The story begins in a rural Nevada town, alternating between multiple different characters, all of which are teenagers at the same high school. It is a typical Monday for most of the students there, until strange sirens kick off the beginning of an unexpected major apocalyptic event, which appears to be a nuclear assault. In the course of the chaos, all of the teachers and supervisors are killed, leaving this group of teenagers to fend for themselves within the darkness of the fallout shelter beneath their school. It isn't until they reach the brink of hunger and self-destruction that they finally leave the shelter and discover that they are the only survivors left in the entire town. Now they must learn how to rebuild some semblance of a society in order to continue to survive together. Warning: Contains concepts of sex, violence, rape, drug use, and obscenity