Two months after the one-day war, America still in the grip of anarchy. The cities are in ruin and the countryside belongs to the scavengers and cannibals. The job of the Guardians, the crack four-man team armed with space-age weaponry, is to put into action the Blueprint for Renewal, the top-secret contingency plan devised before the holocaust. But the Blueprint has vanished with the President, with only parts of it known to key experts.