sentences:  Shute felt that Captain Towers and Moira having a love affair ruined a central element of the novel, that is, Towers' fidelity to his long-dead American wife.In the novel it has been two years since the last nuclear attacks, and small pockets of human survivors are mentioned in several areas of the Southern Hemisphere.Australia is in radio contact with places such as Montevideo, on the east coast of South America, and Cape Town, on the southern tip of Africa.