Cal's post-nuclear adventures may not be quite as harrowing as Threads, but there are some spine-chilling moments.
- In book 1, you can encounter a pair of "Rad-vics", the nickname your colony gives to victims of terminal radiation sickness. If you got past their dogs by feeding the animals with spare meals, you end up at the numbered section that shows a picture of the wretches, and their diseased, ghoulish appearance is jarring for what up to this point has been a family-friendly Mad Max meets Lone Wolf deal.
- In book 3, Cal's extended chase/duel with the HAVOC sniper is tense for a gamebook. One by one, Cal's party of military buddies get picked off by the sniper, who is so lethal that merely peeking in his direction from cover triggers the gamebook equivalent of Press X to Not Die. Once Cal is the last survivor, the sniper hunts him like a goddamned Predator for two days, chasing him over forest and road without ever revealing more of himself than a shadow. More than once, Cal is reduced to cowering behind an obstacle, hardly daring to move. Only when Cal is cornered in the ruins of Tombstone, Arizona does he finally turn the tables on the bastard, killing him in a climactic shootout. Hell, in one Let's Play of the series, the players went on to fail so many rolls in book 4 that they joked that Cal had developed PTSD from the whole ordeal.
