The crash was not sudden, there was no shattering explosion, the plane did not abruptly plummet towards the sea. Rather there was a staged development of tension amongst the passengers as curiosity tempered with an edge of concern evolved through distinct phases into pounding terror. Then the plane crashed.

A group of people combine to survive the plane crash in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Battling against the elements in a feeble life raft, they make their way to a deserted island. If they had known what was on it, they would have stayed on the ocean. But they did not give up, it was not how they were made. Instead they took on everything that confronted them. They adapted, they constantly adapted and eventually they won. By the time the rescuers belatedly arrived they had already saved themselves, or at least some of themselves.

They should not have survived. The crash should have killed them, or the sea water they landed in, or the journey to the island, or the horrors that the island held for them. But they survived and flourished. The book is about how they survived and why the process by which they survived was the same process by which they started killing each other.