www.relaxia.cz/galerie/ nuclear/images/Nuclear
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www.relaxia.cz/galerie/ nuclear/images/Nuclear
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About the Author:
"Pat Frank" was the nickname adopted by the writer, newspaperman, and government consultant, who was born Harry Hart Frank (1908-1964), and who is remembered today for novel Alas, Babylon. Before getting his first novel published, Pat Frank had spent many years as a journalist for newspapers.He wrote fiction, non fiction, stories and articles.After Alas Babylon became famous for being well written and intersting, Pat Frank began writing again for newspapers and putting his writing towards political issues. In 1960 he served as a member of the Democratic National Committee. In 1961, Pat Frank recieved the American Heritage Foundation Award.His other books include Mr. Adam and Forbidden Area.
Summary: At the height of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, Mark Bragg, an officer in the Air Force, warns his brother Randy that nuclear war is unavoidable. Mark lives in Omaha with his wife Helen, and his children, Ben Franklin and Peyton. He sends them to live with Randy in the isolated Florida town of Fort Repose. While he waits for them to arrive, Randy warns his friends, including his neighbors, the Henrys, and his girlfriend, Lib McGovern. He begins to gather food and necessities in case the unthinkable happens. He picks up Helen and her children at the airport, as the radio reports that tensions are escalating between the Soviet Union and the U.S.A. The next morning, war breaks out, and nuclear weapons destroy all of Florida's major cities. Washington is also destroyed, and a low-level Cabinet official becomes President. Having lost all power and communication with the rest of the country, Fort Repose is completely shut out.
Disorder and Chaos haunt the small town. The local doctor Dan Gunn is beaten up by drug addicts, who ransack his clinic; the local police chief is killed; the bank president, Edgar Quisenberry, kills himself. Randy and his friends survive the radio active poisoning, and they maintain a sense of order in the small town. Randy hooks up a supply of fresh water for his house and his neighbors, and the Henry farm provides food. Dan continues to travel around the town seeing patients, doing the best he can with limited medical supplies. The doctor discovers that a lot of people are suffering from radiation poisoning, that a man named Porky Logan has been passing out.Randy and Dan take careof the jewelry by burying it, along with Porky Logans body, because along with poisoning others, Porky Logan has suffered from Radiation poisoning and died. They bury Porky in a lead-lined coffin. When the townsfolk refuse to help bury the coffin, Randy brandishes a gun and forces them to do so.
Randy's authority in the town becomes more and more respected. A radio announcement declares that former Army Reserve officers are to assume responsibility for martial law in isolated areas, and Randy is a former Reserve officer, so he begins to post decrees and take responsibility for law enforcement. When a group of bandits attack and brutally beat Dan Gunn, he collects a posse and hunts them down — on the same afternoon that he and Lib are married. He and his friend kill three of the bandits and hang the other, although his neighbor, Malachai Henry, is shot and dies.
The town struggles through the summer, surviving a brief shortage of fish, and Randy solves a crisis involving a lack of salt. He combs the diary kept by his ancestor, who founded the town, and finds a reference to a nearby pool with a plentiful supply of salt. In autumn, government planes begin flying over the town, and a helicopter lands, carrying Paul Hart, a military man and friend of Randy's from before the war. He tells them that the country is still trying to restore basic services, and that centuries may pass before the contaminated regions become clean. He also confirms that Mark died in the war, meaning that Helen is free to marry Dan, with whom she has fallen in love. He offers to take them out of Fort Repose, but they all prefer to remain in the community they have rebuilt.
This work contains copyrighted materials which have been used under the fair use exemption of the U.S. Copyright Law.