A teenager in North Carolina wasn’t about to let a natural disaster prevent him from playing Fortnite, with Anton Williams deciding to finish his game despite seeing the roofs being ripped off his neighbors’ houses by a tornado. Even though the tornado was strong enough to claim the life of one nearby resident, Anton didn’t want it to distract him from his Fortnite Battle Royale session, sitting back down to play the game after witnessing the destruction unfolding outside his window.
Anton told a reporter at news station WXII 12 that he hadn’t been particularly perturbed by the 135 mile-per-hour tornado circling around his home. Despite a state of emergency being declared in Greensboro, Anton was desperate to finish his game, even though he knew that chaos was ensuing outside.
“I was sitting at home and I was playing Fortnite and all the sudden I just heard a bunch of noise,” he said. “I looked out the window and I started seeing the roofs come off the houses in front of me. Then I sat back down because I only had a couple of people left in my game. I was going to try to finish the game.”
Anton later admitted that he was “just thinking about the game” while the tornado was tearing through his neighborhood, though he conceded: “I was hoping everybody was okay around me.”
Fortnite is arguably the biggest game in the world right now, with it being a huge hit among younger players and garnering a massive following on Twitch and YouTube in the process. While it’s certainly left more than a few kids unable to tear themselves away from it, this is the first reported case of a teen trying to ignore a natural disaster in an effort to obtain that elusive Victory Royale.