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This is how the world ends:
June 13, 2012. A nanosecond computer error in a U.S. Defense Department laboratory results in the accidental release of Project Blue, a bio-engineered superflu virus with 99.4% communicability and a 99.4% mortality rate.
First comes the fever, then the cough, then trouble breathing as the neck and face swells and turns black. Death occurs within three days of exposure to the contagion.
It takes only 19 days for the virus, dubbed 'Captain Trips' by the media, to spread and wipe out almost all of humanity. Panic, martial law and anarchy sweep the world in its wake. Between June 16 and July 4, the world succumbs to a modern-day Black Plague.
The stench of death and putrefaction is everywhere: rotting corpses litter the streets and almost every home. Roads and tunnels are flanked with vehicles that serve as coffins for millions who die while trying to flee the cities and their hometowns. Glass and debris are strewn across footpaths and roads from looters and panicked people trying to stock up on survival essentials.
Only 0.6% of the population survives Captain Trips. You are one of the survivors.
You don't know how you managed to remain immune to the virus and you don't know why. The hows and whys aren't important; what is important is finding other potential survivors.
You begin trekking across the country in search of others. You see many horrors along the way, most of which you've become impervious to after all the horrors you've witnessed in the wake of Captain Trips. Eventually you start coming across crude handmade signs that tell you to go to Boulder, Colorado.
Your gut tells you to follow those signs and your gut is right: after several weeks of travelling, you arrive in Boulder, exhausted, sunburnt, dehydrated, and discover a small community of survivors. The first of the survivors arrived in Boulder on July 24, 2012, almost six weeks after Captain Trips was exposed to the world. They, too, have travelled from far and wide in search of others, and have banded together to form a new democratic society known as The Free Zone.
It's here that humanity must rebuild.
T H E • E N D • O F • T H E • W O R L D
I S • J U S T • T H E • B E G I N N I N G
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