Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank
A classic apocalyptic novel that stunned the world.
This is one of my favorite classics and my favorite book I read in high school. It was one of the easier books to read in terms of language, as opposed to Shakespeare or Jane Austin. There are many peers I’ve talked to who’ve also said they really enjoyed this book.
Alas, Babylon was written and published in 1959 at the height of the Cold War. The political climate was tense between the U.S. and Russia. The book explores: what if Russia DID nuke us? While taking place in my home state of Florida. It follows a community within a small town (inspired by Mt. Dora, FL) and how they survive the attack. We watch the complete disintegration of local government and the reestablishment process when out main character steps up to the plate.
Alas, Babylon really hits home (kind of literally since I'm a Floridian). I remember sitting in class and having a discussion about the bombing scene. In the book, the Russians struck the MacDill Air Force Base, which is situated in Tampa, just across the Bay from where our school was. Our teacher informed us that IF the base did receive a nuclear attack, we wouldn’t have survived. The class fell silent as we took that in. It was sobering to think of it that way.
It also gave me a lot of thought to how vulnerable we are on a citizen level and just simply relying on the government to not fuck it up. I then contemplated about what skills of mine would useful in several different situations such as a nuclear apocalypse. How can you not when Pat Frank makes the events in the book feel so real?
There was a paragraph, just a single paragraph, that related to my own real life experiences to 9/11 (do you remember where you were at on The Day? Because nearly every single person does), the Coronavirus Pandemic (there were only two moments in time: the before and after The Day), and Hurricane Ian (same with covid, except also how nothing will be the same and have to start building from scratch). Pat Frank never saw any of these events, but it's baffling to see how accurate he was in the type of experiences we’d have from traumatic events.
Pat Frank’s career started in journalism and eventually he found his way to the White House as Assistant Chief of Mission at the Office of War Information under Franklin D. Roosevelt. It this experience that educated him the workings of politics and possible threats the U.S. faced. After WWII ended, Frank retired and released several books, all in regards to war and the nuclear crisis. His fiction books were speculative, exploring what if scenarios, all things that were on the minds of the American population.
Mr. Frank eventually became a Floridian, which is where the setting for this novel comes from. The state was very different from how we know it today (after all, Disney had yet finished completion of their Orlando park and wasn’t the booking metropolis we’re so familiar with, yet was still important enough to be considered a threat).
Yes, this book is from the 50's, but I highly recommend giving it a read. Maybe there's something you can learn from it.
Luckily, Alas, Bablyon is still in circulation today with the most recent edition published in 2005. An audiobook version is available (yay!), which is sometimes hard to find with older books. Or, you can check it out at your local library.