It's the late 1940s, and 11-year-old Virginia Joyce is stuck in Albuquerque after her father Malcolm gets a job working on nuclear weapons development at the nearby Kirtland Air Force Base. Virginia soon meets Noah, her 11-year-old neighbor who's obsessed with the Roswell crash and the governmen's supposed cover-up. Between Malcolm bogged down at work and Noah being a weirdo, Virginia's longing for her hometown of Philadelphia and her frustration with her new home bubble up into a fury when she declares to Malcolm that she just wants to be alone. His atom bomb can blow up for all she cares. Then one night, after burning down a model she built of Philadelphia in a fit of anger, she gets her wish Albuquerque gets leveled by a mushroom cloud! Virginia struggles to survive in this nuclear wasteland, realizing that a lonely world is no place to live. Luckily, she wakes up to discover that she passed out from the fire and that Malcolm, Noah, and her new home of Albuquerque are safe and sound.