A man reflects on the past week while an unexpected storm rages outside, and he compares the events that follow with the fall of the Roman Empire.

As the world collapses due to an escalated nuclear crisis, a young boy and a man’s lives are joined together as they escape from New York to Iceland. They start a new life of survival there as the world gets dark and cold, but they need the sun to reappear in order to survive long-term.

Protagonist Walter Stuart drives determinedly, with curious excitement, into a hurricane to save anyone who might be stuck. He weathers a torrential night with a stranded brother and sister, but by morning he has lost his mind and attempts to kill both of them.

When an accountant's flight is delayed due to intense fog, he and the other waiting passengers experience a series of strange occurrences, from meteors to a Cuban uprising.

An alternate universe where all that was improbable begins to happen a lot. A black female narrator navigates the ever crumbling New York City in this new world order.

During their discussion of philosophy and the downward spiral of the world’s condition, a group of men is startled by a voice in the dark that recounts for them two stories of the human embodiment of battlefield carnage. When the voice finishes, the men struggle to pinpoint where it came from.

In a dystopic future on Earth, as a woman comes home from vacation, she hears about a continent emerging from the sea as old ones sink, and returns to find her husband released from Rehabilitation Camp. He and his fellow researchers discover how to make a “sun tap” to channel the sun’s energy into power, but then he is again forced away by the government, into a hospital.

In Galveston, Texas, in the year 1900, a wealthy businessman leaves his family on a train to Fort Worth and takes a ferry back to the island as part of an elaborate plot to murder a rival who dishonored his wife, planning to catch a later train; however, after the act is complete, he is trapped and killed in a hurricane, one of many deaths. His wife, safely in Forth Worth, learns of his death and continues an ongoing affair with his friend's son.

While recovering from a serious illness, a ninety-year-old scientist wades through his patchy memory, piecing together fragments of images and emotions from his childhood as an immigrant in the once-moving American 1940s. He thinks about his admiration for airplanes, which have been outlawed in this alternate history. He considers how such scientific advancements can also bring about great destruction.

A 33-year-old woman living in an apocalyptic Scotland with her husband writes in her diary about the tribulations of their lives and their pilgrimage to Russia in hope of a more stable existence.