Anybody read "On the Beach"? I thought the novel was absolutely horrible. Its not that the writing is bad, its that the writer had tunnel vision. Immediately after reading it I drafted an outline for "Off the Beach" with the premise that while the idiots committing suicide in "on the Beach" wasted their time, my hero was stocking and equipping a recently abandoned Australian mine shaft with all the air filtration equipment needed to maintain livestock and a human colony underground until the radiation subsided. There was no issue with cost since all materials were free for the taking because everyone else planned to die. Just pull up to a warehouse and load your truck. Convince a dozen people to fight for their lives by contributing to the labor and you just saved the human race. A year later they emerge to find a few other similar colonies in Switzerland etc. What utter stupidity to wait for death and make no effort to save yourself!
Try "Alas Babylon" And "Lucifers Hammer" You'll love them both. KNow you can get the first one from Amazon.. havent checked on the 2nd one in a few months
Back to the topic... On the beach Yes I read it back in jr. high school, and I saw the movie when I was 12. It was during the cold war when we and the Russians were still testing ever larger hydrogen bombs. My grades went to hell and I asked why we all would want to go on living after seeing the movie. Especially the scene where the Salvation Army was handing out suicide pills to avoid people having to die the slow painful death of radiation sickness. My parents were damn sorry they took me to see it. I wasn't the only kid who reacted to it that way, though. It stuck in mind even till today! They made a remake of the movie a few years back. Not much improvement over the old one. Your re-write sounds like something that should have come out way back then, it sounds less fatalistic. Hope you finish and publish your novel "Off the Beach" here. Maybe I can get some closure toward the end of my life after all... FukuSnafu hasn't helped my frazzled nerves from way back then... Thanks... - BC
Read it when it first came out, even then I thought it was stupid - why make arrangements for your cows to be fed and cared for if they will die anyway and so will you? If everything is going to die anyway - barbeque for everyone! Of course that was when the majority of the people believed that you could not survive a global nuclear war. Our neighbors had a "bomb" shelter in their yard that we played in. A cot, some water and a little food. They thought they were prepared. It was a pretty scary world then because so much information was kept from the public.
:wave: Hi there JayJay. We are near cookeville.. almost as far out as Cordell Hull Lake. I always say - we arent at the ENDS of the earth exactly- but you can see it from here! You need to think about returning to Tn, buy some land while the prices are down and get a place to run away to organized. Greatest folks on earth here, IMHO. I've lived in ALOT of states over my lifetime and Tn has it all, natural beauty, wild bounty and the nicest most honorable folks around
I remember MT... we had a bomb shelter in the back yard back then too. Ours was a bit sophisticated because my dad worked as an engeineer for an Atomic Energy Commission contractor and was also a local Civil Defense officer. Why make such arrangements? - because "hope dies last"... - BC
I hand them out to friends too. And you are correct, it is a better book. I bought my last one at Amazon, only place I could find it It is almost a premer in adjusting and surviving in a small town. Though it is after a nearby (within 75 mile Nuke hit (well.. think it was atom bombs back then).. it focus' more on 'what now' and what do we need to accomplish, to survive. Lucifers Hammer is a little slower of a read and a much longer book but has some good pointers on survival situations as well.
Oh, I hated "On the Beach!" My honors English teacher assigned it to us. I rank it right up there with "Lord of the Flies." :scratch As for "Alas, Babylon," I just picked up a copy at the local thrift shop for the dear price of.....50 cents! :2thumb: "Alas" reminded me that salt is VERY important, and lacking any salt mines near here (that I know of), I've added salt to my 'you can never have too much...' list.
MAD I am 62 years old. I lived through the Cuban missile crises. The only thing preventing a globular nuclear war was the Mutually Assured Destruction principle. or MAD. The USA and Russian government had enough weapons in their arsenal to kill every living thing on Earth 200 times. If they launched, the President would know in three to five minuets and the joint chiefs and the President would have less than fifteen minuets to give a launch order. Ten minuets later at approximately twenty five minuets from the initial launch detection. The first missiles would begin to land on US soil. Our missiles would be on the way as well as our B52's and our nuclear submarines would have submerged in unknown locations and would surface approximately six months later and immediately launch a second counter strike against the Russians. This would completely eliminate any survivors. This second strike would likely be redundant and would fall on a extinct population! My father, ( a decorated Combat Engineer during WWII ) took me to a civil defense meeting at the National Guard Armory. They showed us a film on how to build a fallout shelter. On the way home , I asked Dad if we were going to build one. Dad told me this and I will never forget what he said. "No Bub , I don't think so". He said he had seen the effect of war on Europe and what a conventional war did to the population. He told me this. "We could build a shelter and I could stock it but would you be willing to shoot our neighbors?" I told him that I couldn’t do that and he said he was glad I couldn’t and that he couldn't either. He said that would be what we would have to do and we would still be unlikely to survive. We drove a little further and he told me this, ( "There are sometimes you are just better off, to not survive !" ) After this I understood , ground Zero was the preferred place to be in a global nuclear war !
A limited nuclear exchange or a solar/nuke EMP or a return of the Spanich Flu is far more likely now IMHO. With that in mind, I am prepared to shoot anyone to protect my family. I cannot imagine a worse fate than watching my family slaughtered or watching them starve, all the time knowing I could have prevented it by prepping. Beans'n'bullets
Amen Horseman.. well said. I am 65 on the 15th of this month and I too lived through the missile crisis and the defcon warnings of the Nixon years, so I DO get what he is saying.. but I am VERY family oriented. I have the greatest family in the world.. a true treasure that I would protect against ANYONE trying to take food out of their mouths and writing their death certificate. In my case, everyone says I am an EarthMother type 'cause I prepare to help those outside my family with bartering items and some fishing giveaways, I do that because I care for human beings.. but do not misunderstand me.. I'd take matters in my own hands, and very quickly, to protect my grandbabies and my son from doing without, especially since I have done my best to warn the neighbors of pending scenarios. If they are gonna get pushy, after I have given them a chance to prep for themselves.. then I'm gonna push back HARD to protect my own. Saying that- I dont think a full scale Nuke war is in the cards, everyone now knows the destruction that would take place on both sides. Nobody wins. I think terrorists and dirty bombs similtaneously in major cities, or solar CME's that throw us back into the 1700's-1800's are far more likely.
Me too. I first read it long before I got interested in prepping, and even then it made me mad. I wasn't too long out of high school at that time (yeah, back when I had to fight dinosaurs on my walk home from school but even then I knew it way unnecessarily doom-and-gloom. I watched the movie again last year. This time it didn't make me mad, just kind of sad that so many people who read the book or watch the movie are getting such crappy intel.
