While an entire block collapsed, she dreamed on peacefully with her headphones. Experts conclude: oversleeping may be humanity’s ultimate survival strategy.
MILWAUKEE, WI – In what scientists are calling the most extraordinary case of survival-by-slumber in recorded history, 28-year-old Bethany Kroeger slept soundly through a massive industrial explosion that leveled an entire city block, including the apartment building next door to hers.
The catastrophic blast, which occurred at 3:47 AM last Tuesday when a chemical plant’s storage tanks erupted in a chain reaction visible from space, should have killed anyone within a three-block radius. Instead, Kroeger was discovered 14 hours later by rescue workers, still fast asleep in her bed, wearing noise-canceling headphones and completely oblivious to the apocalyptic destruction surrounding her miraculously intact bedroom.
“I’ve never seen anything like it in thirty years of emergency response,” said Fire Chief Marcus Hendricks, whose team found Kroeger snoring peacefully amid the rubble. “Her entire apartment complex was pancaked except for one corner unit – hers. She was dreaming about winning the lottery while the rest of the neighborhood looked like a war zone.”
The explosion, measuring 4.2 on the Richter scale, shattered windows fifteen miles away and left a crater the size of two football fields. Remarkably, Kroeger’s bedroom sustained only minor cracks in one wall, despite being a mere 200 feet from ground zero. When finally awakened by paramedics, her first words were reportedly asking if anyone could turn down the “construction noise” outside.
Dr. Helena Voss, a sleep researcher at the Institute for Anomalous Human Behavior, believes Kroeger’s supernatural slumber may represent an evolutionary breakthrough. “What we’re witnessing could be humanity’s next stage of development – the ability to literally sleep through danger and emerge unscathed,” Voss explained. “Her brain waves during the explosion showed patterns we’ve never documented. It’s as if her unconscious mind created a protective bubble around her physical space.”
The evidence supporting this theory is staggering. Security footage from a surviving camera shows debris bouncing off invisible barriers around Kroeger’s window. Seismologists confirm that shock waves mysteriously diverted around her building’s corner unit. Most bizarrely, her houseplants – which should have been incinerated – were found the next morning looking unusually vibrant and green.
Kroeger herself remains bewildered by the attention. “I had my white noise app on and those really good Sony headphones,” she told reporters. “I thought I was just getting my eight hours. I’ve always been a heavy sleeper, but apparently I’m like, championship level.”
Government officials are reportedly studying the incident, with rumors circulating that the Department of Defense has classified certain aspects of the case. Anonymous sources suggest that Kroeger’s apartment has been designated a “zone of interest” and that similar cases of survival-by-oversleeping are being investigated nationwide.
Local survivor Janet Morales, who was thrown from her bed three blocks away, witnessed the impossible firsthand. “The whole sky turned orange and the ground was shaking like the end times, but I swear I could see this weird shimmer around that one corner of her building – like heat waves, but cold,” Morales recounted. “That girl didn’t just get lucky. Something was protecting her while she snoozed.”
Sleep experts worldwide are now questioning everything they thought they knew about the unconscious mind’s capabilities. Could deep sleep actually bend the laws of physics? Are chronic oversleepers unknowingly developing superhuman abilities?
As investigations continue, one thing remains certain: Bethany Kroeger has forever changed how we view the power of a good night’s rest. The world’s scientific community watches with bated breath as researchers work to unlock the secrets of humanity’s most unexpectedly powerful survival mechanism – the snooze button of fate itself.
The characters and events depicted in this story are entirely fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, or to actual events is unintentional and purely coincidental.
