burn uncontrollably, as the danger of fallout is too great. The local government starts to break down as the situation grows out of control. A month later, soldiers make their way into what remains of the Sheffield Town Hall, where the local authorities were headquartered - all are dead due to suffocation. Elsewhere, the dead begin to mount, neither buried nor cremated, and rats swarm, bringing disease. Jimmy is implied to have died during the attack and his parents die soon after of burns and radiation poisoning. Ruth flees her family’s basement shelter in search of Jimmy, her parents are later killed by looters. Hospitals are overrun by wounded survivors seeking treatment. Due to the vast amounts of atmospheric smoke caused by the worldwide detonations, the sun is blocked out causing a nuclear winter which sends temperatures plummeting, adding to the suffering. The cold and the lack of sunlight don’t allow crops and plants to grow causing massive starvation. The government takes over homes in rural areas to house survivors, often leading to violence. In the following year, sunlight returns but with a higher ultraviolet index due to damage to the ozone layer, which in turn increases the likelihood of cataracts and cancer. Crop cultivation after the nuclear winter is poor due to the lack of fertilizers and equipment. A food merchant is shown selling dead rats. Detention camps are improvised to house looters but they are ineffective and costly so capital punishment is authorized by the Government, whose attempts to maintain order are largely ignored. Since money serves no value, food takes place as the only form of currency, the government awards it for labour and withholds it as punishment. Several people, including Ruth, flee to the Buxton countryside, where she gives birth alone, chewing off the umbilical cord with her teeth. Ten years later, what remains of Britain's surviving population has dropped to a medieval level of 4 to 11 million people. Survivors work in cultivating crops for survival, and the generation born after the nuclear explosions suffer from radiation-induced birth defects and poor education. The new generation speaks a broken form of English and all kind of government control has disappeared. Ruth dies in bed, prematurely aged and blinded by cataracts; Jane, her now nine-year-old mentally impaired daughter, reacts unemotionally to her mother's death. Industry begins to return with limited electricity and steam-powered technology, but the population