The War Against Chaos is set in a dystopian version of Britain that is similar in its depiction of a grey shabby philistine country to Orwells 1984 The principal character Hare is a clerk for a vast conglomerate known as Universal Goods who is dismissed from his job and his lodgings after his corrupt boss Jacobs manipulates evidence against himAfter sleeping rough Hare is befriended by a community of socalled marginals who live in anarchic communes on the fringes of society After recuperating Hare decides to search for his estranged wife an artist who fled mainstream society after the government closed all art colleges He encounters another group known as Diggers who live in abandoned subterranean chambers that were originally intended for use in the event of nuclear warA group of young Diggers attempt to seize their own plot of land but the attempt is a failure and Hare is obliged to lead a group of fleeing marginals and Diggers into the Zone a mysterious patch of land where it is rumoured nothing is able to survive