Fact1: satellite that brought back alien organism, Fact2: Dr. Jeremy Stone and Dr. Mark Hall are dropped in Piedmont by helicopter, Fact3: town 's doctor had opened it in office out of curiosity, Fact4: Hall is entrusted with only key, Fact5: team By examining Scoop with discovers microscopic alien organism responsible for deaths powerful cameras
Output: After a satellite, a U.S. government project codenamed Scoop, crashes near the small rural town of Piedmont, New Mexico, almost all of the towns inhabitants die instantly. Suspecting that the satellite brought back an alien organism, the military activates an elite scientific team it had previously assembled for just this type of emergency. Wearing sealed protective suits, Dr. Jeremy Stone, the team leader, and Dr. Mark Hall, the team surgeon, are dropped in Piedmont by helicopter, where they search for the satellite. They find that the towns doctor had opened it in his office out of curiosity and that all of his blood had crystallized. Stone and Hall retrieve Scoop and locate two survivors — a sixtytwoyearold alcoholic and a sixmonthold infant. The team of four core research scientists, who also include Dr. Charles Dutton and Dr. Ruth Leavitt, are summoned from their academic and research appointments to a massive, secret, hightech underground facility in Nevada, named Wildfire, where they undergo a full day of decontamination procedures, descending through four disinfection levels to a fifth level, where laboratories are located. If the organism threatens to escape, this facility includes an automatic nuclear selfdestruct mechanism to incinerate all infectious agents. Dr. Hall is entrusted with the only key that can deactivate the device. By examining Scoop with powerful cameras, the team discovers the microscopic alien organism responsible for the deaths. The greenish, throbbing life form is assigned the code name Andromeda. Andromeda kills animal life almost instantly and appears to be highly virulent. Members of the team study the organism using animal subjects, an electron microscope, and culturing in various growth media in an attempt to learn how it works. Hall tries to figure out why the old man and the baby survived. A military jet crashes near Piedmont after the pilot radios that his plastic face mask is dissolving. Meanwhile, Dr. Stone, the creator of the Wildfire laboratory, is accused by Dutton and Leavitt of designing the lab for the purposes of research into biological warfare. Unbeknownst to other members of the team, Leavitts research on the germ is impaired by her epilepsy, which is triggered by flashing red computer lights in an experiment she is performing. Hall realizes that the old drunk and the baby didnt die because their blood was acidic either from drinking Sterno or from crying continuously, suggesting that Andromeda can survive only within a narrow range of blood pH. Just as he has this insight, the organism mutates into a nonlethal form that degrades synthetic rubber and plastics. It escapes the containment room into the room where Dutton is working. Once all the labs seals start decaying from Andromedas escape, a fiveminute countdown to nuclear destruction is initiated. Hall rescues Leavitt from an epilepsy attack set off by the flashing red lights of Wildfires alarm system. Meanwhile, the team realizes that the alien microbe would thrive on the energy of a nuclear explosion and would consequently be transformed into a supercolony which could wipe out all life on Earth. Hall races against the clock and the labs automated defenses to reach a station at which he can insert his key and turn off the nuclear bomb before it is too late. He endures an attack by automated lasers as he crawls through the labs central core until at last he finds a working station, disables the bomb, and collapses. Hall awakens in a hospital bed. His colleagues reveal that clouds are being seeded over the Pacific Ocean, which will cause rain to sweep Andromeda out of the atmosphere and into alkaline seawater, rendering it harmless. The movie ends with Stone testifying to a senator that, while they were able to defeat an alien pathogen this time, they may not be able to do so in the future.