Nevil Shute · 1957 · sea
Nevil Shute's 1957 novel of the end of the world. A nuclear war has killed the Northern Hemisphere, and in Melbourne the last survivors live out their final months as the radioactive fallout drifts steadily south. The American submarine USS Scorpion makes one last voyage across the dead Pacific, chasing the ghost of a radio signal and looking on the ruined world a final time.
- 1Melbourne
Melbourne, Australia's southernmost large city, is one of the last places alive. A year after a thirty-seven-day nuclear war killed the Northern Hemisphere, the fallout is drifting south on the winds and the city waits its turn. The American submarine USS Scorpion, the last operational US warship, shelters here under Australian command; an earlier voyage north to Cairns, Port Moresby and Darwin found no one living.
- 2Gulf of Alaska
On her long voyage the Scorpion runs north to the Gulf of Alaska to measure the radiation. The hope had been that the levels were falling faster than feared; instead they are as deadly as ever, and the last scientific case for survival collapses.
- 3Seattle
A faint, broken Morse signal has been heard from near Seattle, and the submarine comes into Puget Sound to find its source. A sailor whose home is Edmonds slips overboard to die where he was born. The signal proves to be a window frame swinging in the wind against a transmitter key in an empty radio room. No one is alive.
- 4San Francisco
Cruising the dead coast, the crew take turns at the periscope to look on San Francisco. The city stands silent and the Golden Gate Bridge has fallen into the strait. There is nothing left to find, and they turn for home.
- 5The open sea
Back in Melbourne the radiation arrives, and people take the government's pills rather than die slowly. Rather than wait, Commander Towers takes the Scorpion out past the Heads one last time to scuttle her at sea, while on the shore Moira Davidson watches the submarine go, and then follows him in her own way.