`Defiled Rain'
               Does that mean "radio-active"?

 Quotation in appendix of Roper's "Life of Sir Thomas More" (King's Classics edition)
 - Lady Allington (More's stepdaughter) writing to Margeret Roper:-

 Lady Allington recounts an ancient fable of a country "mainly inhabited by fools"
 upon which a `defiling rain' fell.

 The `wise' persons of this country, foreseeing the rain, had taken refuge underground
 [in bunkers?].

 When the wise ones emerged, thinking "to have gained added prestige, the bespattered
 fools thought themselves much improved by the dirt and mocked at the wise men, utterly
 refusing to be ruled by them"

 Could a "muddy rain" have been foretold? Well, a radio-active rain _might_ have been,
 in a nuclear civilization/technology.

 And, after several generations, when the (rich generals and politicians) `wise ones'
 emerged from their bunkers, the mutant survivors might well have said: 

 "You're obsolete - we're the rulers now"

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