Chicago falls
The superflu is a plague that exterminates 99.4% of the population of humans in The Stand. The virus, which causes the plague is also called Captain Trips. It ignites the events of the novel, which leads to the ultimate battle between good and evil in a post apocalyptic world.
History[]
The superflu was a biological weapon created by the American government, which got loose during a containment breach on June 13, 1990. Everyone died in the base, except for a security guard named Charlie Campion, who fled the base with his wife and child, unaware that he was infected himself.
Campion crashed his car in a gas station in Arnette, Texas on June 16, before succumbing to the virus. The virus spread to the residents of Arnette, and on June 18, started an explosive spread across America and then the world, like a chain letter from Hell. It had a 99.4% communicability rate and a 99% mortality rate. The US government forced news services to print and broadcast the official line, which was that there was nothing wrong going on, it was just the normal flu, and the situation was being under control.
Hospitals soon over filled to capacity and entire towns were quarantined as soldiers were deployed on the roads and highways, blocking off the entrances and exits. It wasn't long before evidence to the contrary began to spread. Photos, videos, and eyewitness accounts revealed to the world the truth. Soldiers dumping bodies into harbors from trucks and barge-trains full of plague victims that were towed out to the sea to be dumped.
Plague victims rotting in a church.
Posters went up on college and university campuses throughout the country: flyers that were variations on the theme of government complicity and cover-up with the superflu, which spread panic. Rebellious journalists, news staff, and talk radio broadcasters began to print and broadcast the truth, alerting the public to the lethal pandemic and the government coverup. To suppress the news, soldiers massacred protesting college students, executed news employees, and blew up the buildings of news broadcasters.
Full blown riots broke out in most parts of the country (and the world), as people took advantage of the situation to loot for supplies. Eventually, these looters and rioters caught the superflu, and either locked themselves in other peoples’ houses, or died trying to leave the city in clogged highways. Most of the population died either bedridden in their own homes, or stuck in traffic until they succumbed to the plague. The president, himself infected with the superflu, gave one last speech to a dying country, one last time denying that the virus was created by the government and its lethality.
Eventually, the superflu burned out, and by July 4, 1990, 99.4% of the human population had died. Bodies laid either in their own homes, in their cars, or even on the streets.
Aftermath[]
As the superflu wound down, there was a second epidemic of a sort. Within the United States, it killed approximately 16% of the survivors. Men, women, and children died of natural causes (e.g. heart attack), injuries that could not be treated (e.g. fractured skull), dangerous animals attacks (e.g. bitten from a venomous snake), or through their own actions (e.g. drug overdose).