 The play's action was explicitly set on September 20, 2000 (exactly 55 years after the date of broadcast), rather than in the indefinite near future of "Night of the Auk".The published edition of "Night of the Auk" is dedicated ""To NORMAN COUSINS who has tried to hold back the holocaust and to PETER who never had his chance"".On April 7, 1958, Oboler's six-year-old son, Peter, drowned in rainwater collected in excavations for a bomb shelter at Oboler's Malibu, California, home, causing Oboler to regard him as a casualty of the atomic age.