The basic idea for what would become On the Beach grew out of the wishful thinking then current in Australia: that radiation from a nuclear war in the northern hemisphere would be held above the equator by the trade winds. Shute's first intention seems to have been to write a kind of modern Swiss Family Robinson about the continuation of civilization in Australia….

The idea for the book "started as a joke," Shute told a friend. "Now that I was living in Australia I kidded my friends in the northern hemisphere, telling them that if they weren't careful with atomic explosions they'd destroy themselves and we Australians would inherit the world." "The idea stayed in my mind in that form for about a year, in a slightly cynical and humorous form," he wrote an interviewer; but, when his research showed him that Australia would not escape nuclear doom...