This ruined the film for me. People could have survived underground in a vault for hundreds of years until the radiation cleared and they could inhabit the surface again and start rebuilding human society but instead what do they do? Piss their last months (!) away getting drunk and having casual sex
shareGiven the fact that they had only a few months before the radiation killed off everyone there was no way there was time to build and equip any suitable shelter, with stores, power, plants and animals, living space and all the rest necessary to survival -- particularly for hundreds of years. A shelter was an impossibility in this scenario. You're not being realistic here.
However, that is a valid criticism of the book. There, there was almost two years between the end of the war and the radiation reaching the southernmost part of the Australian mainland (Melbourne, where the action takes place). And the radioactivity wouldn't last hundreds of years, but only 20 at the most, and probably fewer than that. Therefore, there was more than enough time and incentive to construct a suitable underground bunker for a nucleus of humanity to take shelter in, with everything they needed to survive. If this had also involved having to go underground for centuries it wouldn't have been practical but for less than two decades it was certainly feasible. They surely had nothing to lose by trying.
However, that is a valid criticism of the book
Agreed, sadly. I love, love, love the book, but Shute granted the Southern Hemisphere survivors too much time to just fret and do nothing, except bury a record of civilization inside Mount Kosciuszko...
I share your feelings about the book, and am glad to see you also see this plot point as a shortcoming. It really is a major flaw.
What a sequel it would have been had Shute made provision for just such a nucleus of survivors to emerge around 1983 into the remnants of the world they had left behind. The problem of restarting civilization would have been a difficult one, especially given the reconstruction required and the problem of millions of unburied dead in the beds of most households, among other things.
had Shute made provision for just such a nucleus of survivors to emerge around 1983
A lugubrious task... too bad he killed the main characters so we wouldn't see the further adventures of Dwight and Moira, Peter and Mary, Julian Osborne, etc. Of course, resurrecting humanity after writing about our atomic suicide would have reversed the theme of the original novel...
Of course, resurrecting humanity after writing about our atomic suicide would have reversed the theme of the original novel...
The problem of restarting civilization would have been a difficult one, especially given the reconstruction required and the problem of millions of unburied dead in the beds of most households, among other things.
Sure, they would have decomposed, but you'd still have the remains everywhere. It would surely be too monumental a task to recover and bury or burn them all, but the survivors would have had to dispose of many bodies in places that they'd reinhabit or rebuild. It would be a gradual and progressive process but in the long run the remains would have to be disposed of. They wouldn't be a health hazard but you couldn't leave dessicated bodies lying around in every house or other common or needed areas or facilities.
Restarting civilization with a handful of people (maybe 1000 or so at most), even in a small country like Australia, would be a huge and lengthy task. Recovering old equipment, cleaning up 20 years' worth of exposure to the elements without maintenance or repair, getting electricity back, restarting agriculture (including breeding animals) and the rest would be enormously difficult. Not to mention there'd be little gasoline (petrol) available with which to operate heavy machinery, a critical component both to rebuild and to extract the brown coal burned for electricity.
Hopefully there might be a few other nuclei of humanity who survived elsewhere and eventually they might all make radio contact. But international travel would be many years off, and all parts of the Southern Hemisphere would suffer the same shortages, mainly oil, that would inhibit recovery. Remember also that the land masses of the Northern Hemisphere would continue to be uninhabitable for many centuries, meaning they couldn't even venture north to obtain oil and other raw materials. It would be a hard and limited life...but at least it would be life. And after a millennium or two, the world might again be reasonably populated and thriving, albeit in a more reduced and straightened way...though the wreckage of the past would still remain, and would for thousands more years, though it'd all be in a sparsely populated North.
Sir your remark "Piss their last months (!) away getting drunk and having casual sex"
i find to be quite odd, both those activities , especially when combined are probably the best use of one's time, Nuclear Armageddon or no Armageddon.Plus remember it is set in Australia, so please respect the highpoint of Aussie culture.
Australia already had plans for a Japanese invasion for WW2, which included tunnels and bunkers from Brisbane to Melbourne.
shareI sure wish that possibility could've been explored in this film. The movie is so UTTERLY and completely hopeless. I think considering the fact that they had months warning, some people, even if it turned out to be pointless in the end, would've been fleeing to caverns, some sort of underground space. Human beings are pesky little buggers and we are determined to survive or try to survive at all costs. I honestly don't believe every single person would've been floating around waiting to die.
But this was 1959. And just from looking at various bits of footage on nuclear war from the era, those 'educational' films, it seems like there was quite a bit of naivete concerning some of the scenarios in the aftermath of disaster.
Yep. I also didn't understand that there wasn't any effort to try and survive.
shareI always like to think there was some effort to survive-- that it basically happened off screen.
There could indeed have been shelters that were available for a limited number of people-- caverns under mountains, etc.
Check out:
http://www.greenbrier.com/Activities/The-Bunker/Bunker-History
I'm sure there were other such facilities in the U.S. and around the world in operation at the time.
So if you want to use your imagination, there was a hush hush effort to save something, but our group of people in the book and film were not part of that and didn't know about it.
AE36
I gather that the overwhelming nature of the world catastrophe nipped prepping/survivalism in the bud. I mean - a few isolated bands of troglodites/cave dwellers? For what? Extending individual life? What about the kids? How/what to teach them? Reading and writing? I doubt it. How to hard-scrabble after the supplies have run out and the earth is still radioactive and infertile? Tools for such subsistence farming? Nuclear winter; although not well-known then, still the modern reader would take that nastiness into consideration. Yes, I could see a few Australians/New Zealanders banding together or separately going into hiding, but from everything that the novel establishes, that seems only to be a Quixotic, last-ditch effort for individual survival, with maybe just a tiny ray of hope for the kids. A lot of effort for virtually zero return...
share