Farnham's Freehold
by Robert A Heinlein
Warning: Spoilers below!
They get outside in an apparently empty world. The story goes through a whole series of survival situations (a worthy read in itself). Just when it looks like the group might finally manage to survive, everything falls apart.
A group of high-technology people shows up, takes our heroes captive, and destroys everything they've built in mere minutes. They are taken slave, and go through a whole series of adventures. They discover that they're actually about a thousand years in the future; cast there by some strange effect during that nuclear war. In the end, one couple manage to escape from their captors into the past from which they came. Altogether it's a good story, except for one bit of bad luck/bad taste on the part of the author (Which I must admit, I really didn't much notice when I read it, but some folks strenuously disagree):
The Chosen, captors of the family, are all black. The slaves in that civilization are white. The way to tell the difference between a slave and a Chosen is simply to look at skin color. The Chosen are also far more vicious to their slaves (including cannibalism) than were slaveholders in the United States. This leads to accusations that this is a racist book. I can see this point, but it's not self-evidently true. A book which involves racist characters is not necessarily itself racist, just as a book which involves evil characters need not be itself evil.
If you don't think you can put up with this, then I suggest you don't read the second half of this book. Either way, I do highly recommend the first half of the book. I give it a 6/10.
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