Instead, the two nurses on duty tell Miranda that Peter, like most of the town, has died of the flu over the weekend. Demonstrating her newfound maturity, she skis to the local hospital in an attempt to find a doctor and family friend, Peter, to help her dying family. Miraculously, Miranda is the only one unaffected in her family.
A flu epidemic soon hits the town and decimates the remaining population. They also lose access to natural gas and water, adding to their troubles. When snow comes early, the family is forced to drastically cut their food intake, trying to conserve their dwindling supply of canned foods until things get better. Miranda’s friends either leave their Pennsylvania town, hoping to find a better life south or west, or begin to die of starvation. Electricity is nonexistent, crops die and insect-borne diseases spread rapidly. Dense clouds of ash block the sun’s rays, and the earth is thrown into a premature winter, further reducing the availability of crops and food supplies. When volcanoes begin erupting around the world, in places that have experienced this phenomenon before, things go from bad to worse. She becomes more optimistic about their chances of surviving when her older brother, Matt, manages to return home from college to be with the family. Though Miranda believes her mom is overreacting and initially takes a myopic view of the catastrophe, she helps out however she can. Miranda’s mother also makes the wise decision to stockpile winter clothes, batteries, oil lamps, and flats of vegetable plants. In a mad dash, with fights breaking out all around them, Miranda and her family are able to pack their van with canned foods, bottled water and toiletries. Nesbitt, the group buys everything they can get their hands on at the supermarket.
Realizing that things will not return to normal anytime soon, people enter survival mode, including Miranda’s mother, Laura, who takes Miranda and her brother Jonny out of school to stockpile food and other basic necessities, in case things get worse.
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