Alas, Babylon discussion

What a great book about the American spirit in times of disaster. I was impressed with Pat Frank's knowledge of military procedure. This is a must read for anyone who enjoys reading about the individual grit of coping with rebuilding after a major disaster!

If memory serves after all these years, Pat Frank was a civil defense official and thus would have been privy to much of that type of information. You're absolutely right. A marvelous book that, thankfully, is now apparently being used as a school textbook.

This book is a must read. You learn what's really important when you don't even have the basics of modern life, not even pure water or soil to grow food in. Find out what talents and survival skills will be the most important.

I read this a few years before I actually worked on bombers loaded with nuclear weapons. So many times while I was active duty I thought about this book. I'm sure the seeds of many nightmares were sown within the pages of, "Alas, Babylon".

Though Pat Frank left out quite a bit of useful information, I shall not fault him for this. The book actually portrayed something I really enjoy from an author, in that he told the perspective using a fallible character.

Those books where the main hero can do no wrong, never making major mistakes, are to me both boring and unrealistic.

Randy Bragg in the story was the perfect hero. Caught relatively by surprise and totally unprepared, he was the classic "Average Joe Citizen". His application of common sense towards unfamiliar situations made the story ultimately what it is.... A Classic.

I'm about 40 pages into this, having read it as a teenager some epochs ago. I "liked it." But I return to it after having read here that it's about the most popular apocalyptic fiction, and being reminded that after all these years (about 50, I think) I still remember it and details from it.

I had to read this book when I was a sophomore in high school. This, along with Hiroshima was part of a unit for English. Man, talk about nightmares. This book was the start of my total and utter terror/nightmares for years to come (to this day in fact) about nuclear war. However, it's a great novel. One of the few required reading books that I read straight through and was finished in a couple of days vs. the weeks you had to read it. ;)