Talk:On the Beach (novel)

The only unbelievable part is the Australian government supplying suicide pills to people. They can't even pass euthanasia laws now. They want people to suffer.

Surviving
Odd how the characters all seem to miss the incredibly important fact that they have access to a *NUCLEAR SUBMARINE*, which can remain underwater for years and wait out the effects of the fallout. --StarKruzr 02:44, 5 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Sounds good except that they don't have either food or air for the years needed for the fallout to either drop in radioactivity or fall out of the atmosphere and do so in such a manner that allows them to safely come ashore, grow food, and survive. Even then, assuming they brought enough women, there's the risk of dying out from loss of people or through genetic faults either induced by radiation or innate already (read up on Founder Effect.). Deathbunny 05:54, 28 August 2006 (UTC)


 * In addition, if you had paid attention you've would've noticed at the very beginning the issue of fuel is addressed: Shute has the submarine as needing to be immediately refueled after it makes it to Australia, which hardly indicates the nigh-unlimited range we associate with nuclear submarines. --Gwern (contribs) 01:37 27 July 2008 (GMT)


 * (1) So ALL nuclear submarines happened to be just at that rare point in their life when they need refueling? (2) If you plan to outwait the fallout, you do not need much power. You do not plan to swim a lot. Actually, you may even stay at the surface in a port, and just use sub's water purification and oxyged producing machinery. 209.132.186.34 (talk)

In that case why don't they spend the last couple of months building large underground bunkers, or convert coal mines in which they could shelter from the radiation, rather than mucking about as they do? Anybody in a well built bunker with enough food should be able to survive for quite a time.

THE POINT OF THE STORY ISN'T "THE END OF THE WORLD", IT'S HOW PEOPLE DEAL WITH THE END OF THE WORLD

First off, to comment on the previous comment, the novel says the bombing was done with hydrogen-cobalt weapons, which would leave deadly fallout for a long, long time. Underground shelters would be about as useful as those drills in elementary school when you practiced hiding under your desk.


 * Cobalt-60 half-life is 5 years. Some people would be willing to wait even much longer than that in order to survive. There were examples in the past of people living for tens of years on islands, or even in prisons in solitary confinement. Also, cobalt-60 dust is going to be gradually absorbed by ocean (ocean is BIG), so you don't really need to wait 50 years before it's perfectly safe to go outside. 209.132.186.34 (talk)

The problem with this article is that it mentions only in passing what is the most important issue in the book, namely the fact that Commander Towers maintains his strength and his ability to function by believing in an alternate reality, i.e. the reality that his home and family are still there in Connecticut, where he's sure he's going to return "when all this blows over". As Towers boards his ship for the last time, he and Moira promise to meet in Connecticut, and they're not pretending, even though he knows he's going down with his ship and he's certainly not in denial about what's going on. At the dock, Moira asks how much time it will take him to actually sink the ship. He answers her question, and she follows on her wristwatch because she knows that's when he'll be heading back to Connecticut. Her last words are "Dwight, if you're on your way already, wait for me."

This triumph of the human will - remaining in one's right mind in an impossible situation - is the whole point of the story. Indeed, in many ways, the real climax of the novel is the fishing trip, in which Towers makes sure that he and Moira register in separate rooms. He keeps trying to make sure she "won't be hurt", but poor Moira! This is the first man she's really loved in her whole life of lushing and casual sex, and yet she has to keep herself stoic -- Towers feels that any consummation of the relationship would be a smutty little episode of "cheating", and by golly, he's been faithful to his wife up til now and isn't about to blow it at a time like this! (Film director Kramer, of course, changed that because "the film needs some sex" and because "nobody would believe it" if Towers remained a straight arrow. To their credit, Ava Gardner and Gregory Peck told Kramer he was wrong, for all the good it did them.)

And taking the sub out to sink her isn't "pointless", despite what the article says, because if Towers stopped following his code, allowing his ship go to pot and his crew to wander off, he'd be like the dying patient at the hospice who knows he'll be dead in a week so he stops shaving, bathing and changing clothes - just goes silly instead, not even remaining alive until he's dead. That's not for Towers. He doesn't end his life with a whimper, even if the "world" does.
 * In regard to the plausibility of a slowly creeping blanket of lethal fallout spreading all over the entire world, no, it's not particularly realistic. The "hydrogen-cobalt" weapons he speaks of are real, and they do render a relatively large area lethally uninhabitable for several hundred years, but the long-lived cobalt fallout particles are "heavy"; that is, they do not circulate throughout the atmosphere, but fall out of the cloud within minutes of the detonation. Furthermore, salted bombs were never a standard warhead. A worldwide nuclear exchange with normal warheads would surely circulate vast amounts of lethal "dust and dirt" fallout around much of the Northern Hemisphere, contaminating most of the land unscathed by the blasts themselves, but 99% of it would settle within days and be reduced by the Law of Halves to a survivable level within weeks, allowing survivors to repopulate. Nuclear winter is a much more plausible concern for the survival of humanity after such a worldwide exchange, but even then the "coal mine shelter" is still a semi-viable option, at least for the first year or two until all the surface plants and bacteria die. Bullzeye contribs 15:56, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Infobox placement
In case anyone's wondering (and I'll bet you aren't, but oh well), I placed the "Novels Infobox" over the "Films Infobox" simply because the novel appeared first. Given the apparent differences between the novel and the film(s), they should get seperate articles, IMHO. I'd consider splitting them myself, except I've neither read the novel nor seen the film. The book is on my to-read list, at least... -- Antepenultimate 00:02, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:OnTheBeach(1stEd).jpg
Image:OnTheBeach(1stEd).jpg is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

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BetacommandBot 03:39, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Later Covers
I have now located two Pan covers one from 1966 and the other from 1970. What they show is the slow change of emphasis from people on the first edition cover to the submarine as she seems to have become a character in her own right. As I locate other covers I will add them to the article. Graham1973 (talk) 04:18, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Eliot quote
The quote from the T S Eliot poem should read "We grope together" and not "We group together". I haven't the knowledge to make the change on the page.

Dantes Warden (talk) 12:59, 22 January 2015 (UTC)


 * I went ahead and made the correction. I do not have my physical copy to check the poem, but several online versions of the poem agree that it is "grope" rather than "group." Antepenultimate (talk) 21:53, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

The Original Research in the "Reception" section needs to be deleted
The last paragraph of the "Reception" Section has nothing to do with the "reception" of the novel.

The paragraph is a critical analysis--a product of Original Research. The critique concerns the accuracy of the science contained in the fiction novel which was written in 1957. The novel is a science fiction story. The "fictional" science about the impact of a global nuclear war is criticized and "debunked" using 21st-century knowledge. This content is not appropriate.

Wikipedia policy concerning Wikipedia article content is no original research. The last paragraph of the "Reception" section needs to be deleted.

I post here prior to deleting the paragraph. Does anyone disagree?

Osomite &#x1F43B;  (hablemos)  23:31, 2 November 2022 (UTC)


 * I agree the para is inappropriate as "reception" relates to reactions to it at the time of publication. Perhaps the sentences could be retained under the heading of criticism, but since it is a work of fiction, it's unclear that how the world ends has to conform to someone else's theories, nor be an exhortation to become a prepper. The book's premise is that everyone will die and everyone knows this and looks at how they respond to that situation. Kerry (talk) 04:21, 21 November 2022 (UTC)
 * I think the final paragraph (referring to Creston Kearny's deservedly harsh criticism of the book) is absolutely worth including in the article. (Though perhaps not under the Reception section, due to his own book being published around 2 decades later.) A widely read author calling into question the premise of a story is one thing, but the accusation that On The Beach has the capacity to cause widespread fatalistic lack of precaution in the general populace is worth noting. As is, the article does not allude to the book as Science fiction until the Reception section; until this point, it could be interpreted as speculative fiction, or alternative history. 192.77.12.11 (talk) 07:03, 6 March 2023 (UTC)