The news came in on a Wednesday—the Earth was, in fact, a gigantic, hyper-sensitive bomb. This came as a bit of a surprise, and caused much speculation and debate among its inhabitants. The dominant question quickly became how much time do we have left, along with what's stopping it from exploding then?

As various scientists eventually figured out, every time a human being uttered the sound "p", the Earth bomb would put off its inevitable detonation for another two seconds. The human population reacted immediately. Oral alliterative poetry involving "p" skyrocketed in popularity, as did baby names beginning with the letter. "Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers" became the #1 most used tongue twister in theater circles. People started to take to the practice of murmuring the plosive over and over before they went to sleep. Some even paid others to do it, which became a quick, easy way of earning money.

Soon after, however, the scientists redid their calculations, and panicked. The sound that would hold off the world from its apocalypse was, in fact, "t", not "p". They'd gotten the wrong plosive.

Even worse, saying the sound "p" shortened the time to the explosion.

Needless to say, the Earth blew up soon afterwards.