SF Collectors' Edition: This Is The Way The World Ends

When George Paxman, a contended tombstone engraver in a quiet Massachusetts backwater, is offered a bargain, he doesn't hesitate for long. The deal is that his beloved daughter gets an otherwise unaffordable anti-radiation scopas suit to protect her. And all George has to do is sign a document admitting that, as a passive citizen who did nothing to stop it, he has a degree of guilt for any nuclear war that breaks out. George signs on the dotted line.

And then the unthinkable happens. The world and everyone in it - with or without a scopas suit - is destroyed in a nuclear armageddon. Except for George and five others. And now George must face prosecution. His accusers are those who will never now be born, and his crime is having done nothing to stop a nuclear conflagration.