War on Terror

War on Terror names the pre-catastrophe political climate in which the rationale for Project NOAH first takes shape. In Cole’s pitch to Richards, the spread of nuclear weapons makes the old promise of American security seem exhausted; he presents NOAH as a still more consequential project, one that would weaponize the human form and make American power permanent. The later Sanctuary and farmstead scenes show how far that language of control lies from the intimate, uncertain work of judging guilt and remembering the dead.

The geopolitical argument behind Project NOAH

Cole recalls the brief period after the United States possessed the atomic bomb but before the Soviet Union tested its own in 1949 as Pax Americana. By the time he speaks with Richards in Ankara, nuclear weapons have spread: he cites Soviet-era warheads circulating on the open market and the nuclear programs of Pakistan and India. In his deliberately caustic telling, the possibility of mass killing has become ordinary business in the War on Terror.

Against that background, Cole describes NOAH as a new Manhattan Project, larger in consequence than its predecessor. He does not disclose its details to Richards, but supplies the defining ambition: the human form itself is to be weaponized, and the American Way made permanent. The pitch joins technological power to political permanence, presenting the project not simply as a response to danger but as an attempt to secure lasting dominance.

Security as recruitment and method

Cole approaches Richards because the project requires someone who can work off the books and handle practical security. He emphasizes that security sits at the top of his priorities and that the project’s pieces are still gathering. The conversation makes recruitment part of the security apparatus: Cole travels to Ankara, dresses conspicuously in a Hawaiian shirt beneath his khaki suit, and seeks Richards’s personal buy-in before the operation is fully assembled.

This early account gives the later catastrophe a political prehistory without making the War on Terror itself its sole cause. The language of permanent national advantage is already present at NOAH’s conception; Richards’s practical role is to help make that ambition operational while keeping it concealed.

Justice after the old order

The novel’s post-collapse Sanctuary offers a sharp contrast to Cole’s sweeping strategic vision. After the girl’s arrival, Sanjay orders an inquest into the night’s events and questions Peter, Alicia, Hollis, and Soo separately. Peter experiences the procedure as a search for someone to blame. Old Chou, who once led the Household, insists that Caleb’s intention is not the issue and asks Peter directly whether he opened the gate. Peter denies it, and Old Chou visibly relaxes, but the questioning does not settle what will happen to Caleb.

The scene presents authority as both necessary and precarious: an inquiry is conducted amid silence, disrupted routines, and uncertainty about what the children will be told, while responsibility remains unresolved. When a crowd later calls for Dale to put a boy out, Alicia steps forward and asks Dale for his cross. Her intervention shifts the moment away from the crowd’s pressure and toward a personal act of authority, showing how communal judgment can be challenged from within.

Remembering the dead

At the farmstead, the handling of Galen’s body provides another measure of justice after the collapse. Mausami objects to burning him, insisting that although he may have been a viral, he was once her husband and deserves burial. The group lays him to rest in the yard on their second day there, while Theo remains bedridden.

Sara proposes that each person tell a story about Galen. The task is difficult because most of those present barely knew him or had not liked him, but they eventually recall something funny, loyal, or kind. Their stories do not erase his transformation or the harm around it; they restore the person to the body they bury. Mausami’s account adds that Galen had been nearly blind and too proud to admit how badly his sight had failed. She regrets deceiving him and reflects that he had wanted to be a father. In this ritual, remembrance becomes a form of recognition that the strategic language of weapons and security cannot provide: the dead are judged not only by what they became, but also by the human life that preceded it.