I just the other day listened to, and finished, a radio production version of Nevil Shute's On The Beach. A very difficult two hours because
Spoiler Alert
Everyone dies.
Every single person. Not with a cry of rage, but with barely a whimper.
Young, old, rich, poor, deserving, undeserving.
Those with potential futures, those without.
By the end, no one is left.
I don't know which has affected me the worse - the tragedy of death, or my infuriation at their acceptance of their oncoming demise. The characters seem to accept what is going to happen with pathological stoicism - like getting half-way across a road, seeing a truck coming several hundred metres away, and calmly lying down, getting ready for the truck to hit you.
The story is set in Australia, in the early 1960's. Global nuclear war erupted in the northern hemisphere, killing (as far it can be determined) everyone, if not in the initial conflict, then in the radioactive aftermath. The clouds carrying the deadly dust are slowly moving down past the equator, slowly covering the globe. The end is coming, those remaining can see it, but no-one seems to make a move to preserve themselves; they accept what is coming, although enter a collective fugue state - they know what is coming, but continue life as normal, albeit with rationing, talking about what gardens they will plant in the next year.
No-one seems to say: This is coming, we can use our ingenuity to at least not be complicit in the extinction of the human race...
That last sentence has struck me - by accepting their oncoming fates, not trying to save themselves, the people in the story are as bad as those who started (,continued, and finished) the war in the first place.
Maybe it has to do with the book being written in 1957. Would people react that way now? After seeing how people can work together in emergencies, perhaps we wouldn't just lay down to die. Fifty years of study of radioisotopes, new technologies, and so on, might mean that people know more about what to expect - and how to survive the worst of it...