In Arthur Conan Doyle's science fiction novella The Poison Belt, Professor Challenger discovers that Earth is passing through a belt of poisonous ether in space that will destroy all life. Summoning his companions—Professor Summerlee, Lord John Roxton, and journalist Edward Malone—to his Sussex home, he seals them in a sealed room supplied with oxygen tanks. As the deadly ether envelops the planet, the group watches through a window as civilization collapses around them. Facing certain death when their oxygen runs low, they unexpectedly survive as Earth passes through the belt. Humanity awakens unchanged, yet profoundly transformed by its brush with extinction.
