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The Poison Belt was the second novel Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote about Professor Challenger. Written in 1913, roughly a year before the outbreak of World War One, it is set--rather oddly, given that it follows The Lost World, a story set in the jungle--in a room in Challenger's house. This would be the last story written about Challenger until the 1920s, by which time Doyle's spiritualist beliefs had begun to affect his writing.
The group of four from The Lost World - Edward Malone, Lord John Roxton, Professor Summerlee and Challenger himself - are gathered in a sealed room in his house when Challenger, deducing from his research that the Earth is about to come into contact with the ether of space, and that, based on its effect on the people of Sumatra, that it is poisonous, concludes the world is doomed. Challenger seals them in a room with some cylinders of oxygen, which he (correctly) believes will counter the effect of the ether. The sealing is not to keep the ether out - it permeates everything - but "to keep the oxygen in".
The four, along with Mrs. Challenger, wait out the earth's passage through the band as they watch the world outside die, and machines run amuck. Finally, the last of their oxygen cylinders runs dry, and they open a window, ready to face death. To their surprise, they do not die, and they wander through the dead landscape in Challenger's car. They encounter only one survivor, who is an elderly woman prescribed oxygen for her health.
After going to London and back, they make plans for the fate of the world at their hands--when suddenly, people start to wake up again. The effect of the ether turns out to be temporary, and the world wakes up again after a little over a day in a coma.
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