As many upperclassmen know, the winter months during the past two years at Wesleyan have been dominated by catastrophic weather disasters, buried cars, cancelled classes, and less-motivated students fleeing to more comfortable areas across state lines. As October rolls around, this year’s Snowpocalypse-level event is likely to be waiting around the corner, so it’s as good a time as any to start speculating. Here are a few of my theories for what might be heading our way.

Hurricane/Blizzard
Climatologists might predict that rising carbon dioxide levels or other atmospheric anomalies will cause another round of brutal condensation. Power lines will die, nobody will be able to check Facebook on their laptops, and we might even see the return of the lovable, giant snowmen parades. But although some might suspect this is the most likely option, I doubt that Mother Nature will send us another round of boring inclement weather. I mean, we’ve been dealing with too much rain and snow for years now. The University is used to cancelling classes, and despite Public Safety’s best efforts, every Wesleyan student knows how to build an igloo by now. Wouldn’t Gaia feel the pressure to get a little more creative at this point?

Magma Flows
I think that the gods of our doom might want to turn up the heat a little this time around. I’m not saying that a whole volcano will suddenly appear in the center of Middletown, but you don’t need Pompeii for volcanic events to occur: a little leak of magma here and there would suffice. In Iceland, lava just comes out of the ground in random places all the time. Who’s to say that won’t happen here? The sub-bass from the lacrosse team’s warm-up music on Jackson Field might just crack Earth open this time around.

Alien/Robot Invasion
Did anyone see that movie “The World’s End” this summer? It showed what would happen in the event of an extraterrestrial, robotic invasion in a small British town. The geographic layout and drinking habits of this town seem pretty similar to those at Wesleyan, so I’d say it’s a pretty solid analogy to what would happen here if we were faced with a “body snatchers”-type scenario. Was anyone paying attention to those Tufts visitors at the night game? There’s no way they actually came all this way just to see their team get destroyed like that, right? I think a few of them might have made themselves comfortable for a longer stay.

Tour de Franzia
After the legendary Tour failed to materialize last year, only Zeus knows how long it will take before all of our suppressed destructive energy explodes onto the streets of Middletown. WesRave, or any other innocent nighttime activity, has the potential to tip into darkness. Seriously, how has nobody been trampled yet during one of these things? If a lesser storm happens and PSafe and MPD become temporarily incapacitated, I bet that Tour is going to be the first thing on some peoples’ minds.

WSA Shutdown
Let’s be honest: The worst thing that could happen is that Spring Fling would get canceled, but after last year’s relocation, even that doesn’t sound so bad. Moving on.

Food Truck Annihilation
When students were cut off from dining services during the recent years’ storms, food trucks came to the rescue. But what would happen if, in a heist worthy of a Batman film, suddenly those food trucks were themselves incapacitated? Would we venture out of the snow to loot or pillage? Or would the weather be too severe that we would be forced to stay cooped up, resourceless, in our homes and dorms? This can only end in a scenario so bleak I don’t even want to dwell on it any longer.