IF CIVILIZATION WERE DESTROYED TODAY-WOULD JOHN THOMAS ROURKE BE ABLE TO SURVIVE... ? World War III has reduced America's purpled mountain majesty to a battle-seared landscape of blasted rubble and toxic waste. A few tattered pockets of civilization struggle to exist, always in the shadow of the advancing soviet killing machine. Only one man dares to challenge it, John Thomas Rourke: ex-CIA Covert Operations Officer, weapons specialist, and survival expert. Rourke, the Germans, the Chinese of the First City and the citizens of Mid-Wake ally and try to duplicate the blood-curdling Particle Beam weapons of the Soviets. Without the technology, survival is hopeless. Then intelligence data confirms rumors of an alliance being forged between the warring soviet factions. Almost as a warning, New Germany is ravaged by a hellish bombing raid of unprecedented magnitude. Rourke and the Free World have no choice: a dual strike, simultaneously against the Soviet undersea forces and the Soviet underground City, must be launched. The allies' battle plan is desperate, hinging on the success of the untested Particle Beam weapon and the equally-deadly instincts of... THE SURVIVALIST.