Humanity's last hope of survival was dashed in Chapter 6. Chapter 7 documents the connecting threads of social order beginning to unravel. People still maintain an admirable common decency, but they find it more and more difficult to hold onto routine. Rules and regulations that once made sense become impediments to enjoying these final days. Thus far in the novel, Shute has shown readers the power of routine and habit to hold society together through tough times. After World War III, without rules and regulations, civilization would have collapsed into anarchy and barbarism. As readers have seen, order and routine have kept things running smoothly and efficiently. Now, however, the tightly woven fabric of civil life and social order is coming undone. With extinction so near, strict social order no longer seems necessary. Shute uses the concerns of people during these last days to further illustrate the decency and humanity that has survived. In the closing chapter, the novel's epigraph is fully realized. Since there is nothing more to do and nothing more to say, the characters meet up to say goodbye. The world ends, as the T.S. Eliot poem predicts, "not with a bang but a whimper." Throughout the novel, Shute never gives readers reason to believe that a miraculous reprieve for humankind is waiting in the wings. Yet the ending is tragic. Shute has revealed the essence of each character, showing them to be decent, moral people victimized by a faceless evil. It's a deliberate choice by the author. He portrays the best in human nature and then shows how it is lost when senseless war indiscriminately killed both the best and worst of humankind.