Summary: A reluctant hero holds the line for civilisation while the forces of chaos and anarchy try to claw him (and the rest of the world) down into the ash. As Pogo said so long ago, 'We have met the enemy and it is us.' ( ) The war itself caused limited damage, the plagues that followed did more, but it was the 'hypersurvivalists' with their stockpiles of weapons and food who caused the most damage and prevented the country from rebuilding itself by attacking and disrupting humanitarian relief efforts. Beyond the basics of the plot, the book also has a powerful message about the real dangers of the post-apocalyptic world. The postman initially doesn't intend to deceive them, but soon figures out that it's the best way to bring them together against the common enemy. It's touching to see how eagerly the villages want to believe that they are not alone in the world. government (due to his having stolen the uniform and mailbag of a dead postman along the way), he figures out a way to use the lie to bring communities together to fight the larger threat of anarchic gangs of 'hypersurvivalists' who bear an uncomfortable resemblance to modern-day militia groups. When a solitary traveler is mistaken as an agent for a reconstituted U.S. The United States has been destroyed, and isolated communities in the Pacific Northwest are barely surviving in the aftermath of a war that was less damaging than the plagues that followed on its heels and killed most of the population.

I'm a sucker for a good post-apocalyptic tale, and The Postman did not disappoint on that score.

The postman by david brin