Every modern city has one week's worth of food to feed itself. Then it will collapse. Cut off the resources to New York, Sydney, or even a mid-size metropolis, and millions will soon starve... Set in a realistic near future with dwindling global food supplies under increasing pressure from worsening droughts, floods and extreme weather events, this book follows a handful of survivors from the first day of society's descent into violent, uncertain futures. James, a consultant to the US National Security Council, is the first to suspect that the worldwide emergence of a crippling computer virus is actually a cover for something else, a devastating cyber-attack by China on the food distribution system of the United States. The attack is a bid for the Middle Kingdom to distract America as it seizes the food bowl of South East Asia and feeds its starving population. But Beijing has miscalculated. Follow the missions of an embittered activist chasing salvation, a single mum rescuing her child from a frantic San Francisco and an army veteran who has long retreated from society, as the world they knew crumbles around them.