In November 2019 Netflix released a world-wide series, We Are The Wave, inspired by Strasser's novel. In 2008, The Wave (the movie version of Die Welle) starring Jürgen Vogel, debuted at the Sundance Film Festival and went on to become a box office success in many European countries. In Germany, under the pen name Morton Rhue, he is the best-selling author of such novels as Die Welle, Dschihad Online, Ich knall euch ab!, Boot Camp, No Place, No Home, Ghetto Kidz, Asphalt Tribe, and a number of other titles. He is the father of two children, and an avid tennis player and surfer. There’s a struggle when desperate neighbors try to push their way in. The story opens before dawn with Scott’s family climbing down into their bomb shelter. His first novel was Angel Dust Blues (1978). But in Todd Strasser’s Fallout (Candlewick 2013) the attack takes place.

He earned his living as a reporter for the Middletown Times Herald-Record newspaper, and as a copywriter for Compton Advertising in New York City.

He studied literature and creative writing at New York University and Beloit College. Internationally best-selling author Todd Strasser has written his most impressive and personal novel to date, ruthlessly yet sensitively exploring the terrifying what-ifs of one of the most explosive moments in human history.Todd Strasser (born May 5, 1950) is an American writer of more than 140 young-adult and middle grade novels and many short stories and works of non-fiction, some written under the pen names Morton Rhue and T.S. But even worse is the question of what will - and won’t - remain when the door is opened again. With not enough room, not enough food, and not enough air, life inside the shelter is filthy, physically draining, and emotionally fraught. In the middle of the night in late October, when the unthinkable happens, those same neighbors force their way into the shelter before Scott’s dad can shut the door. As the neighbors scoff, he builds a bomb shelter to hold his family and stocks it with just enough supplies to keep the four of them alive for two critical weeks. But Scott’s dad is the only one in the neighborhood who actually prepares for the worst.

In the summer of 1962, the possibility of nuclear war is all anyone talks about. The Horn Book Tweens and teens will enjoy reading the fast-paced novel about Scott and his pranks, as well as understand the reason bomb shelters were built in the 1960s. What if the bomb had actually been dropped? What if your family was the only one with a shelter? Strasser has crafted a memorable piece of alternative history that will leave readers pondering the characters and their choices long after the last page is turned.

Fallout by Todd Strasser