On the Beach

by Nevil Shute

“It’s not the end of the world at all,” he said. “It’s only the end of us. The world will go on just the same, only we shan’t be in it. I dare say it will get along all right without us.”

“None of us really believe it’s ever going to happen—not to us,” she said at last. “Everybody’s crazy on that point, one way or another.”

He was not very well accustomed to taking personal risks, to endangering his life, and his life had been the poorer for it.

“We’re all going a bit mad in our own way,”

“Well, don’t go and kill yourself. Although, I’m sure, it doesn’t seem to matter very much if you do.

“I don’t know. . . . Some kinds of silliness you just can’t stop,” he said. “I mean, if a couple of hundred million people all decide that their national honour requires them to drop cobalt bombs upon their neighbour, well, there’s not much that you or I can do about it. The only possible hope would have been to educate them out of their silliness.”