The Compound

Use these questions or activities to help gauge students’ familiarity with and spark their interest in the context of the work, giving them an entry point into the text itself.

Short Answer

1. What do you know about how a nuclear war or nuclear accident would impact human beings and the environment? List three or four of the most important impacts.

Teaching Suggestion and Helpful Links: As students make their lists, point out the differences between a local and a global event. Reassure them that the likelihood of a global nuclear event is very small in today’s world, and explain that most nuclear events are local meltdowns at nuclear energy plants—and that even these are very rare.

• a brief but informative article intended to give a younger audience information about nuclear radiation’s impact on humans and the environment
• Ready.gov’s information sheet on nuclear explosions
• This article about nuclear plant meltdowns from Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists offers some reassuring background for students who might live in proximity to a nuclear plant.

2. Do you think it is important to be loyal and obedient to a leader during a time of crisis? Why or why not? Under what circumstances might this be a bad idea? What should be done about an ineffective leader during a crisis?

Teaching Suggestion and Helpful Links: Guide students to think about why effective leadership is important in a time of crisis and to analyze what makes an effective leader. Help them see how this question relates to Relationships and Power and Control. Ask them to think about what happens when a leader fails to consider everyone’s needs, makes self-interested decisions, or has unworkable ideas. As they offer ways to fix the problem of ineffective leadership during a crisis, help them to consider the pros and cons of their solutions, focusing some attention on Shame, Guilt, and Relationships and Power, Control, and Intimacy.

• This University of Queensland article thoroughly explains the qualities of effective leadership.

Short Activity

The novel we are about to read takes place in a compound that the protagonist’s father has built to shelter his family from a nuclear disaster. Imagine that you are building your own shelter intended to keep a small group of people safe from the outside world for about fifteen years. What would you include inside? How would you arrange it? Draw the plans for your own “fallout” shelter, labeling the different rooms and areas as well as the most important items inside.

Teaching Suggestion and Helpful Links: Discuss with students the basic requirements for sustaining life in this way—water, food, ventilation, sanitation, medical supplies—and then ask them to think about what they would add to these to promote happiness and protect mental health during more than a decade in isolation. Show them how Relationships and Intimacy are affected by these choices. You might ask how many of your students play the video game Fallout Shelter, and then talk about how different aspects of the game do or do not reflect real-life concerns.

• This ABC News slideshow of images shows a variety of fallout shelters that can pique students’ curiosity and generate ideas.
• This article from the New York Times addresses basic structural concerns.
• Students can see some fallout shelter blueprint plans here and here.