'After the war is over, a radioactive cloud begins to sweep southwards on the winds, gradually poisoning everything in its path. An American submarine captain is among the survivors left sheltering in Australia, preparing with the locals for the inevitable. Despite his memories of his wife, he becomes close to a young woman struggling to accept the harsh realities of their situation. Then a faint Morse code signal is picked up, transmitting from the United States and the submarine must set sail through the bleak ocean to search for signs of life.'
Source: Publisher's blurb (2009 Vintage ed.).
On the Beach
( dir. Stanley Kramer
)
Los Angeles
:
Stanley Kramer Productions
,
1959
Z1421090
1959
single work
film/TV
science fiction
Set five years in the future (in 1964), On the Beach explores the lives of several Australians and some crew members of an American submarine following a nuclear war that has wiped out the population of the northern hemisphere. The submarine finds temporary safe haven in Australia, where life as usual covers growing despair that the winds will inevitably spread radiation to the southern hemisphere, bringing about the end of mankind. The principal characters are the submarine's commander, Captain Dwight Towers, who is in denial about the loss of his wife and children in the holocaust; the careworn but gorgeous Australian woman, Moira Davidson, who begins to fall for him; Julian Osborne, a conscious-stricken scientist whose dream is to win the Australian Grand Prix automobile race; and Lt. Cmdr. Peter Holmes, who is as concerned about his wife and newborn child's future as his own. All cope with the inevitability of death in their own way, but also with love, dignity, and affection. When a Morse code signal is picked up from San Diego, the submarine travels back to the United States' west coast.
The Red Box
( dir. Digby Rumsey
)
United Kingdom (UK)
:
Auteur Films
,
2000
19533427
2000
single work
film/TV
Described by the director as a 'millennial' adaptation of On the Beach, this short film sets actors against images of contemporary Australia.
On the Beach
( dir. Russell Mulcahy
)
Australia
:
Southern Star Entertainment
Edwards/Sullivan Productions
,
2000
Z1606977
2000
single work
film/TV
science fiction
'Australia is the last place on earth still unaffected by the nuclear fallout of World War II. As the people of Melbourne await the deadly radiation clouds southerly drift, a few survivors from the northern hemisphere, including the US submarine SSN Charleston commanded by Lt. Commander Dwight Towers, make their way into the last safe port of call.'
Source: Screen Australia. (Sighted: 2/8/2012)
'A small group of friends in Melbourne – some local, some survivors from the US Navy – are living out their eerily prosaic lives and loves in the wake of World War III. But when a mysterious distress call rings out across the Pacific Ocean, the characters are called to choose between duty to the ones they love and duty to the human race.'
Source: Sydney Theatre Company.
Epigraph: Stanzas from T. S. Eliot's 'The Hollow Men', including the final two lines:
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
Preppers and Survivalism in the AustLit Database
This work has been affiliated with the Preppers and Survivalism project due to its relationship to either prepping or prepper-inflected survivalism more generally, and contains one or more of the following:
1. A strong belief in some imminent threat
2. Taking active steps to prepare for that perceived threat
3. A character or characters (or text) who self-identify as a ‘prepper’, or some synonymous/modified term: ‘financial preppers’, ‘weekend preppers’, ‘fitness preppers’, etc.
As a tier two work, this text has been identified as key to prepping in a broader, more conceptual relationship. These texts have been classified as ‘key’ prepper-adjacent texts that are important to prepping, even if they themselves are not about prepping or do not include preppers. These texts have been identified in the database through various means such as interviews with preppers, scholarship on preppers, and online prepper forums.
'Reflecting on Hiroshima, 6 August 1945, Karen Barad writes :
'Time stopped. The internal mechanisms melted...Time died in a flash. Its demise captured in shadows: silhouettes of people, animals, plants, and objects, its last moment of existence emblazoned on walls. Never before was it possible to kill time, not like this. Atomic clocks. Doomsday clocks. The hands of time indeterminately positioned as creeping toward the midnight of human and more-than-human existence, moving, and no longer moving.' (Introduction)
