Revelation 18:10: "Alas, alas, that great city Babylon, that mighty city! For in one hour is thy judgment come."

"Along came Pat Frank in 1959 with a novel about what would happen if Russia started firing missiles at the United States and Western Europe in an attempt to win a nuclear war via a devastating first strike that would cost millions of lives in a matter of hours; suddenly, our worst fears were easier than ever to picture in our minds."

Frank does not shy away from showing the reader exactly what the carelessness and stupidity of the political class might cost the world one day. He doesn't linger in the gore, but he does paint a clear enough picture of what would be lost – perhaps lost forever. Frank focuses more on how much we are going to miss all the things we destroy, and just how suddenly thousands of years of human advancement could be made meaningless. Pat Frank, though, has one more message for his readers, a message of hope - hope that those who survive will be able to claw back as much of the past as is humanly possible, and that civilization will survive the worst.

Pat Frank makes racism part of his story. The author uses the Bragg family to make his points about racism and racists; he doesn't preach tolerance, he shows it in action.