Secondary: Current Assemblies
WORST-CASE SCENARIO
By
Stuart Kerner
 Suitable for Key Stage 4/Key Stage 5
Aim
To consider how fear can prevent us living full and healthy lives.
Preparation and materials
Assembly
- Tell your audience that you would like to read two stories you found in the newspapers. Add that the two stories are quite shocking in their own ways and that they both have something in common.
Story 1
A couple from Newcastle were on holiday in Spain. One day, upon returning to their hotel room, they found that their room had been broken into. Although a little upset that someone had probably been messing with their stuff, it seemed that the intruders had just looked through their possessions, and the couple were pleased to discover that nothing was actually missing. They continued with their holiday as normal and thought no more about the break-in.
That is, until a few days later, when they got home, and developed the roll of film that was in the camera. In among the happy snaps of each other on the beach and photos of their sightseeing tours was a picture they had not taken. It was quite clearly the image of two strangers in their hotel room; to be more specific it was the image of two large strange bottoms, and to add to the horror, between the cheeks of said bottoms the couple could clearly see their toothbrushes.
Story 2
Business travellers are being made aware of a criminal gang which was operating in most major cities and was recently very active in New Orleans, USA.
The crime begins when a business traveller goes to a hotel lounge for a drink at the end of the work day. A person in the bar walks up as they sit alone and offers to buy them a drink. The last thing the traveller remembers, until they wake up in a hotel room bath tub, their body submerged to their neck in ice, is sipping that drink. There is a note taped to the wall instructing them not to move and to call an ambulance.
A phone is on a small table next to the bathtub for them to make the call. The traveller calls the emergency services, who have become quite familiar with this crime. The traveller is instructed by the 911 operator to very slowly and carefully reach behind them and feel if there is a tube sticking out of their lower back. The business traveller finds the tube and answers, ‘Yes.’
The emergency operator tells them to remain still, that paramedics are already on their way. The operator knows that not one but both of the traveller’s kidneys have been stolen while they were drugged – harvested, to be sold for illegal transplant surgery.
- If told carefully, the chances are that your stories will elicit gasps and nervous laughter from your audience. Remind them that these two stories have something in common. You may like to ask for suggestions.
Eventually, after your audience has tried to suggest possible links between the two shocking stories, tell them that the common link is quite simply that neither is true!
- These stories are what we call ‘urban myths’ – shocking stories that pass from person to person and become exaggerated with each retelling. They are a form of folklore, intended to shock and worry the listener, and since the advent of the internet they have increased enormously.
Every week a new and more shocking story is sent to millions of people via email – totally untrue but nonetheless worrying – about viruses, criminal activity and violent actions perpetrated against unsuspecting victims. Newspapers pick them up and also print many untrue stories as facts, which creates further paranoia.
Deep down we probably know that these stories are untrue or at least wildly exaggerated, but the human mind tends to multiply our fears and cause us to imagine all kinds of harm befalling us.
- Say that a good example of this is the way schoolchildren are increasingly driven to school by parents worried about the dangers of them being abducted or abused by strangers. Statistically these fears are unfounded, but newspaper headlines and urban myths create a ‘climate of fear’.
A 2007 survey concluded that ‘a perception that the outside world is both a more dangerous place for children and a less protected one is having a profound effect on the way that parents are bringing up their children.’
The actual truth of the matter is that children are now at greater danger from the increased traffic caused by these worried parents!
‘Far more people are killed by strangers behind the steering wheel of a motor vehicle than are killed by strangers on foot. Danger should be removed from children rather than children from danger.’ (Mayer Hillman, One False Move … A Study of Children’s Independent Mobility, 1991)
- Comment that many of us are missing out on life experiences because of fear and anxiety. Anticipating problems can paralyse us into inactivity, which is a real shame and a waste of the opportunities available to each of us.
Franklin D. Roosevelt, the President who led the USA into World War Two, once said: ‘The only thing we have to fear is fear itself – nameless, unreasoning, unjustified, terror which paralyses needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.’
Pope John XXIII said: ‘Consult not your fears but your hopes and dreams.’
Perhaps the next time you hear a terrible tale or read a frightening story in the newspaper or receive a worrying story via email, you will take their advice.
Time for reflection
Reflection
For Christians life should hold no fear. As the writer of Psalm 27 puts it, confidence in God removes fear and allows us to live a life without anxiety:
The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold
of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?
When evildoers assail me to devour my flesh – my adversaries and foes – they shall
stumble and fall.
Though an army encamp against me, my heart shall not fear; though war rise up
against me, yet I will be confident.
One thing I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after: to live in the house of the Lord
all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in his temple.
For he will hide me in his shelter in the day of trouble; he will conceal me under the
cover of his tent; he will set me high on a rock.
Now my head is lifted up above my enemies all around me, and I will offer in his tent
sacrifices with shouts of joy; I will sing and make melody to the Lord.
Hear, O Lord, when I cry aloud, be gracious to me and answer me!
‘Come’ my heart says, ‘seek his face!’ Your face, Lord, do I seek. Do not hide your
face from me.
Do not turn your servant away in anger, you who have been my help. Do not cast
me off, do not forsake me, O God of my salvation!
If my father and mother forsake me, the Lord will take me up.
Teach me your way, O Lord, and lead me on a level path because of my enemies.
Do not give me up to the will of my adversaries, for false witnesses have risen up
against me, and they are breathing out violence.
I believe that I shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.
Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord!
Prayer
Dear Lord,
We pray that you will guard and shelter us from fear and anxiety.
Defend us with your protective shield, that we will be fearful of nothing.
Help us, Father, to change our fear and apprehension into trust and assurance.
Keep us dedicated and unyielding in serving you and in doing your will.
And above all give us your peace.
Amen.
Song
‘Think of all the things we lose ’ (Come and Praise , 57)
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