When Reed Gallagher, dean of Journalism at Lanholme College, is found dead of asphyxiation in an apparent attempt at autoerotic suffocation, Joanne Kilbourn is pulled into the murky world of kinky sex, academic competitiveness and ruthless ambition.

An experiment of psychological effects under stressful conditions in a shelter. When fifteen strangers are put into a nuclear shelter to see how long they can survive without interaction with the outside, things work out fine.

The story of a fictional town suffering from an outbreak of severe water contamination.