Ben and Haley are brother and sister and the children of a paranoid doomsday prepper, Ed.

Upon hearing of the possibility of an upcoming pandemic, their father forces them to accompany him to a remote piece of land to ride out the future disaster along with several of his followers.

[3] Allan Massie praised Morrison for avoiding issues common in other dystopian novels such as poor characterization and noted Haley's sense of humor.

[5] Stuart Kelly wrote positively in The Spectator about the novel's plot and praised Morrison for humanizing doomsday preppers.

[6] By contrast, Ben H. Winters panned the book in The New York Times, criticizing Morrison's narrative structure and describing the dialogue as "clumsy and forced.