Verdict? A strong 4 out of 5 stars, if I gave out stars. He knows how to pace his story and maintain its atmosphere without letting it overwhelm the narrative. The anxiety is palpable, no less so for the reader, herself and it is this that makes Strasser’s decision to revisit events leading up to the bomb a most welcome escape. As is dignity-the toilet is an exposed bucket and toilet paper and water are in short supply.

Within a couple of days, morale is on the way out. In theory, it takes about 2 weeks for radiation levels to drop to a safe level but below ground, there’s no way to keep track of time. The shelter chapters are marked by volatility, created primarily by the adults, who fight over who is in charge, how best to ration the supplies, and whether people should be “voted out” so that the group has a greater chance of survival. The pre-bomb chapters create a nice break in the tensions building below ground, in addition to laying out backstories and context for the characters.

Told from Scott’s point of view, the narrative alternates chapters between life before the bomb and afterwards in the shelter. This is a survival tale rather than a war saga, and the story quickly becomes one of the psychological fallout caused by being trapped in a small space with limited resources. Total annihilation? A Communist regime? No food, family, or friends? Radioactive everything? Other survivors? And then the waiting begins: waiting for radiation levels to drop so they can emerge from their hole to face who-knows-what. 10 people in total are trapped below ground. A few make it in, and in the frenzied chaos of this, Scott’s mother is knocked from the ladder and lies prone on the cement floor, unnaturally still. The shelter, however, is only stocked with supplies for 4, so Scott’s dad scrambles to lock out the pleading neighbors. Seized by panic, neighbors who scoffed at Scott’s dad for building the shelter in the first place, now fight to gain entry, to gain sanctuary. When the sirens go off, 11-year-old Scott and his little brother are whisked into the shelter, deep below the floor of their playroom. Would the Russians drop a bomb? Fire missiles? What would happen if they did? This is the question Strasser takes on in his alt-history novel, Fallout, where he imagines the fate of one family-the only family on the block with a fallout shelter-after a nuclear bomb is dropped. In 1962, the Cold War was in full swing and tensions and fear were rampant throughout the country.

Fallout todd strasser book review