This is a survival tale rather than a war saga, and the story quickly becomes one of the psychological fallout caused by being trapped in a small space with limited resources. Total annihilation? A Communist regime? No food, family, or friends? Radioactive everything? Other survivors? And then the waiting begins: waiting for radiation levels to drop so they can emerge from their hole to face who-knows-what. 10 people in total are trapped below ground. A few make it in, and in the frenzied chaos of this, Scott’s mother is knocked from the ladder and lies prone on the cement floor, unnaturally still. The shelter, however, is only stocked with supplies for 4, so Scott’s dad scrambles to lock out the pleading neighbors. Seized by panic, neighbors who scoffed at Scott’s dad for building the shelter in the first place, now fight to gain entry, to gain sanctuary. When the sirens go off, 11-year-old Scott and his little brother are whisked into the shelter, deep below the floor of their playroom. Would the Russians drop a bomb? Fire missiles? What would happen if they did? This is the question Strasser takes on in his alt-history novel, Fallout, where he imagines the fate of one family-the only family on the block with a fallout shelter-after a nuclear bomb is dropped. In 1962, the Cold War was in full swing and tensions and fear were rampant throughout the country.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |