Survivors - Terry Nation

 SURVIVORS - TERRY NATION

I was really young but I have vague memories of the BBC television series of Survivors shown in the Seventies, particularly the first episode depicting London falling into chaos as people fled the capital. The fact that I can still remember this episode is an indication of the impact it had on me as a child. The series was remade in 2008 but I was otherwise engaged at that time and never got round to watching it.

And so to the book that the series was based on, first published in 1976 and written by Terry Nation, creator of the Daleks for Dr Who and that other BBC cult television series, Blakes 7. Books based on the Dr Who television series along with others of that ilk were quite popular in the Seventies though I never actually read any myself and likewise for Terry Nation's Survivors. Time for some catching up then, with now being as good a time as any - in fact, now being probably a far better time than any.

The premise of Survivors is really very simple: A killer disease sweeps through the world and within weeks almost all the world's population has been wiped out. As power, water and food supplies fail, cities become open graves and nature lays waste to civilisation. In England, a small group of survivors roam the countryside after fleeing London but with no law and order they not only face the trials of day-to-day life in this post-apocalyptic world but also the threat from other survivors competing for limited resources.

The striking thing about Survivors is that in its description of the early stages of the disease how very similar it is to the Corona virus pandemic. It starts with a passenger being taken ill whilst disembarking at a London airport and after being stretchered off and taken away by a waiting ambulance the other 211 passengers along with the cabin crew also disembark. That same day more than 6000 people move through the same airport, their destinations including every major city in the world. That same night the air stewardess who tended to the ill man on the plane is also taken ill, then four days later the man dies in an isolation ward of a London hospital.

Does it sound familiar?

In the early stages of the pandemic there are descriptions of schools closing, trains being cancelled due to staff not turning up for work, and shops and factories closing for the same reason. Reports come in from New York, Rome and Paris about the rapid spread of the virus, hospitals overflow and are unable to take further admissions with medical staff falling ill as fast as the patients. From some quarters the virus is called 'the Asian flu' or 'the China virus' though it's obvious this is no influenza. There's a rush to escape London for more isolated places in the country as people panic buy and start stocking up on canned foods.

Does it ring any bells?

Terry Nation takes it all one stage further with the main plank of the book taking place in the post-pandemic world where society has totally collapsed. It's a world where there is no electricity, no running water, no heat and no food production. A world where the dead lay unburied, looting is a prerequisite but where the stench in the cities makes it impossible. Guns and petrol have become symbols of power whilst things such as the clearing of leaves to prevent the blocking of drains to prevent flooding is suddenly realised as having been a once unrecognised but important job. Likewise, simply knowing how to plant vegetables and other basic farming skills is quickly recognised as being invaluable. And as for something so apparently simple as knowing how to make a candle is suddenly seen as one of the most important aspects of human knowledge.

Unlike the aforementioned Dr Who books based on the BBC television series, Survivors isn't aimed at  a teenage readership but is instead an adult book dealing with adult themes This then poses a question of what it should be categorised under? When first published in the 1970s, Survivors might well have been labelled as science-fiction of the post-apocalypse kind but now we have experienced the Corona pandemic it's more akin to 'science-fact'. Granted, we haven't seen the collapse of civilisation but we have witnessed something that just two years ago would have been incomprehensible - as in the world being brought to heel by a virus and coming to a near-juddering halt.

Terry Nation's predictions are uncannily prescient with the only thing him getting wrong being the near-wipe out of the human race from the virus. This then poses another question as in how close was he in actually getting everything right? Just how close were we at the start of the Corona pandemic to a potential death count of utterly horrifying proportions? To a death count so high it could have been nigh-on impossible for the human race to have recovered from? Fanciful thinking? Possibly but then so too until not long ago was the notion of a global social and economic lockdown.

There are some books that age very badly and become obsolete almost overnight but on the other hand there are some books that become ever more relevant over time. Though it's not the best written book in the world Survivors is very much of the latter group.

John Serpico