Dollar Pandemic

The **dollar pandemic**, also known as the **dollar plague** or **cotton plague**,is an ongoing pandemic of dollar rabies that began when the United States government released the Langdom Bioweapon - specifically the extremely pathogenic strain known as RDVA-2017 - into the town of Langdom, Missouri, where it quickly and unexpectedly spread outside of the containment zone into the rest of the country and across the world. As the virus is carried on the cotton in dollar bills, all forms of official physical currency were outlawed, resulting in a massive economic crash which affected the rest of the world, meaning other countries were unable to keep the virus out of their borders.

Eighteen months after the beginning of the pandemic at Langdom, roughly 40% of the world population has been driven to extinction by the virus, with this number increasing every day. The world government has completely collapsed; in the United States, only small pockets of government remain, mostly within the numerous quarantine zones, with the few survivors setting up isolated communities of their own.

The pandemic begins at the end of *Season 1* and is ongoing from *Season 2* onwards. All spin-offs begin either near the start of the pandemic or months and years into the apocalypse.

## Epidemiology

### Background

The dollar pandemic first began in late 2017, when the genetically engineered Langdom Bioweapon began to spread across the country by carrying itself in the cotton in bank notes, leading to its nickname "dollar rabies". The bioweapon was created by a team of virologists led by Robert Schrader under the coercion of the U.S government.

Although the pandemic first began in late 2017, the virus was actually first released on humans in July 2017, when the United States government purposely unleashed the bioweapon on the town of Langdom, Missouri in order to test its effectiveness in contained areas (or, as some have theorized, to discover anyone that may be naturally immune to the virus). A containment zone consisting of a thirty-foot tall wall with permanent armed guards was set up around the town and the virus released into the air; the virus was kept in the town's vicinity by a network of vents and turbines. Almost all of the town's populace was infected with the bioweapon, driving them insane - a state referred to by the survivors as Turned. Those who survived the initial release were hunted down and killed by those who succumbed to the virus.

When the containment zone was destroyed, the army wiped out the Turned residents and began erasing any evidence that the experiment had been conducted; during this process, dollar notes that carried the virus were accidentally - or deliberately distributed into general circulation, and quickly cases appeared across the rest of the world. The outbreak was declared a pandemic by the WHO in November 2017, just a few weeks after the first case appeared in the general population.

### Cases

The first confirmed case of dollar rabies in the general population was confirmed on August 2nd 2017 in Kansas City; within 24 hours, cases already exceeded 1000. According to the CRM, cases exceeded 1 million by August 8th, less than one week after the first case. The government began suppressing information related to cases around this time. By the winter of 2019, marking eighteen months since the virus was unleashed on Langdom, approximately 40% of the global population had either died or been infected by the virus, with the virus posing a significant threat to the future of humanity.

## Disease

> *Main Article: Langdom Bioweapon*
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### Signs and Symptoms

Following infection, the infected person will quickly experience fever, delirium, hallucinations, muscle spasms, seizures, frothing at mouth and extreme aggression and agitation. When the virus reaches critical mass in the brain, the infected loses all higher cognitive function and is driven completely insane, relying only on their basic animal instincts; those who reach this stage are generally known as the Turned.

### Transmission

Dollar rabies spreads from person-to-person via an infected person's bodily fluids, including saliva and blood. It is also spread indirectly by seeping into the cotton that makes up dollar bills, allowing to be spread across the world and leading to its nickname "dollar rabies".

### Cause

The Langdom Bioweapon, officially known as RDVA-2017 but better known as dollar rabies, is a genetically modified viral superweapon created by Project Babylon, a United States government biological research project whose purpose was to develop a supervirus that could be used against America's enemies. Although it is nicknamed "dollar rabies" by the general populace, it is not a true version of the rabies virus, but an artificial organism consisting of rabies genome combined with that of other dangerous pathogens. It was designed with the specific purpose of infecting as many people as possible, and is spread in saliva, blood and other bodily fluids.

### Prevention

Preventive measures to reduce the chances of infection include avoiding direct contact with a Turned's bodily fluids, such as their blood or saliva. When out in the open, most survivors wear surgical masks in order to avoid accidentally inhaling the viral "spores" released from the tumours that grow on the skin of the infected, as well as avoid ingesting a Turned's blood or saliva.

## History

> *Main Article: Timeline*
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### 2017

#### The Langdom Experiment

The RDVA-2017-Lineage B.4.7.2 strain of the bioweapon was unleashed on Langdom, Missouri on July 4th 2017, a day when most of the town's population would be outside to celebrate the Fourth of July. Around 9am, an armada of helicopters delivered the containment wall in pieces, dropping them in sequence around the town's perimeter. Once the individual pieces were connected, a series of vents, fans and turbines activated, drawing the attention of most of the town's 5000 residents to the wall. The virus was then released from air cannons directly into these concentrated crowds, creating a mist that was kept within the containment zone by the network of turbines and vents. Within a few minutes almost 5000 people were driven insane by the virus, becoming the first of the Turned.

Over the course of just over 21 hours from July 4th to July 5th, the remaining residents were slowly massacred by the Turned, with two groups forming in an effort to survive: one led by Max Everett, and another consisting of the TEOTWAWKI-obsessed Ericson Family. While the Ericsons tried to close off their street, Max's Group attempted to understand how the virus worked, concluding that the time between infection and "turning" averaged a few minutes (as short as a few seconds and as long as 12 hours); the virus was spread by bodily fluids such as saliva and blood; the Turned were attracted by scent and sound; and the virus itself, at its core, was a heavily modified rabies virus spliced with additional pathogenic genomes. By the end of the experiment only six survivors remained: Adam and Cassie Levitt, Abby St. John, Lloyd Smith, Charlie Everett and Frank Thornstein.

#### The Disease Spreads

As the military tried to erase any signs that the experiment had occurred, they removed thousands of pieces of evidence from the town, among them around $2 million in banknotes; thanks to the influenza genes that the virus possessed, it was able to be carried in the cotton that made up banknotes. When these notes were placed into general circulation across the world around August 2017, it led to a global economic crash as Turned began appearing all over the world. The virus and its spread was the subject of an intense censorship campaign by multiple governments, particularly the Federal Government of the United States, who began releasing false data concerning infection rates, numbers and the status of major cities and towns. The U.S government created a new branch of the military, the Federal Rescue Force (FRF), by merging FEMA with the army and giving them responsibility for military action concerning evacuation and containment. The FRF built several quarantine zones in major cities and were granted full authority to govern these zones as the federal government began to collapse.

#### Collapse

By September 2017, a few weeks after the first case of the virus in the general population, the WHO declared the situation a global pandemic. As governments were slowly collapsing, almost all of the world's nations descended into lawless states where citizens were left to fend for themselves and surviving by any means necessary, be it killing other survivors, raiding military outposts, or forming entire enforced communities outside of the FRF's control. According to Vernon Maker, entire U.S states began to seceede, most notably Wisconsin and Minnesota, which united to form the Sylvania Republic only to collapse a few weeks later. By November 2017, the entire world was in a state of emergency as broadcasts began going silent, a period known as the "Blackout". By the end of the year, governments all across the world completely collapsed, leaving their citizens to fend for themselves.

## Impact

### Economic

"*Money is what makes the world go round...once that stops, the world stops. It **ends**,*"
—Vernon Maker about the collapse of the global economy due to dollar rabies[src]

Due to the vector on which it spreads - cotton, which is used in the manufacturing of physical currency - the bioweapon has completely devastated the global economy as most forms of physical currency have been outlawed to contain the spread of the virus; economic superpowers such as the United States, Russia, the European Union and China have been completely decimated economically. Global stock markets completely crashed within a few weeks of the global outbreak, creating a worldwide depression far worse than the global Great Depression of the 1930s. This immense economic downturn has preciptated the failure of supply lines to both ordinary citizens and government agencies, resulting in the complete collapse of society across the world.