A strange green cloud has turned almost the entire human race into stone. The only survivors are eight children, their intrepid teacher Birnenstiel and his friend, a jolly millionaire, who by chance all happen to be in an airship above the green cloud at the time. Against this background Birnenstiel tells a bizarre adventure story in which he and the children are heroes. With loving and pointed irony he confronts his protagonists with deep-frozen beauty queens, gene-manipulated tomatoes, extraterrestrial maniacs, aggressive goldfish and last but not least the rampant mechanics of an abandoned civilisation which claims its victims one by one. When the narrator goes too far, the children take the story into their own hands..