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.