IF CIVILIZATION WERE DESTROYED TODAY-WOULD JOHN THOMAS ROURKE BE ABLE TO SURVIVE...? It's a perilous world after the fiery apocalypse of World War III, and John Thomas Rourke-ex-ClA Covert Operations Officer, weapons specialist, and survival expert-pursues his archenemy Vladmir Karamatsov into the strife-torn, blackened wilderness of mainland China and a rendezvous with certain death. Karamatsov in possession of devastating gas that transmutes normal men into homicidal, blood-crazed animals, is determined to use it to seize control of the vast Communist Chinese nuclear arsenal that survived the hell-fire destruction of the Night of The War. Like few men alive on earth, Rourke knows the thermonuclear horrors that await mankind. Although the odds have never been more heavily stacked against him, he has no choice but to attack and crush the new threat-he is.... THE SURVIVALIST.