Freeze Dried Foods

Freeze Dried Foods Absent from Swan Song by Robert R. MacCammon

Freeze dried foods don't figure in the post-atomic war novel Swan Song by Robert R. MacCammon, but they could have.

Swan Song is the last -- and perhaps the best, because least "realistic" -- in a long line of post atomic war novels, such as Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank, On the Beach by Nevil Shute and A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr.

It may also owe some derivation to The Stand by Stephen King, to which it bears some resemblance, though I enjoyed Swan Song better. The Stand is better known because, by that time, Stephen King had achieved much greater popularity.

A lot of Swan Song derives from the prediction popular during the 1980s that, because nuclear explosions would send lots of dust into the atmosphere, that this would block sunlight, causing a widespread "nuclear winter."

Store Up Some Freeze Dried Foods in Case of a Similar Catastrophe

In Swan Song, the post-war United States is a dark and gloomy place. There's no sunshine, only clouds. It's cold in July and even colder in January. Because there's no wild plants growing, deer and other herbivores die out immediately. Because within a few days of the attack, wolves come down from the hills and are attacking people along interstate highways.

I didn't find this quite credible. It would take more than just a few days to kill all the deer running around suburbia and farmlands of the United States. There'd still be leaves and plants for them to forage.

And I'm not so sure there are that many wolves left east of the Mississippi River in the U.S., as depicted in that segment of the book. Nor do I believe they'd so quickly lose their fear of people and guns. Eventually, yes, but by that time they'd be weakened by hunger.

Whether it's because of the weather, lack of sunlight or radiation, no plant life can grow. MacCammon doesn't mention how the Earth's atmosphere retains oxygen during this period. We're left to speculate that the atomic attack left plenty of plankton and algae in the oceans, to take in carbon dioxide and release oxygen.

In Such a Climate, Nobody can Grow Farm Crops or a Garden

Crops don't grow for seven years. The small percentage of people who survived the nuclear attack, live entirely on pre-war food they can scrounge -- mostly canned goods.

That's why I say it should feature freeze-dried foods. While it's true that the average pantry is more likely to have cans of baked beans than Mountain House canisters of foods in storage for such emergencies or for campouts, there are some.

And there are campers and survivalists (though not too many in the 1980s) who would have stored food better than simply conventional self-canned vegetables, dried fruit and canned goods you can buy at the supermarket. There would have been camping supply stores where the war's survivors could have obtained useful supplies of all kinds, to live off the land.

So it's likely they would have also eaten freeze dried foods, along with the other meals they scrounged for seven years, until the Swan of the book's title works her magic.