Unlike previous versions of this story, characters indulge in sex and romance to keep their minds off their impending deaths.

There are scenes in which naked people get into bed with each other and kiss.

While civilization crumbles, the main character walks through a street just before two groups are fighting and rioting. Easily seen, at the side of the street, a man and a woman are having sex standing up against a brick wall; he is naked from the ribs down, he is standing, and she has her legs wrapped around him, while he is shown thrusting up. We see his buttocks fully.

There is a street riot between warring groups. People are shot in the chest, almost point blank, with pistols.

More than 20 f-words, more than a dozen s-words. Nevil Shute didn't need them!

The female lead drinks to excess; being a bit alcoholic is part of her character.

The major scientist, the Osborne character, explains that he tried valiantly and persistently to avoid the conclusion that the world was doomed. After he failed at that, he then decided to remain almost permanently drunk in the little time he had left.

The whole planet Earth has been made uninhabitable by a nuclear war. The people left alive only have a certain amount of time before they get radiation sickness. The only way to avoid a very unpleasant death is to kill oneself. The government aids this by making "suicide pills" available.

A good number of people arrange to kill themselves in what would normally be called accidents, but intentionally. A race car driver deliberately drives into a billboard to kill himself while at a racetrack.

A number of times while investigating the dead Alaskan town, the seamen encounter the dead bodies of people who "suicided" months before. The bodies are only partially decomposed, partly because the microorganisms that would normally rot corpses may also have been killed by the radiation. The bodies mostly look normal, but the faces have bloated and changed color. Families are shown gathered together on a bed, having "suicided" together; their faces are discolored and bloated grotesquely as well.

There are two scenes depicting people perishing in atomic blasts. One is a recording of a television newswoman, before, during, and after the moments she realizes a nuclear exchange has begun. This is shown on the computer in front of the woman's actual dead body, several months after her death.

The second scene depicting people perishing in atomic blasts is one in which the ship's captain imagine how his family died from an atomic blast. They look scared, there is a tremendous flash of light, the family drops to the floor to avoid the flames and fire that come in through the windows, the little boy and girl try to evade the flames as they get lower, but scream as they are engulfed anyway. Meanwhile, the wife screams for her husband who was not there.

A husband and wife take their toddler in to the main bedroom with them. They painlessly euthanize her with a hypodermic needle. They reminisce over her dead body between them, before taking their "suicide pills" themselves.

A city with famous landmarks is shown destroyed and in flames.

A man is shown trying to wash out a bleeding wound in his leg, in the shower, with blood running down his legs. He is shown later dying of radiation, which takes a while, until he is euthanized with an injection.

A number of times, radiation victims are shown vomiting.