The episode originally aired on January 12, 1962, was written by series creator/showrunner Rod Serling with a cast featuring Joseph Wiseman, Katherine Squire, Trevor Bardette and Gage Clarke.
How rich we can already perceive; how eccentric and single-minded we shall see in a moment, because all of you have just entered the Twilight Zone.Millionaire Paul Radin invites three people to the bomb shelter that he has built.
One is high school teacher Mrs. Langsford, who failed him when he was caught cheating on a test and attempting to frame another student; the second is Colonel Hawthorne, who had him court-martialed when Radin endangered lives by disobeying orders; and the third is Reverend Hughes, who made a public scandal out of a young woman who later committed suicide over Radin.
Radin, with the aid of sound effects and fake radio messages, convinces the trio that an apocalyptic nuclear war will occur in just moments.
Mr. Paul Radin, a dealer in fantasy, who sits in the rubble of his own making and imagines that he's the last man on Earth, doomed to a perdition of unutterable loneliness because a practical joke has turned into a nightmare.