Plot Summary of H.g. Wells’ War of The Worlds

The book starts off with a man (our narrator of the story) who witnesses an alien invasion from Mars that begins at the small British town of Woking, there a mysterious cylinder crashes into the earth, and the townspeople see that a martian the size of a bear with tentacles appears from the craft. The townspeople try to communicate with the Martian by waving around a white flag, but they get attacked by a heat ray and disintegrated in their efforts. The military is brought in to control the situation. The military begins to get overwhelmed by the Martians. The Martians start to destroy the buildings and kill people with their unstoppable technology. The Narrator takes his wife to a nearby town so she is safe and the narrator rushes back to Woking to see what's going on. The military is losing batteries to the Martians heat rays and escaping people are handed no mercy as they fall to dust. The narrator manages to escape on a boat with a priest. 

The story cuts to the Narrators brother who is escaping London as the Martians wreck havoc across the town. The Martians start to release chemical gasses that are toxic to humans and the people are dwindling in numbers. The Narrators brother hops on a boat accompanied by two women as they set sail to the sea safely. The story jumps back to the Narrator where we find the priest and him Scavenging for food in an old house. Suddenly, a Martian cylinder crashes into the house next door. The man and the priest both look through the crack in the wall to observe the Martian cylinder assemble its machinery. Food runs out and both men get aggravated and start to argue and this argument leads to a fight where the Narrator knocks out the priest. 

The Martian tentacle swoops in and steals the unconscious priest never to be seen again. The Narrator escapes somehow against the odds from the house and starts to travel through the countryside where he sees red weeds littering the ground, these are Martian native plants. Many of the plants are dying from their lack of immunity to earth bacteria and are getting sick. The Narrator stumbles across a person he saw earlier who was part of a military artillery squad. This man proposes his Idea for human survival to the Narrator, His plan is to rally the remaining people on earth and isolate them in the sewers where they will presumably be safe from the Martians. 

The Narrator makes his way to London where he sees ruble and little remains of the great town that use to stand there. While navigating through the destroyed city he sees that the Martians have stopped attacking the city and they have all died due to bacterial infection. These events were foreshadowed with the dying plants and makes a lot of sense now that the pieces came together. The man sorrowly returns to his house in Woking where he is reunited with his wife. At that point, the human race must now rebuild and expand its population.