Death of Grass

As the story opens, the initial viral strain has already attacked rice crops in East Asia causing massive famine and a mutation has appeared which infects the staple crops of West Asia and Europe such as wheat and barley, threatening a famine engulfing the whole of the Old World, while Australasia and the Americas attempt to impose rigorous quarantine to exclude the virus.

The novel follows the trials and struggles of the narrator's family as they attempt to make their way across England, which is already descending into anarchy, to the safety of his brother's potato farm in an isolated Westmorland valley.

The main characters sacrifice many of their morals in order to stay alive. At one point, when their food supply runs out, they kill an innocent family simply to take their bread. The protagonist justifies this with the belief that "it was them or us." Some critics have viewed this as an attempt by the author to distance the work from the cosy catastrophe pattern made popular by John Wyndham.