Alas, Babylon

"Out of death, life; an immutable truth"

― Pat Frank, Alas, Babylon

Sirens blared throughout the school, and Mrs. Dixon dropped her textbook. Unlike a fire drill, my eighth-grade teacher ordered us to sit under our desks. My heart raced with the question, Is this it? The nuclear attack? Are we about to all die? If we survive, would our skin fall off? How would we eat, drink, and breathe if everything is contaminated? How would communities divided by race amidst forced desegregation pull together, or would we die?

On the cusp of a world ready to self-destruct, almost every household in 1970 knew the terms Defcon one and radiation poisoning. Fear from our enemies dominated our lives in a world divided by borders, state lines, and railroad tracks, splitting every town in America.

Having just finished J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, which allowed me to escape the surrounding fear into his fantastical world of fairies, elves, hobbits, and wizards, I was forced to return to reality. On my parent's bookshelf lay a novel that would give me a playbook on how to navigate the global threat of a nuclear holocaust amidst the unrest of hate in the South where I lived. I read it non-stop through the night like an emergency room I.V. drip needed to survive.

Alas, Babylon was published in 1959 by Pat Frank. Through his fictional account of a nuclear holocaust, he shaped the central tenets of my core beliefs on how humans will interact in a crisis and how we should act in everyday life.

The plot is simple, but the drama is complex. The United States comes under nuclear attack, and a small community in North Florida survives the destruction and massive fallout. What's left is a community rife with social, economic, and racial divisions. Racism, greed, and elitism fall victim to the need to survive. Those who cling to arrogance and errors of the past don't.

How did it change me? As I observed the divide of people in my neighborhood, school, and town by race, economics, and social standing, the book gave me a lens to see how things should be. Everyone had talents and gifts to contribute to the good of the community, no matter their nationality, race, or wealth. We don't have to wait for a survival crisis to learn and exercise this lesson. If your neighbors are hungry, feed them. If there is a threat to the security of all, stand together. An unjust society will not survive when tested. The weakest links come from the lack of character, courage, ethics, and an unwillingness to do hard work, not the impaired or downtrodden.

9/11 came in a flash, and we met the challenges as a nation for a only a short time by standing together as one. It pains me to write that most communities today in America probably would not survive an Alas Babylon.

Since the eighth grade, I have held to the firm conviction that I can only do my part to love all, care for all, stand firm against injustice, and work hard. With Pat Frank's courageous book, this spark, idea, belief, and passion took seed in my heart and became rooted like a tree.

His best-selling book, Alas Babylon, was promised to be made into a movie. But, whatever powers existed nixed it because of the unity of races portrayed.

Pat Frank's story lives and remains in publication. Its veracity of truth has never been needed more than today. as he wrote, "Out of death, life; an immutable truth." I hope and pray that it does not come to a test like this before all humanity sees the light.

Other favorite quotes,

"Censorship and thought control can exist only in secrecy and darkness."

― Pat Frank, Alas, Babylon

"[He was disgusted] at the beasts who in callous cruelty had dragged down and maimed and destroyed the human dignity of this selfless man. Yet it was nothing new. It had been like this at some point in every civilization and on every continent. There were human jackals for every human disaster."

― Pat Frank, Alas, Babylon