Hideout in the Apocalypse is about surveillance and the crushing of Australia's larrikin spirit. The government knew when it introduced the panopticon, universal surveillance, that it would have a devastating impact on the culture. If people know they are being watched they behave differently. Dissent is stifled, conformity becomes the norm, the population easier to manage. At the same time the Australian government has prosecuted the greatest assault on freedom of speech in the nation's history. The media is highly manipulated, and journalists closely monitored. They are now classified as Persons of Interest for the nation's security agencies, an outlandish assault on the Fourth Estate. A democracy in name only, in Australia the war on terror has become a war on the people's right to know, justifying an unprecedented expansion of state power. Forced by a plethora of new laws targeting journalists to use novelistic techniques, in his latest book veteran news reporter John Stapleton confirms the old adage, truth is stranger than fiction.