Steve Anders (Peter Graves) and his two teenage children are on a fossil-finding expedition far removed from civilization in the High Sierras when a solar flare bestows upon California a lethal dose of radiation. Jim Clancy, their hiking companion, then gets very sick and has to be carried off the mountain. Not only does he die on the way down, but his body then desiccates to powder almost immediately. The Anders trio completes the descent from the mountain into the town of Rainbow, where they find many more piles of “human powder” but nary a living soul. Their need to get back home to Malibu now involves looking for cars that will run and food that is not contaminated. Along the way they encounter a handful of scattered survivors, some of whom have hostile intentions, but two of which join them for the journey after having seen their own families killed by the after-effects of the flare or by more violent means. When the Anders family f inally gets home, they learn that most of the population has succumbed to a deadly virus after the radiation weakened their immune systems, but that a select few individuals possess a gene that maintained their immunity to the virus.

This program was originally broadcast on ABC on October 8, 1974.

Run Time 74 minutes
Condition: VG-