1. David Almond’s award-winning children’s novel The Fire-Eaters is the story of three families living their lives under the looming threat of the Cuban missile crisis. Where is it set?

   1. Havana

   2. Northumberland

   3. London

   4. Russia

2. What is Sophie’s secret deformity, caused by the fall-out of a long-ago nuclear war, in John Wyndham’s The Chrysalids?

   1. Three thumbs

   2. Three ears

   3. Six toes

   4. Four arms

3. Which country started the nuclear bombardment in On the Beach by Nevil Shute?

   1. Albania

   2. Italy

   3. The US

   4. Australia

4. What are the names of the old couple who suffer from radiation sickness in the graphic novel When the Wind Blows by Raymond Briggs?

   1. Jim and Hilda Bloggs

   2. Alfred and Annie Fletcher

   3. Tom and Agatha Williams

   4. Alan and Nicky Baxter

5. From which apocalyptic story is the following quote taken? "The days sloughed past uncounted and uncalendared. Along the interstate in the distance long lines of charred and rusting cars. The raw rims of the wheels sitting in a stiff gray sludge of melted rubber, in blackened rings of wire. The incinerate corpses shrunk to the size of a child and propped on the bare springs of the seats."

   1. The Postman by David Brin

   2. The Road by Cormac McCarthy

   3. Z for Zachariah by Robert C O’Brien

   4. Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood

6. When did Philip K Dick set his then-futuristic novel of a world destroyed by nuclear war, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

   1. 1984

   2. 2001

   3. 2221

   4. 1992

7. What is the world-destroying nuclear war known as in Walter M Miller’s A Canticle for Leibowitz?

   1. The Flame Deluge

   2. The Burning

   3. The Reckoning

   4. The End of Days

8. Where in England (Inland) is Riddley Walker – Russell Hoban’s story of life 2,000 years after a nuclear holocaust – set?

   1. Isle of Wight

   2. Suffolk

   3. Manchester

   4. Kent

9. What happens to America in Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Wild Shore?

   1. The Cuban missile crisis becomes more than a crisis and the missiles are launched

   2. Three thousand neutron bombs are exploded in cities across the country

   3. A terrorist plants a nuclear bomb in the Empire State Building

   4. A nuclear power station explodes

10. In which post-apocalyptic novel is a criminal the only hope to travel across a nuclear wasteland and find an antidote for a plague?

    1. Damnation Alley by Roger Zelazny

    2. The White Plague by Frank Herbert

    3. The Death of Grass by John Christopher

    4. Eon by Greg Bear

Solutions

1:B, 2:C, 3:A, 4:A, 5:B, 6:D, 7:A, 8:D, 9:B, 10:A

Scores

1. 2 and above.

   Nuclear winter

2. 5 and above.

   Smouldering

3. 8 and above.

   Hot stuff

4. 10 and above.

   Explosive!