W.W.T or World War Terminus

The story of Do Androids Dream of Sleep? takes place in 1992, after World War Terminus has spread a cloud of radioactive dust across the Earth, devastating the planet and destroying nearly all of human civilization. Almost all of the world's major cities have been destroyed and much of the human race has been killed. “The U.N. had made it easy to emigrate, difficult if not impossible to stay,” on Earth after the war. (Dick 16) Nobody knows who started the war or how it comes about.
The World War drove entire species into extinction. The Owls were the first ones to die and the other animals followed. “A thousand thoughts came to mind, thoughts about the war, about the days when owls had fallen from the sky; he remembered how in his childhood it had been discovered that species upon species had become extinct and how the ‘pages had reported it each day—foxes one more, badgers the next day, until people had stopped reading the perpetual animal obits.” (Dick 42)
Scenes such as a one described in the above quote take the frequently shocking ideas of what would have occurred during the “Cold War” and turn them into realities in the form of science fiction novels. Author Philip K. Dick wrote Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? during the 1960’s, a time where the world was threatened by the possibility destruction at any time because of the nuclear arms race between the United States, the Soviet Union, and their respective allies. The effects of the nuclear bombs were assumed to be burns, radiation poisoning and related diseases. This period in time is called the “cold war” because it never resulted in actions of mutual destruction.
In the book, Dick makes Earth’s setting to be as if the end results of if the cold war had heated up and nuclear bombs were used. He names the imagined war World War Terminus. He creates to setting on the surface of Earth to be radioactive wasteland and has some areas the effects of the dust is so dangerous that going outside made those who ever exposed to it sick. As seen through the effects of the U.S. dropping bombs on Japan, those results are what occurred to the people that were in Hiroshima. Dick makes it a reality within his novel through creating the setting to be resulted from World War Terminus.
Bibliography:
Dick, Philip K. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? New York: Ballantine, 1996. Print.
"Philip K. Dick." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2010. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 06 Dec. 2010 .