This episode features "When And If" by Philip Reynolds. Europe is once at war as the United States and Soviet Union fight for supremacy and the French protagonist uses his spycraft to fight against communist infilration at home.

Theme Music "Melancholia" by Veronica Zand

Sound Transition "Dubby" by Lloyd Richards

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This episode features "Let Out The Beast" by Leonard Fisher. After a short, violent nuclear war Gregory Robinson and his wife have to contend with the grim realities of survival in the post-apocalypse and the threat of degradation.

Theme Music "Melancholia" by Veronica Zand

Sound Transition "Dubby" by Lloyd Richards

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This episode features "On The Trail of 1960" by Ray H. Wiley. Resistance leader David King fights to create a just and equal society despite the machinations of a corrupt oligarch regime that uses nuclear weapons to keep the populace under control.

Theme Music "Melancholia" by Veronica Zand

Sound Transition "Dubby" by Lloyd Richards

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This episode features "Shadow on the Hearth" by Judith Merril. Gladys Mitchell is thrust into the role of trying to maintain her house and keep her children safe from radiation and unhelpful government commands after a surprise attack on the United States.

Theme Music "Melancholia" by Veronica Zand

Sound Transition "Dubby" by Lloyd Richards

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This episode features "Don't Inhale It!" by Imre Balint. The narrator, with the help of special tobacco, describes a darkly comedic future where the fascist president of the United States inadvertently splits the planet with a massive nuclear weapon.

Theme Music "Melancholia" by Veronica Zand

Sound Transition "Dubby" by Lloyd Richards

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This episode features "Shoot!" by Bernard Newman. Another world war erupts with every nation engaged in military manuevers and background schemes with dozens of characters caught in the wake. Also, Hitler.

Theme Music "Melancholia" by Veronica Zand

Sound Transition "Dubby" by Lloyd Richards

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This episode features "Ape And Essence" by Aldous Huxley. Two movie executives search for the writer of a movie script where scientists from New Zealand visit the radioactive wasteland of the United States and encounter the damaged survivors.

Theme Music "Melancholia" by Veronica Zand

Sound Transition "Dubby" by Lloyd Richards

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This episode features "World Aflame: The Russian-American War of 1950" by Leonard Engel and Emanuel Piller. The United States is in a terrible war with the Soviet Union that's seen the use of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons and the worst is yet to come.

Theme Music "Melancholia" by Veronica Zand

Sound Transition "Dubby" by Lloyd Richards

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Welcome to "Our Nuclear Nightmares" a series on the literature of the Nuclear Age. Each episode will offer a detailed summary of a fiction novel, analyze its themes, and place it in the historical context.

This episode features "Fight For Life" by William Fitzgerald Jenkins. The United States is reduced to a ruined wasteland by nuclear attack with the survivors trying to fight back against the mysterious enemy with the help of lucky rocks.

Theme Music "Melancholia" by Veronica Zand

Sound Transition "Dubby" by Lloyd Richards

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This episode features "Murder of the USA" by William Fitzgerald Jenkins. The United States has been devastated by a surprise nuclear attack and the survivors of the Rainer Burrow struggle to stop the enemy and retaliate before time runs out.

Theme Music "Melancholia" by Veronica Zand

Sound Transition "Dubby" by Lloyd Richards

Support The Show: Patreon

Welcome to "Our Nuclear Nightmares" a series on the literature of the Nuclear Age. Each episode will offer a detailed summary of a fiction novel, analyze its themes, and place it in the historical context.

For almost four decades humanity lived under the threat of nuclear annihilation, that their lives, their world would end in a flash of light. Through those long years, novelists sought to imagine the nature of a nuclear conflict and its possible grim aftermath. The end of the Cold War tensions saw these novels relegated to the trash and forgotten, but they deserve to be remembered and understood as they helped create the outlines of the world we live in today.