#War beach code#

Heartbroken, Davidson watches from a cliff as the Sawfish submerges. Choosing duty over love, he takes the Sawfish back to sea. Towers says farewell to Davidson at the docks. Before they take their pills, Peter and Mary reminisce about the day they met, 'on the beach.' Others queue to receive government-issued suicide pills. Osborn shuts himself in a garage with his Ferrari and starts the engine, to end his life by carbon monoxide poisoning. Towers takes a vote among his crew, who decide they want to return to the United States to die. Returning to Melbourne, Towers learns the first of his crew members has radiation sickness. As drunken revelers sing ' Waltzing Matilda' in the hotel bar, Towers and Davidson make love in their room. Towers and Davidson go on a fishing trip to the country. Osborn, having bought the fastest Ferrari in Australia, wins the Australian Grand Prix, in which many racers, with nothing left to lose, die in fiery crashes.įulfilling Towers' wish, Davidson has used her connections to get the trout season opened early.

He learns that all US Navy personnel in Brisbane are dead and he has been given command of all remaining US Naval forces. Towers is reunited with Davidson at her father's farm. Sawfish returns to Australia to await the inevitable. Nearby, a telegraph key has become entangled in a window shade's pull cord and a half-full Coca-Cola bottle, and is being randomly pulled by an ocean breeze, causing the radio signals. A crew member discovers the power source is still running on automatic control. The submarine next stops at a refinery near San Diego, which has been pinpointed as the source of the mysterious Morse signals. A crew member with family in the city deserts and swims ashore, so he can die at home. Stopping next in San Francisco, Sawfish finds the city devoid of life.

There will be no salvation from the radiation. Towers is ordered to take the Sawfish, with Peter and Julian, to investigate.Īrriving at Point Barrow, Alaska, the sub crew discovers the radiation levels are still highly lethal.

#War beach code#

Soon after, the Australians also detect an incomprehensible continuous Morse code signal coming from the West Coast of the United States, where there should be nobody alive to send it. Meanwhile, a new scientific theory postulates that radiation levels in the Northern Hemisphere might have fallen faster than anticipated, suggesting radiation may disperse before reaching the Southern Hemisphere, or at least leaving Antarctica habitable. Although Davidson falls in love with Towers, he finds himself unable to return her feelings, because he can't bring himself to admit his wife and children in the US are dead. Holmes invites Towers to his home for a party, where Towers meets Julian Osborn, a depressive nuclear scientist who helped build the bombs, and Moira Davidson, a lonely alcoholic with whom Towers develops a tentative attraction. Peter Holmes, a young Australian Naval officer with a wife and infant child, is assigned to be Towers' liaison. Dwight Towers, arrives in Melbourne and is placed under Royal Australian Navy command. The American nuclear submarine USS Sawfish, commanded by Capt. Air currents are slowly carrying the fallout to the Southern Hemisphere, where Melbourne, Australia will be the last major city on Earth to perish. In 1964, World War III has devastated the Northern Hemisphere, killing all humans there.