It’s my hypothesis that the novel begins close to McCarthy’s boyhood home in western Tennessee. The man and his son then begin to travel east, crossing the Appalachian Mountains into Tennessee and then head south before finally reaching the coast of South Carolina. I gleaned this information from the fact that many of McCarthy’s novels are partly set in the area where he grew up and he refers to the area the man and his son travel through as they make their way toward the coast as “The Piedmont” which is a common term for the flatlands along the Carolina coastline.

But since McCarthy’s boyhood, many tunnels have been blasted through the mountains and hills of Kentucky and Tennessee and never once does he mention the pair traveling through a tunnel. Yes, I’m sure the man would be far too cautious to risk walking through a tunnel, but it could also save them a lot of walking so it’s hard to say. Another clue us that the house where they find the bunker buried in the yard has cardboard cans of motor oil in the shed. It’s been quite a while since any motor oil has been sold in anything besides a plastic bottle. Still another clue is the truck the roadrats were driving through the mountains. if the cataclysm was caused by a comet or meteor strike like I believe it was, then the Electro Magnetic Pulse of the explosion as the object collided with the Earth would have knocked out any vehicle with an electric ignition and that vehicle could never be started again. But vehicles made prior to the mid-1970s still had fuel-injection engines and EMP wouldn’t prevent them from starting.

My guess is that the novel takes place somewhere between 1970 and 1985. But that’s just my own theory.

Having read “The Road” many times, (I have been reading the book with my students for about four years now) I don’t know if I agree with you about the man not knowing what caused the cataclysm. As you mentioned, McCarthy always makes every word count, and when he recounts the night of the event, I don’t get the impression that the man is at a loss as to what’s happening. The man’s wife actually asks him about what is happening and he doesn’t reply. But he checks to see if the power is on and thinks to fill the tub straight away. Again, we can’t know why the man doesn’t answer his wife’s question. It very well could have been because he didn’t know. Or it may have been because he didn’t want to tell her. We can’t know, but it’s interesting to ponder things like that. Later on in the novel, after the man and his son had seen the horror in the woods, the boy asked where the baby had come from and the man doesn’t answer. Obviously, it’s not because he doesn’t know. Just an example.

It’s interesting to me that you feel there were quite a few environmentalist themes in the novel. That’s something that I have only heard mentioned by a few people. I would say that the Biblical themes are very strong as well. As this thread is geared solely on talking about the possible causes of the cataclysm and not the book itself, I haven’t gone into detail about any of that here. It’s a well known fact that McCarthy’s circle of friends doesn’t include a lot of authors but consists mostly of people involved with science in some way. It would be more than likely that their expertise played some role in McCarthy’s formation of the bleakness of the world in the aftermath of the cataclysm.

Regarding your final thought on the asteroid, I could have sworn that I’d touched on the fact that life managed to find a way, that explains why we’re here. It’s impossible for us to say whether or not an asteroid or comet far larger than anything that’s come our way before could destroy all life on this planet.

I would like to thank you for your very well thought out reply. It’s nice to talk with others who enjoy this book as much as I do and I appreciate all of your feedback. if you find some free time, I’d be interested to read more about your opinion that environmental themes can be found throughout the novel.

Take care.

Which I believe leads to the main point: CMC is an incredibly accomplished author, and he doesn’t waste a single word. The ambiguity surrounding whatever happened to the world is deliberate. It reflects the fact The Man himself has absolutely no idea what caused the world to be how it is. It happened too quickly, with too much infrastructure and all communications cut off before any explanation could be found or transmitted. The fact the cataclysm is a mystery even to The Man completes the utter awfulness of the situation, robbing readers and characters alike of the ability to make any sense of what has happened or transpose any sense of order onto the chaos of the ashes.

It’s important to bear in mind, therefore, that really, the setting of the road is a construct. It’s an entirely contrived situation. Nobody can say with any certainty that any disaster or combination of disasters could reduce the world to what it is in The Road. McCarthy needed to paint a picture of a world so bleak and hopeless in order to craft within it the story he wanted to tell, which is a story about love, fatherhood, the meaning of humanity, the dichotomy between good and evil, etc.

I also believe there are many environmentalist overtones throughout which, to my Greenie eyes anyway, hint the cataclysm was in some way human-caused- the final paragraph, about the trout, is particularly resonant.

As a final note, the asteroid which supposedly wiped out the dinosaurs was some 25km across, yet every living thing on the extraordinarily diverse earth we live in today evolved from plants or animals that survived that impact. So I’d say it would take a lot more than merely an asteroid to wipe out all life on the planet