This content is from Wikipedia. GradeSaver is providing this content as a courtesy until we can offer a professionally written study guide by one of our staff editors. We do not consider this content professional or citable. Please use your discretion when relying on it.

Plot summary

Randy Bragg, the protagonist, is a man who dabbles at law and lives a life with little purpose. The scion of a once prominent political family, Bragg is a former Korean War infantry officer whose own foray into public life was a run for the state legislature which proved disastrous because of his open support for racial desegregation based on the Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education; this ended his first foray into public life. Randy's life changes abruptly with the receipt of a telegram from his older brother, Colonel Mark Bragg, an Air Force Intelligence officer serving with the Strategic Air Command (SAC). In the telegram, Mark informs Randy that he is sending his wife and two children to stay in Fort Repose, and that he wants to meet with Randy during a brief layover at McCoy AFB, in Orlando. The telegram ends the message with an ominous code: "Alas Babylon", a Biblical reference that the Bragg brothers employed throughout their lives to warn of danger. Only this time, it foretold a more ominous warning—nuclear war was imminent.

Randy later drives to McCoy Air Force Base and meets Mark's arriving plane. While the jet is refueled, Mark explains to Randy the background for sending the urgent message. The Soviets evidently perceive a weakness in US and Allied defense posture and plan to take advantage of the situation. A defecting Soviet military officer has brought the Russian "war plan" to the West. Mark believes the Russian plan is flawed and that the West would ultimately prevail, but danger lies in Moscow's belief that they can succeed. The brothers soon say their goodbyes, and Randy realizes that he may never see Mark again. Heading back to Fort Repose, Randy privately warns those people of Fort Repose whom he believes to be his friends, of the impending war.

At about the same time as Randy is picking up his brother's family at the Orlando airport, Ensign Cobb, flying a F-11 Tiger off the coast of Syria (a Soviet ally) fires a heat-seeking missile at a Soviet reconnaissance aircraft. The missile goes off course and hits an ammunition depot at Latakia, Syria, resulting in an explosion that may or may not have included nuclear devices. This event becomes the apparent casus belli for the Soviet Union to launch a preemptive nuclear strike against the United States.

Early the following morning, Mark is on duty at SAC headquarters at Offutt Air Force Base in Omaha, Nebraska, known as "The Hole". He suspects an attack is imminent and recommends to SAC's commander, General Hawker, that SAC ask Washington to transfer the direct authority to use nuclear weapons, since the weapons-release process takes about a minute and a half, and the U.S. expects only about a fifteen minute warning if the Soviet Union were to attack. This is granted. Minutes later, radar stations report what appear to be inbound Soviet missiles from over the Arctic as well as submarines lying off the US coast. Mark realizes what he feared most has arrived and turns to walk back to his office. As Mark leaves, General Hawker says to him, "Thanks for the 95 seconds."

In Fort Repose, Randy and his houseguests are awakened by shaking due to the bombing of Miami. While looking at the glow to the south caused by the destruction of Miami, the family sees the nuclear explosion and mushroom cloud that destroy Tampa temporarily blinding Randy's niece, Peyton. Finally, there is another and more pronounced shaking followed by a huge rumbling, which can only be the same nuclear destruction of Orlando, the city closest to Fort Repose. These events culminate to what will later be called "The Day" by the residents of Fort Repose—in effect, a one-day war—has begun.

The effects of "The Day" on Fort Repose are varied. Tourists are trapped in their hotels. The local bank manager tries to get instructions from the Federal Reserve sub-branch in Jacksonville, but since Jacksonville has also been destroyed, no advice is available. The local disc jockey nervously reads instructions on the CONELRAD system. The only reliable method of news from the outside world is a shortwave receiver owned by one of Randy's neighbors, Sam Hazzard, a retired U.S. Navy admiral. Convicts escape; the local retirement homes are filled with panicked people; and a run on the bank results in the bank closing and local merchants selling out of nearly all supplies.

As the effects of the disintegration of society get worse, many prominent people fail. The local banker, Edgar Quisenberry, commits suicide once he realizes money is useless. Randy's political rival, Porky Logan, obtains looted radioactive jewelry and becomes seriously ill with radiation sickness. Randy organizes his immediate neighbors to provide housing, food, and water for themselves, organizes the community into self-defense, guides his family, and helps find salt and new supplies of food when they grow short. He fights "highwaymen" who murder residents and assault the local doctor, Dan Gunn. Some in Fort Repose discover faith; others degenerate into drunkenness. Randy eventually learns that, as an active-duty reservist, he has the legal right to exercise martial law—shortly after he had already begun to do so, albeit in a de facto mode. The authority comes from an order of acting Chief Executive Josephine Vanbruuker-Brown (who prior to The Day had been the Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare) for any surviving active-duty or reserve officers to form local militias.

When the Air Force finally makes contact with Fort Repose again, and express a willingness to move the families out of the area, none accept the offer; they have come to believe that the life they have built in Fort Repose is at least as good, if not better, than the life they would face outside. The Air Force officer reveals that the United States won the war - but at a tremendous cost: it is now a secondary power at best, and is the recipient of aid from third world powers such as Brazil and Venezuela. He also explains nothing is left of Miami, Tampa, and Orlando. There are two huge craters where McCoy AFB and downtown Orlando once stood. This gives the reader the impression Fort Repose is now the only major city left in Florida.