No plan survives contact with the enemy." An age old idiom that Clay Sanders knows very well. In this case however, it's surviving contact with the people who are supposed to be on his side. Family that can't accept the reality of their new situation, soldiers who follow orders selectively, and 'friends' who essentially sell you down the river. No one ever said the end of the modern world would be boring or uneventful.
Clay has to deal with betrayals, attitude problems, shifting blame and idealist natures that all threaten to undermine the long months of preparation for the troubling times they now live in. Preparations that cost a fortune and tried to anticipate every need of the small number of people he had planned on living at the Sanders farms, not the growing number of people actually living there thanks to events he can't seem to get control of.
The 'Citizen's committee' is still out there somewhere, there's a nutty 'Reverend' working the airwaves into a frenzy, there are disgruntled members of the community sowing discord and strife, apparent rogue nomadic elements of some kind that are raiding any place that still has food or resources, cannibals that are still active in their area, and because of certain betrayals they now have to step up training of every individual on the farm from the age of sixteen on up just to be able to protect themselves.
Clay just might have had enough of trying to protect a farm full of people that apparently don't want to be protected, even if a lot of them are his own family.
And then, there's that radio call. . . .