At the same time, a significant event had recently happened -- the detonation of two atom bombs over Japan. The people of the world were transfixed by the devastation.
And then, in 1949, Russia revealed that it too had the atom bomb. The world suddenly had two superpowers threatening everyone with a nuclear holocaust.
William Golding started writing Lord of the Flies soon after this sequence of events.
It was taken for granted that a nuclear war would soon erupt. One prediction for this event was 1964 --the theme of Nevil Shute's novel