ZPG (1972)
Smog
covers the Earth. The oxygen is depleted. Love is encouraged but
the penalty for birth is death.
World Governments have placed a 30
year ban on conception in an effort to achieve Zero Population
Growth (ZPG) and save what's left of life on earth.
Instead of real babies everybody is entitled to go the Baby
shop and get themselves their very own animatronic child. It's a
world of plastic food and simulated merriment . . . and a museum
to contain the last living remnants of Earth's natural flora and
fauna.
The caretakers of that museum, Russ and Carol McNeil, are a
young couple who represent the last living link with today's
humanity . . . the last holdouts for individuality in a sterile,
bland future.
They
defy the anti-conception edict and produce a child which they must
hide - and try to save from being put to death. Russ hides Carol
down in the fallout shelter for five months, and tells anyone who
asks that his wife left him.
Once the child is born, Carol and Russ's neighbours discover
their secret and reveal their psychotic side, demanding firstly to
hold the baby, then to share it, and ultimately to take it away
for their own.
When a baby is discovered in this future society, the
authorities swoop and the offending parents and baby are placed
inside a big dome. They are forced to stay under the dome for 12
hours to contemplate their transgressions, and then they're
executed in the dome.
Russ and Carol, realising it is just a matter of time before
they are discovered, have been secretly getting their escape
ready. They have figured out where they would be executed and get
their gear together underground, below the execution spot. When
the inevitable happens and the dome descends, Russ has a digging
tool strapped to his ankle and burrows down to the sewer tunnels
where their raft awaits for them to paddle off into the sunset.


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