Oregon, USA. Patrick Edward Dunn has nothing left. Heading home in snowy weather after dropping off his kids, the fifty-something, three-time-divorcé is shocked when cars on the highway lose control and start crashing. And stopping to help a woman trapped in her vehicle, he only has seconds to save her as a logging truck hurtles right at them…

Nate Bauer and his pregnant wife, Amy, are bracing for the worst winter storm in a century when a sudden attack takes out the power grid, crippling the country at the worst possible moment. With temperatures plummeting and law and order unraveling all around them, news soon emerges that the local nuclear power is on the brink of a meltdown. Separated during the chaotic evacuation that follows, Nate soon finds himself alone in a frozen world racked by chaos and mounting levels of radiation.

Fourteen-year-old Greg Dixon is living a nightmare. Attending boarding school outside of Boston, he is separated from his family when a pandemic strikes. His classmates and teachers are dead, rotting in a dormitory-turned-morgue steps from his room. The nights are getting colder, and his food has run out. The last message from his father is to get away from the city and to meet at his grandparents' town in remote New Hampshire.

This is the way the world ends. On a warm summer night in New York City, the apocalypse begins. Within days, the deadly Medusa virus is sweeping the globe like a wildfire, pushing humanity to the brink of extinction. As civilization crumbles around him, survivor Adam Fisher will discover a flicker of hope that will send him on a quest through a ruined American landscape.

When the end of the world arrived, it came not with a bang, as most expected, but with more of a "pfft" instead. Humanity has been torn asunder and brought to the edge of total annihilation in less than an hour. For those who died, it was a quick death, so fast that their brains didn't have time to process the pain signals from their nerves. For those who survived, the true horror is about to begin as they struggle to not only stay alive, but come to grips with the shocking realization about what - and who - was responsible.