Everyone thought, when the alarm bell rang, that it was just another fire practice.

But the first bombs had fallen on Hamburg and Leningrad, the headmaster said, and a full-scale nuclear attack was imminent.

It's a real life nightmare. Sarah and her family have to stay cooped up in a tightly sealed kitchen for days on end, dreading the inevitable radioactive fall-out and the subsequent slow, torturous death, which seems almost preferable to surviving in a grey, dead, world, choked by dust.

But then, from out of the dust and the ruins and the desolation, comes new life, a new future, and a whole brave new world...