Alas, Babylon

infobox Book |
name ="Alas, Babylon"
title_orig =
translator =


image_caption = Cover of first edition (hardcover)
author = Pat Frank
cover_artist =
country = United States
language = English
series =
genre = Post-apocalyptic novel
publisher = J.B. Lippincott
release_date = 1959
media_type = Print (Hardcover & Paperback)
pages =
isbn = NA
preceded_by =
followed_by =

"Alas, Babylon" is a 1959 novel by American writer Pat Frank. It was one of the first post-apocalyptic novels of the nuclear age and remains popular nearly fifty years after it was first publishedFact|date=July 2008.

Plot introduction

The novel deals with the effects of a nuclear war on a small Florida town. Pat Frank based the semi-fictional Fort Repose in part upon the real city of Mount Dora, Florida.Owens, Vivian W. The Mount Dorans: African American History Notes of a Florida Town. Waynesboro: Eschar, 2000] Frank lived in Tangerine, Florida, in 1958 and 1959, very near Mount Dora and the Catacombs fallout shelter in Sylvan Shores. Pistolville was a real place to the north of Tangerine. It appears in "Alas, Babylon" but is not entirely fictional. [http://www.southflorida.com/travel/sfe-pixgallery_dora,0,3958849.photogallery?index=9 The Mount Zion Primitive Baptist Church (est. 1896), just west of US 441 on old highway 441] is referenced in Vivian Owens' book, "The Mount Dorans: African American History Notes of a Florida Town". This is the area Frank and Owens have called Pistolville. "Used as the setting for Pat Frank's most famous book, Alas, Babylon, Mount Dora is referred to as The New England of the South." "Author Frank says his imaginary Fort Repose is somewhere in Central Florida within 100 miles of Orlando--patterned after Mandarin on the St. Johns, the little town where he was reared. … Pat Frank works in Tangerine in a small office adjoining his home." [Bavar, Emily. "Press Time." Orlando Sentinel - Florida Magazine Volume VII.Number 3 (1959): 2F.]

Explanation of the novel's title

The novel's title is derived from Revelation 18:10, which is interpreted and quoted in the book as describing the aftermath of a nuclear attack. In the King James Bible, this passage reads:

Plot summary

Randy Bragg, the protagonist, is a man who dabbles at law and lives a life with little purpose. A former Korean War infantry officer, he ran for the state legislature and was soundly defeated because he supported the Supreme Court decision of Brown v. Board of Education; this forced his retirement from public life. This changes when his brother, Colonel Mark Bragg, sends him a telegram with the code words "Alas, Babylon"—their private code for disaster. Mark, who is on the Air Intelligence staff of the Strategic Air Command (SAC), is certain war between the United States and the Soviet Union is imminent. He sends his wife Helen and children Ben Franklin and Peyton to stay with Randy in Fort Repose, Florida.

Randy privately warns those people of Fort Repose whom he believes to be his friends; including Malachai Henry, his gardener.

A U.S. Navy fighter pilot, Ensign Cobb, callsign Peewee, fires a heat-seeking missile at a Soviet reconnaissance aircraft that same day. The missile goes off course and hits an ammunition depot at Latakia, Syria, resulting in an explosion that may include nuclear devices. This event is the pretext (called in the text a casus belli) for the Soviet Union to launch a pre-emptive nuclear strike against the United States.

Early the following morning, Mark is on duty at SAC headquarters at Offutt Air Force Base in Omaha, Nebraska. He suspects an attack is imminent. He recommends that SAC ask for the authority to use nuclear weapons since the weapons-release process takes about a minute and a half, and the U.S. expects only about a fifteen minute warning if the Soviet Union were to attack. This is granted. Later, when American radar reports an attack underway, the SAC commander says to him "Thanks for the ninety-five seconds."

In Fort Repose, Randy and his houseguests are awakened by shaking. "The Day" has begun. The effects of the war, called "The Day", on Fort Repose are varied. Tourists are trapped in their hotels. The local bank manager tries to get instructions from Jacksonville, but since Jacksonville is also home to several naval air stations and a homeport for naval warships, Jacksonville is destroyed. The local disc jockey nervously reads instructions on the CONELRAD system. The only reliable method of news from the outside world is a shortwave receiver owned by one of Randy's neighbors, a retired U.S. Navy admiral. Convicts break free of chain gangs; the local retirement homes are filled with panicked people; and the flash from a nuclear blast over the city of Tampa to destroy MacDill Air Force Base temporarily blinds Randy's niece, Peyton.

As the effects of the disintegration of society get worse, many prominent people fail. The local banker commits suicide once he realizes money is useless. Randy's political rival obtains looted radioactive jewelry and becomes seriously ill with radiation sickness. Randy, instead, grows stronger. He organizes his immediate neighbors to provide housing, food, and water for themselves, organizes the community into self-defense, guides his family, and helps find salt and new supplies of food when they grow short. He fights "highwaymen" who murder residents and assault the local doctor. Some in Fort Repose discover faith; others degenerate into drunkenness. Randy and his family fare the best, though, for when Randy needs something, he commandeers it. He is backed up legally by an order of President Josephine Vanbruuker-Brown (who was the Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare when "The Day" came) for any surviving active-duty or reserve officers to form local militias.

Also, his niece, Peyton, discovers an attic of antique wonders--a Victrola, old-fashioned straight razors, a treadle sewing machine--in his ancestral home, allowing the families to adapt more easily to life without electricity.

When the Air Force finally makes contact with Fort Repose again, the community has survived, but at a cost.

Effects of the novel

"Alas, Babylon" depicts fallout and radiation as an invisible threat, rather than a roaming "cloud of death" as in other novels such as "On the Beach". Its theme is "You can survive if you are ready and willing to adapt."

The book also portrays nuclear war as arguably winnable. When the Air Force personnel find Randy and his survivors, they are asked about the outcome of the nuclear exchange and are told: "We won it. We really clobbered 'em!" (The value of this victory is questioned, even by the speaker, who adds, "Not that it matters"; he has already explained that the "victorious" United States now has a smaller population than pre-war France, and will be accepting lend-lease shipments of foodstuffs from South America, Thailand, and Indonesia.) The book presents the post-apocalyptic situation as grave but survivable, that even within the so-called "contamination zones", it is possible for some communities to continue. This book was written before the effects of Nuclear Winter and Electromagnetic pulses were widely known, but otherwise is reasonably accurate in the effects of a nuclear attack and its aftermath. The U.S. government is presented as functioning in uncontaminated areas, and working to help survivors as best as possible in contaminated zones. This depiction is very different from later books and films on nuclear war.

In the foreword of the 2005 edition of "Alas, Babylon", David Brin admits that the book was instrumental in shaping his views on nuclear war and had an effect on his own book, "The Postman" (pp. xi-xii, ISBN 0-06-074187-2, Harper Perennial Modern Classics).

Adaptations

An adaptation of "Alas, Babylon" was broadcast on April 3, 1960 as the 131st episode of the "Playhouse 90" dramatic television series. [ [http://www.tvtome.com/tvtome/servlet/GuidePageServlet/showid-2182/epid-134672 "Playhouse 90" Episode Guide, TV.com] ] It starred Don Murray, Burt Reynolds, and Rita Moreno. [ [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053581/ IMDB "Playhouse 90" Alas, Babylon (1960)] ]

The television show "Jericho" is arguably a modern take on this tale.

References

ee also

*List of nuclear holocaust fiction
*Survivalism