Over the course of the pandemic, many individuals have been concerned with the idea of the end of the world. In order to explore people’s thoughts on this, we came up with a playful survey question:

If you were to inherit 5 million dollars, and on the same day aliens come to Earth and say that they were going to blow everything up in two days, what would you do with the money?

We asked over fifty individuals what they would do in such a hypothetical scenario. Here are the best answers and a breakdown of how different age groups answered:

Thomas Bobbitt

Statistics teacher, age 31

“I would donate all of it to the defense team to help stop the aliens.”

Christian Bermudez 

Biology, Astronomy teacher, age 31

“I would round up every homeless person I saw and give them a steak dinner.”

Wendy Sexton

English III teacher, age 51

“Give it away, and buy a fancy sports car and drive it around, crumple up all the money and roll around in it, and cry… and use the money as my tissues.”

Jacob Sharum

Psychology teacher, age 31

“Maybe I would buy a rocket ship. Aliens will not get me if I am on the moon.”

Ndioba Fall

French teacher, age 42

“Two days? I would bury it. Maybe the Earth won’t all be shattered!”

Lindsey Oseguera 

Culinary Arts teacher, age 28

“I would feed as many people as possible, you know, like a last meal. I’ll hire some entertainment, and I would do it in an area where people don’t have a lot of access to the kind of thing. A final, last hot meal would be nice.”

Joe Reeder

Substitute teacher, age 42

“I would probably share it with as many people as possible, so everyone could have a fun last couple days on this planet.”

Jill Dunn

Deaf Education teacher, age 35

“I would give my sharings out across the world so all people could meet Jesus before they die.”

Juniors Colin Ta, Vincent Nguyen, Clayton Dao, Brad Nguyen, James Lam, age 16

“Hide in a bunker.”

“I don’t know.”

“Dude, a bunker wouldn’t even work!”

“Oh.”

“Oh.”
“Oh.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, yeah, you’re right.”

“I would send myself to space.”
“I think I would just die.”

“Let’s go on a gamble together!”

“Gambling?”
“Gamble it all away!”
“Five million? That’s not enough to gamble.”
“We still have 25 million in all. We can just gamble together.”

“Roulette? Roulette.”

Sophomore Jadon Arellano, age 15

“I would just spend it all doing whatever I wanted. I could throw a grenade at a random building, set something on fire, or buy out an animal shelter and let the animals roam free. I don’t care about the consequences because it’s one day.”

Junior Julius Alfaro, age 17

“Five million dollars? In two days? I guess I’ll buy me a big store of chips, like just a big bag of chips.”

Freshman Tyson King, age 14

“Use it for food!”

31-year olds have shorter responses than other ages.

English teachers have more detailed and lengthy responses.

Younger teachers (<36) are more concerned with the well-being of the tribe.

Students tend to be more wild with their answers than faculty would be.