes from the few people who did not take part in the days’ killing spree. Their two-word slogan may not have sounded appealing to the masses before, but now people are willing to take the path of peace—to lay down their weapons and live a less destructive life.

Ultimately, this story has a happy ending: The Day the Human Race Went Vegan