Nevil Shute's 'On the Beach' in real time. This time?

 

I own a hand-me-down book of 'On the Beach'.  Read it three times over forty-five years.  I really don't need to read it a fourth time, BUT, seeing as how Donald Trump is surreal, and completely off his rocker .. maybe I'll have  .. time for a refresh before the 'Apprentice' kills us all

But first ..Time for a refresh.   A Wikipedia basic

On the Beach is an apocalyptic novel published in 1957, written by British author Nevil Shute after he emigrated to Australia. The novel details the experiences of a mixed group of people in Melbourne as they await the arrival of deadly radiation spreading towards them from the Northern Hemisphere, following a nuclear war some years previous. As the radiation approaches, each person deals with impending death differently. Shute's initial story was published as a four-part series, The Last Days on Earth, in the London weekly periodical Sunday Graphic, in April 1957. For the novel, Shute expanded the storyline.[4] The story has been adapted twice as a film (in 1959 and 2000) and once as a BBC radio broadcast in 2008.

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Disturbing apocalyptic vision still delivers chills. Extended review: Like a number of other novels of Nevil Shute, On the Beach is a moving tale of ordinary people jolted out of the normal course of their lives and into something--this particular something very dark and troubling--that they must somehow face and cope with. Here, the Northern Hemisphere has been obliterated (read more)

Review by Meredy

 (LibraryThing), September 5, 2015

On the Beach by Nevil Shute tells the story of the last month’s in the lives of the last people on earth, and although slightly dated, still makes chills run up and down my spine. Nuclear war has come and gone, there is no one left alive in the earth’s northern hemisphere and clouds of radiation are slowing flowing south. From the very beginning of the book, the people know that their (read more)

Review by DeltaQueen50

 (LibraryThing), February 6, 2015

This was a classic. The operative word here is was. My understanding is that this was a ground breaker in the 50’s, including a fairly well-received movie. But now, we are in different times. The understated continuation of life with the foregone conclusion of death by radiation sickness was probably quite compelling in the A-bomb paranoia that existed in the 50’s. (I can attest for part (read more)

Review by figre

 (LibraryThing), April 22, 2007

In his book Rumors of War and Infernal Machines, Charles Gannon argues that "the discourse of nuclear literature has traditionally relied upon images because a personally meaningful quantitative assessment of the bomb’s annihilator powers is impossible. Its size dwarfs and makes mute any discursive attempt to establish a connection between individual experience and the overwhelming total (read more)

Review by Stevil2001

 (LibraryThing), March 31, 2017

A gloomy picture of the final weeks of human life after a global nuclear catastrophe; as someone who is barely old enough to remember the Cold War, I found it fascinating to read about this situation of which people at the time must have been genuinely afraid. Shute's writing is enthralling, his attention to detail a delight to read. The characters are well-formed and the plot is intriguing. (read more)

Review by pokarekareana

 (LibraryThing), August 24, 2010

A harrowing book detailing the end of the world. Muted, subdued and chilling. This book will depress and sadden you, but will leave you with some hope that we haven't reached this far yet. Don't read this on the train if you're an emotional softie like me, I barely held back the tears at the end.

Review by MikePearce

 (LibraryThing), September 10, 2010

There has been a war. Short in length, but devastating for the Northern Hemisphere. No one in Australia really knows what happened during those days, but they know one thing. Nuclear bombs were dropped, and now everyone up there seems to be dead. And the radiation is spreading. Slowly but surely its coming closer, and there is nothing anyone can do to stop it. Peter is posted to a submarine (read more)

Review by lunacat

 (LibraryThing), October 10, 2009

The northern hemisphere has obliterated itself in nuclear warfare. In Australia, humanity continues to exist, at least for a time. In six months the radiation cloud will reach them as well. The book follows very different people as the end nears: the American submarine commander Towers; Moira, who drowns herself in drink and parties; Peter and Mary, working on their garden and worrying (read more)

Review by ladycato

 (LibraryThing), June 28, 2009

A book I have returned to throughout my life. The sadness envelops me as if wrapped in a comforting blanket

Review by BookMarkMe

 (LibraryThing), May 26, 2009

Dated but interesting.

Review by LewisZ

 (LibraryThing), February 17, 2025

Nevil Shute was an Englishman who left Britain for Australia. He was an aeronautical engineer who turned to novel writing, novels with settings in the air world. So, when he came to write an apocalyptic novel, it was quite authorative from a technical point of view. The life of an Australian community as it awaits the arrival of what will probably be totally fatal clouds of nuclear fallout (read more)

Review by DinadansFriend

 (LibraryThing), January 27, 2024

Good story but somewhat depressing, because it's about the end of humanity in Australia after an all-out nuclear war in the North. Just waiting for the radiation to come! A nuclear sub is based there.

Review by kslade

 (LibraryThing), January 3, 2024

This was perfect for the time I was reading it - during the war in the Ukraine, after a couple of Alan Garner books. Very English, very British values, but a beautiful soft vision of the end of the world.

Review by andrewlorien

 (LibraryThing), November 28, 2022

Imagine that the northern hemisphere is blanketed with radiation and all animal life is gone. The radiation is moving to the southern hemisphere and latitude by latitude succumbs. People living south of Melbourne await what scientists say is inevitable: death. The different ways that people handle this makes it one of those books that is hard to put down.

Review by burritapal

 (LibraryThing), October 23, 2022

What would you do if you know that you will be dead in a few months? What would you do if you know that humanity will disappear shortly after your death? Most authors will tell you a story of struggle and attempt to save humanity. Shute disagrees - in his novel humanity is doomed, even if they are not ready to admit it. It all ended quickly - there was a war, someone threw a bomb, someone (read more)

Review by AnnieMod

 (LibraryThing), January 31, 2022

I knew it was going to be sad, but was absolutely devastating.

Review by Deelightful

 (LibraryThing), September 4, 2019

Nevil Shute's post-apocalyptic 1957 novel On the Beach is surprisingly powerful and affecting given the author's mediocre writing style and the mostly mundane day-to-day events that comprise the narrative, albeit against an extraordinary backdrop. A nuclear war has devastated the Northern Hemisphere, and as the novel begins, life continues in Australia, mankind's last remaining outpost, (read more)

Review by ghr4

 (LibraryThing), January 15, 2019

Although it has a novel concept, this novel doesn't pull it off with the intensity that it deserves.

Review by DanielSTJ

 (LibraryThing), December 18, 2018

People of Australia are just waiting to die from the fallout of a massive world war. There is no hope of survival, they don't even try. This is a stirring, eerily believable short work by Nevil Shute. The main characters are a US submarine commander, Dwight Towers, and his counterpart, lt. commander Peter Holmes, an Australian. Towers has survived by virtue of being out to sea at the time (read more)

Review by buffalogr

 (LibraryThing), November 5, 2018

In Australia, residents await a wave of radiation that’s slowly been making its way south after the rest of the world participated in a nuclear World War III. Although the basis for the story is bleak, the humanity of the details makes this an incredibly personal read. It’s not about the bombs and the battles; it’s about the quiet personal moments between spouses and friends as they decide (read more)

Review by bookworm12

 (LibraryThing), March 2, 2017

The setting is 1963 in Melbourne, Australia and its surrounding towns, two years after a nuclear World War III. The radioactive fallout has been moving through the hemisphere killing all living things in its wake. Australia (which didn't participate in the war) and New Zealand are expected to be the last victims. This is an interesting look at how these last survivors cope with, or deny, (read more)

Review by LeslieHurd

 (LibraryThing), January 11, 2017

There has been a war. The northern hemisphere is a radioactive wasteland. Australia has survivors, but the radiation is heading their way. I laughed when it talked about making gas being too outrageously expensive to do - It would cost $2.00 a gallon! What would you do if you knew that come September everyone would be dead? Would go on pretending that it wasn't coming? Where would you (read more)

Review by nx74defiant

 (LibraryThing), November 5, 2016

My literary tastes lean more maximalist, and I have a more pessimistic view of humanity, so the fact that I enjoyed this understated novel about the last remaining survivors from a global nuclear apocalypse facing certain death was truly surprising. Like the radioactive dust that's circling the globe in a gentle death vise, Nevil Shute creates a tightly written novel about facing one's (read more)

Review by gendeg

 (LibraryThing), October 13, 2016

I read this book without realizing it was science fiction, which is a weird way to go about it, but that's just how it happened. This is set in a post-apocalyptic world (Melbourne, Australia, specifically). It was fascinating for me to read about a Melbourne I'd never been to - a Melbourne from the 1950's and 60's. Sparse, stark, a little bit dirty, a little bit worn around the edges, (read more)

Review by lydia1879

 (LibraryThing), August 31, 2016

I read this ages ago, of course, but although I remember it too poorly to claim it here as read, I'm confident it's worth a re-read.

Review by Cheryl_in_CC_NV

 (LibraryThing), June 5, 2016

More reviews: [page 1] | page 2 | page 3

 

In 1963, World War III has devastated most of the populated world, polluting the atmosphere with nuclear fallout, and killing all human and animal life in the Northern Hemisphere. The war began with a nuclear attack by Albania on Italy, and then escalated with the bombing of the United States and the United Kingdom by Egypt. Because the aircraft used in these attacks were obtained from the Soviet Union, the Soviets were mistakenly blamed, triggering a retaliatory strike on the Soviet Union by NATO. The Soviets also attack the People's Republic of China, which may have been a response to a Chinese attack aimed at occupying Soviet industrial areas near the Chinese border. Most, if not all, of the bombs included cobalt to enhance their radioactive properties.

Global air currents are slowly carrying the lethal nuclear fallout across the Intertropical Convergence Zone to the Southern Hemisphere. The only parts of the planet still habitable are Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and the southern parts of South America, although they are slowly succumbing to radiation poisoning as well.

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Russia, the United States, the United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea