Synopsis:
The book is set in the world two hundred years in the future. An eruption of Mount Pinnetubo in the Phillipines in the year 2007 sends up a dustcloud that alters the world's climate. Winter reigns for two full years and when the earth recovers, a mini ice age has begun. (All of this is consistent with current science, see the Why page on this site for more specifics.) The two year winter prevented the growing of crops, and the human race with its population of 6.2 billion people virtually all died of starvation.
In North America two groups of people survived. One was a selected group of 100,000 individuals in the US military. Seeing the inevitability of mass starvation the military made a plan for a few to survive, using their power to acquire the food and supplies necessary and resist all attackers. The Federals evolved into a military dictatorship whose Army acts as a police force to enforce the will of the Government on the people.
The other group was made up of private citizens who were prepared for disaster, survivalists who had stores of food, supplies and weapons against the fall of civilization. After the disaster, these people found each other using Ham Radio and formed The Tribe. The Tribe became a hunter gatherer society organized into forts of a thousand people. Their society is based in personal honor, and they are communal and polygamous. (This is consistent with human history for such societies. See the Sexual Content page for more discussion of this point.)
The book is the tale of an Expedition of ten thousand members of The Tribe, men
women and children, to try to start a new colony on the southern shores of the Gulf of Mexico. Will Raven, the books narrator, is a scholar
and inventor who invents weapons and tactics that let the technologically inferior people of The Tribe finally
defeat the Federal Army in a great battle at the end of the book. He and Kelsey the Hawk, a woman warrior of The Tribe,
become a team and undertake to lead the adventure together. In the course of their travels, they encounter numerous
ruins of the dead Great Civilization of our time, and Will Raven describes life in our time to the amazement and
often disbelief of his warriors. They organize the people and transform them into an army which by courage and
discipline defeat the Federal Cavalry in the final decisive battle.
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