The Film Source Collection

1955 The Nevada Desert. A young, attractive couple, BRIAN and PEGGY JONES, sits anxiously ensconced in an experimental bomb shelter. They administer an anti-iradiation vaccine to each other, strap themselves down, and brace for an overwhelmingly powerful H-Bomb to explode a few miles away. Miraculously surviving the test, which seems to have gone off without a hitch, they're given $10,000 and a new home by LEWIS OLANIDER, the president of the company that built the shelter, and become known as "America's First Nuclear Family.'

Soon after the test, Peggy gives birth to a baby boy with a small, red, perfectly circular birthmark on his hand. Only a few days later, a thermometer breaks, splashing silvery mercury on Peggy and Brian. As NINA, a German scientist attached to the project watches in horror, Brian and Peggy spontaneously erupt in flames - melting plastic and emitting a sickening high-pitched squealing sound, but leaving everything else in the room untouched. Their deaths are investigated and attributed to SHC - Spontaneous Human Combustion - possibly amplified by the experimental vaccine they were given.