This is the book that started me thinking about survival, self-sufficency, civil defence and post apocalyptic fiction.
The book inspired the 1970's BBC TV series Survivors, that was remade last year by the BBC, but worse in my opinion. (Lacking the build up, sense of isolation, and the shoehorned in Multi Ethnic Brigade, but that's my issues with it, your milage may vary.)
Starting with the source of the infection coming to the UK, it then plays out the spread, the authorities losing control, and the decimantion of the population, before the shattered remenants of the UK begin to work to not even rebuild. Just to survive.
The blurb on the back of the book is as follows (This is the First Edition, 1976):
Quote:
AS THE WORLD LAY DYING...
Only one passenger alighted from te Chinese aeroplane which touched down at London airport, but within six weeks the disease he carried had destroyed fifty-two million people in Britain alone. Doctors died along with their patients. As power, water and food supplies failed, cities became open graves.
Only seven thousand people in Britain survived to rebuild a dead civilization.
This is the chilling story of some of those survivors --especially Jenny, Greg and Abby-- determined to construct a new societ from the surrounding wasteland where the technology and skills of the old life had become obsolete. SURVIVORS is a brilliant novel of the near future, the inspiration for the BBC television series of the same name.
It also got a sequal book, 'Survivors - Genesis of a Hero' set after the end of the first book, which deals with the continued rebuilding of the UK, as armed groups battle for supremacy of the now rusting remains of a once great nation.
I read this as a teenage girl during my high school lunch breaks, and I give it a reread every couple of years or so. Pick up a copy if you can, it's well worth it and should have been reprinted recently due to the new version of the show out.
