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FROM THE VERY CORE OF THE EARTH ITSELF A SAVAGE DROUGHT ATTACLS MANKIND!

THE TROUBLE WITH PEOPLE...
...is that nobody really believes they can be destroyed. It'll always be some other unfortunate who get's in the way of the truck, or the bomb, or who can't escape the radiation. Anybody knows man now has the power to destroy the world--nobody really believes it would happen. It just isn't possible.

BUT...
...there might be ways in which the misuse of atomics could eliminate--and you wouldn't even know it was happening, let alone believe it. At first. Some things after all, are unimaginable. For instance, the world couldn't conceivably dry up. The idea's ridiculous. It just isn't possible.

UNTIL...
...a frightening idea gets into the hands of skilled writer Charles Eric Maine. Suddenly then, the terrifying idiocy becomes real--the monstrous reality of total destruction in all the homes of all the people who, just like anybody else, are strong and weak, funny and foolish, loving and full of hate; people who, cowlike, always believe the best--and who face the worst with courage they never knew they had.

Charles Eric Maine... is well-known in science-fiction circles for the realism, the startling believability of his setting and stories. In THE TIDE WENT OUT he visualizes a situation so bizarre as to seem virtually impossible--except that he not only makes it become possible, but highly probable.

Almost without realizing what is happening, you are caught up in a savage struggle, the veneer of civilization shucked off because it has become a useless pretense: all that matters is staying alive, at whatever cost, in a world that man has made into a death-trap. Will you be among the handful to survive?

A deadly plague engulfs East Asia - the rest of the world's governments look on callously, until the shadow of the new virus begins to sweep across the globe.

As the pandemic draws nearer to Britain shelters are hastily constructed, but when the death toll rises and the populace finds themselves sacrificed for the sake of the elite, the cry for revolution rings out amidst the sirens.

Charles Eric Maine's subversive novel shows that even the heroes may succumb to brutality as humanity descends into a desperate scramble for survival.