In a similar vein, George Stewart's "Earth Abides" (1949) covers some of the same apocalyptic ground. And it still holds up very well from an ecological sciences point of view (that's right, concern for the environment predated the sixties). When I was a graduate student in Geography (in those days, it was still considered an interdisciplinary earth science, not a means of inventorying and cataloging real estate) Stewart's books were required reading for geographers. He wrote about environmental themes, devoting whole book-length fictionalized treatments to natural phenomena such as storms, wildfires, etc and how they affected the natural and human landscape. The interconnection of the human ans natural landscapes was, after all, the subject matter and purpose of geography as a discipline before it became obsessed with automated data collection and representation.

"Earth Abides" is about how the natural world responds to the almost instantaneous removal of human beings (except for a tiny percentage who have a natural immunity) by a viral plague. Stewart was a physical geographer himself, so his books were scientifically accurate and are still authoritative even by today's standards. Fortunately, because of when he worked, there is little political slant to them, although today's readers will no doubt interject their own. Check out the review below, it dwells on an aspect of the book I had totally forgotten about. I can think of at least one of our Zoners, in particular, who might really benefit from reading it.

http://www.lostbooks.org/reviews/1998-06-11-1.html