On a South Pacific island in the only radiation-free zone on earth, Cheeta, the Kauri tribe's storyteller, narrates to children about their ancestors, the Ancient Ones, who caused the apocalyptic war that destroyed life on earth. She sees a glowing object descending like a meteor in the evening sky. It is the Deep Space Vehicle Genesis returning to earth 600 years later. The Genesis crash lands in the sea and ends up on the beach. Astronaut Anastasia "Nastya" Mironova and five other crew members interact with the peaceful Kauri and adapt to their utopian lifestyle. The Kauri worship the Spirits of Nature and a totem that is, in disguise, an unexploded, nuclear, ballistic missile. On a nearby, hellish island at the fringe of the radiation belt, Syn, the chief of a tribe of cannibals called the Vile, also sees the Genesis descend from the sky. He leads his tribe across an ocean straight on make-shift watercraft to the Kauri's island, the Promised Land foretold in prophecy. Nastya and Cheeta discover their love for one another, which transcends time itself. They find an underground bunker beneath the totem and see the missile's mangled, nose cone wedged through the ceiling. The Vile kidnap and torture the crew's chaplain. A terrible battle takes place between the Vile and the Kauri, which decimates both sides. Nastya faces off against the evil daughter of Syn, who killed her brother to become chief, after Syn's death. The surviving Kauri, having lost faith in the Spirits of Nature, learn the truth about the totem and turn on Nastya and Cheeta, forcing them to escape the island on a Genesis life raft along with two Kauri children. Cheeta's father, the Kauri chief, along with four Genesis crew members, have died at the hands of the Vile. Her mother, the Kauri shaman, is murdered by a distraught Kauri tribesman. Her sister willingly accepts death from heart disease. Thor, the Genesis captain, hides out in the bunker where he works on the nuclear missile's trigger system. When he collapses from hunger and exhaustion, a rat that arrived as a stowaway on a Vile raft crawls into the missile access panel and bites through a wire.