There Will Come Soft Rains

Also known as August 2026: There Will Come Soft Rains, is a short story narrating the daily routine of an automated house, whose menial tasks continue, unimpeded for now, in the solitary aftermath of a worldwide nuclear holocaust.

This story was written in 1950 during a period known as the Cold War, a conflict mostly devoid of overt military action that took place between the United States and the Soviet Union. The fear of total nuclear annihilation was thick in the air, as each side became increasingly preoccupied on developing potent nuclear armament capable of discouraging the other side from using its own bombs, a tactic that would eventually form the basis of M.A.D., or Mutually Assured Destruction. This, coupled with the fact that the United States had dropped two atomic bombs on Japan during World War II, created a widespread fear of nuclear war that was pervasive in American households.