Global T-Virus Pandemic

The Global T-Virus Pandemic is an event that encompasses the entirety of the Resident Evil film series. It is a worldwide catastrophe engineered by the Umbrella Corporation as a means of "saving" the Earth from ecological destruction by wiping out all of humanity, save for those working for Umbrella. The corporation arranged for the T-Virus - a viral weapon capable of reanimating the dead - to spread across the planet, killing off the population while leaving mankind's infrastructure intact for Umbrella to use to rebuild the world as they saw fit. The pandemic would lead to the eradication of 99% of the human race, but was brought to an end before Umbrella could ensure humanity's extinction.

Engineering the apocalypse
In the early 2000's, Umbrella's co-founder and chief scientist Dr. Alexander Isaacs arranged a meeting with the Umbrella High Command to discuss the future of Umbrella and also the future of the world itself. Citing that excessive human industrialisation and international conflicts were causing long-term harm to the planet, Isaacs proposed a plan to prevent total destruction: releasing the T-virus upon the world in order to destroy the majority of the human population, sparing only Umbrella's employees. While the virus spread across the globe, Umbrella's leaders would wait out the apocalypse in cryogenic storage underground while their scientists and private military forces oversaw the progress of the population's decline. During this time, Umbrella would perfect the T-virus antigen into an airborne strain and release it once all human life had been purged from the Earth's surface. The anti-virus would kill off all infected organisms around the world, leaving the Earth a blank slate from which Umbrella could rebuild however they wished.

The majority of Umbrella High Command approved of Isaacs' plan, the only voice of opposition being that of Alicia Marcus, co-owner of the company and daughter of James Marcus, Umbrella's other co-founder and creator of the T-Virus. Alicia was horrified that Umbrella had turned her father's creation into a weapon and intended to use it to commit global genocide, but with all of Umbrella's leaders outvoting her, she was powerless to stop it. When Umbrella put their plan into action, Alicia joined the rest of High Command in cryostasis within the Hive.

Initial outbreak
The precise origin of the T-Virus pandemic is unclear; Umbrella had triggered numerous outbreaks across the United States and abroad with little time between each of them. The most likely point of origin, however, is believed to be Raccoon City, located in the American Midwest.

The Hive
In 2002, Umbrella's secret underground laboratory known as the Hive was locked down when someone intentionally released the T-virus into the complex's air-conditioning system. The Red Queen, the supercomputer that controlled the Hive, sealed off the complex in order to prevent the virus from spreading and activated interior defence systems, killing the 500 staff members trapped inside. By this point, the entire staff had been unknowingly infected and shortly after death they reanimated as mindless zombies that hungered for living flesh. With the doors all sealed, the Undead staff had nowhere to go.

Uncertain of what had happened in the Hive, Umbrella dispatched a paramilitary security force to enter the complex and investigate. The team arrived at the mansion that covered the Hive's emergency entrance where they found Alice, the head of security. However, Alice had lost her memory after the Red Queen released a nerve gas into the house. Along with Alice, the team also found Matt Addison, an anti-Umbrella activist who was posing as a Raccoon City cop, and Spence Parks, Alice's partner and the man who had caused the outbreak to begin with. Like Alice, Spence had also lost his memory. The team took Alice, Matt and Spence with them as they descended into the Hive.

As the Umbrella Security team approached the Red Queen's mainframe chamber, they tripped a laser defence grid in the adjoining corridor. While the team's techie Chad Kaplan managed to shut the lasers down, four of the soldiers had already been killed, including the team leader One. Alice and Kaplan entered the Queen's chamber in order to shut her down, but a holographic avatar of the Red Queen appeared and warned them against it. Ignoring her, Kaplan went ahead and shut the computer down, but unknowingly unlocked all the doors throughout the Hive, releasing the zombified staff. The Undead horde, drawn by the presence of living flesh, found their way to the team's location. Alice and the others struggled to survive against the tide of Undead and were forced to reactivate the Red Queen in order to find a way out of the Hive before its blast doors sealed shut. However, not only did they have the Undead to deal with, but the betrayal of Spence and a Licker bio-weapon that had escaped containment. In the end, only Alice and Matt managed to get out alive, but Matt had been wounded by the Licker and infected with the T-virus. Just then, a team of Umbrella scientists wearing hazmat suits entered the mansion and captured Alice and Matt.

Raccoon City
After capturing Alice and Matt, Umbrella reopened the Hive in order to find out what happened down there. The team that were sent in were quickly attacked and killed by the zombies and other infected creatures within which would then escape the complex and spread the T-virus into Raccoon City. Whether this was accidental or had been arranged by someone within Umbrella aware of Isaacs' plan is unknown.

Within 24 hours, Raccoon City became hell on earth as the T-virus spread like wildfire, turning most of the population into zombies. In order to keep the virus from spreading beyond the city limits, Umbrella hastily constructed a wall around Raccoon with the Raven's Gate Bridge being the only way out. Citizens that came to the gate were screened for the virus before being allowed to leave, but after an infected man attacked a S.T.A.R.S. member near the gate, the city was sealed off completely and the remaining citizens were forced away from the gate at gunpoint. As T-virus contamination reached critical levels, Umbrella continued to monitor events inside the city. Seeing the outbreak as the ideal opportunity to test new bio-weapons, Major Timothy Cain ordered the activation of Nemesis, a near-invulnerable super-soldier armed with heavy weaponry. Discovering that most of the Raccoon Police Department's elite Special Tactics & Rescue Squad were still alive, Cain ordered Nemesis to hunt them down and eliminate them as a test of its abilities. Nemesis easily slaughtered the S.T.A.R.S. members gathered in a gun store and would soon after encounter Peyton Wells and Jill Valentine. Accompanying the two S.T.A.R.S. survivors was Alice, the Hive's former security chief whom Umbrella had conducted experiments on just prior to the outbreak. Nemesis killed Peyton before attacking Alice, who lured it away from Jill. Alice was able to evade Nemesis for a time, but would encounter the monster again after she and her companions went to City Hall in order to take a helicopter out of the city.

With no means of controlling the spread of infection, Umbrella decided that Raccoon City was to be sanitized and arranged for the launch of a 5-kiloton nuclear missile to annihilate the city and all evidence of the outbreak. Alice and her friends confronted Major Cain and Nemesis at City Hall as the missile strike was ordered. At this point, Nemesis (revealed to have been a mutated Matt Addison) broke free of Umbrella's programming and joined Alice and co. in attacking Cain's men. Nemesis was killed after shooting down an Umbrella attack helicopter which crashed upon him. Alice, Jill, and their associates hijacked Cain's chopper, leaving the major to die as a swarm of Undead besieged City Hall. When the missile struck Raccoon City, the chopper was rocked by the blast wave and forced to crash-land somewhere in the Arklay Mountains.

Several weeks after the destruction of Raccoon City, Jill Valentine, Carlos Olivera and L.J. Wayne were on the run after Umbrella had used their media connections to dismiss a video recording of the outbreak. Alice, on the other hand, had been captured by Umbrella and was being experimented on at their facility in San Fransisco by Dr. Alexander Isaacs, Umbrella's top scientist. Enhanced with superhuman strength, agility, reflexes and even telekinetic powers, Alice managed to escape captivity just as Jill, Carlos and L.J. arrived at the facility undercover in order to rescue her. However, they had no idea that Dr. Isaacs had implanted Alice with a device that would allow him to monitor her every move and even seize control of her when he wished.

Although a small number of citizens had left Raccoon shortly before the bombing, one or more of the evacuees may have been carrying the virus and were somehow missed by Umbrella's screening test at Raven's Gate. It is unclear if Umbrella's screening instruments failed or if an agent of Umbrella's High Command had somehow sabotage the screening and knowingly allowed an infectee to leave the city.

Containment failure
Not only did Umbrella fail to contain the infection at Raccoon City, but in the months following the city's destruction, the T-virus would be leaked from a number of Umbrella sites around the U.S., including San Fransisco and Detroit. These containment failures would draw the attention of the U.S. government who condemned Umbrella of gross negligence, but with mass panic spreading across the country as a result of the increasing number of Undead, the government were forced to focus on stemming the tide of infection and quell civil unrest. Meanwhile, Umbrella operated without interference, reallocating their assets and personnel while law enforcement and military forces were distracted with the Undead.

Biological arms race
Around the same time as the initial U.S. outbreaks, Umbrella were already involved in several trade deals with other military powers around the globe, selling the T-virus to different nations already in conflict with one another. Using simulated environments and cloned genetic models out of their testing facility in Russia, Umbrella demonstrated the effectiveness of the T-virus to their clients, triggering a biological arms race that would ultimately accelerate humanity's downfall. They infected a number of individuals with the T-Virus and released them into major population centres around the world where they would turn Undead and spread the infection.

Collapse
While Umbrella's command staff were relocated to the Hive, which was still intact after the bombing of Raccoon City, Albert Wesker was appointed as Chairman of Umbrella and tasked with overseeing the progress of Isaacs' plan. Having complete control of the organization, Wesker operated from the main facility under Shibuya Square in Japan. To lure survivors into their clutches so they could be experimented on, Umbrella prepared a false safe haven called Arcadia which was a tanker hiding a testing facility within. To pacify the staff that would be forced to hideout in the underground Umbrella facilities, a clone of Dr. Isaacs was created for the purpose of trying to domesticate the Undead and make them subservient.

Humanity entered a dark age as the world was overrun by the Undead; though lacking intelligence, the Undead's sheer numbers and unending hunger for flesh made them extremely dangerous nonetheless. As the number of infected grew, prisoners were released to help fight back out of sheer desperation. Within a few weeks, the T-Virus had completely consumed the United States and only a month later, the rest of the world fell. Any organised resistance or form of governance collapsed, overwhelmed by the Undead hordes.

Though the virus was only intended to wipe out the surface population of humans, it mutated and affected the Earth herself. Wildlife infected and mutated, entire swathes of forests died off and bodies of water dried up leaving much of the planet a barren wasteland. Slowly but surely, the Earth began to wither and die, a final massive casualty of Umbrella's orchestrated holocaust.

What few survivors that were left learned to stay on the move and avoid large cities where the infection was at its worst. Speed and constant mobility were their only defense against the unending horde of Undead. A convoy led by Claire Redfield and Carlos Olivera was one such example; however, they always ended up too late to help others that radioed for assistance, something that weighed heavily on their consciences.

Occasionally, the humans would be aided by nature. Swarms of infected crows were known to feed on flesh, indiscriminately. The entire undead population of Las Vegas was purged in this manner. On the other end of the spectrum, there were survivors who remained in their cities, defending themselves vigorously.

Resistance
In Washington D.C., the remnants of the United States military had rallied and formed a "resistance" against Umbrella and the monstrous horrors they had unleashed. Fortifying their base camp at the White House, the resistance enlisted any survivors they could to help fend off the advancing hordes of Undead, but between the limited resources and manpower, the endless zombie masses and the presence of airborne mutations, there was little hope of long-term survival.

Ultimately, the resistance would be brought down from within by Albert Wesker. Wesker, who had fled from the Arcadia after battling Alice, had infiltrated the resistance while claiming that Umbrella was now being controlled by the Red Queen A.I.. With his knowledge of Umbrella and its creations, Wesker was potentially an invaluable asset and was appointed as the resistance's top strategist. He organised the rescue of Alice from Umbrella Prime, claiming her expertise would be necessary to ensure humanity's survival.

While Wesker fulfilled his promises to the resistance and brought in Alice, he would later reveal that he was still working for Umbrella. He sabotaged the defences around the White House, leaving the resistance vulnerable to attack. While Wesker fled from Washington, the resistance were overwhelmed by hordes of Undead and other viral mutations, being completely wiped out. Alice was the only survivor of the attack.

End of the pandemic
In the tenth year of the pandemic, Alice was contacted by the Red Queen via a still-functional computer terminal in the ruins of the resistance camp. The AI explained to Alice that she was not controlling Umbrella's forces according to her own will, that she was still very much under their control. She offered her help to Alice, informing her that she could not directly oppose Umbrella, but was capable of operating with a limited degree of freedom, enough that she could provide information to Alice that would help her end Umbrella once and for all.

The Red Queen told Alice that Umbrella had developed a new airborne variant of the T-virus antigen and could release it whenever they chose to, wiping out the worldwide infection. However, Umbrella had opted to wait until the remaining human population had been wiped out before releasing the cure. The Red Queen revealed that the cure was being developed in the Hive, where everything had begun. Alice had only a matter of days to reach the Hive and release the antivirus before Umbrella destroyed the last remaining human settlements.

On her way to Raccoon City, Alice was ambushed by Umbrella forces being led by Dr. Isaacs. (This was later revealed to be just another clone of Isaacs.) Having established himself as a sort of messianic figure among his troops, Isaacs declared Alice a blasphemer and tried to have her executed. Alice was lucky enough to escape from Isaacs' convoy and steal a motorbike that would get her to Raccoon City ahead of the convoy.

Alice made it to Raccoon where she encountered a group of survivors being led by none other than Claire Redfield, who had somehow managed to escape from Arcadia. Alice and Claire led a team into the crater in the centre of the ruined city where they gained entrance to the Hive. Fighting their way through automated defences and grotesque bio-weapons, the group planted a series of explosive charges in the cryostasis chamber where the Umbrella High Command were stored. They then confronted both Wesker and the real Dr. Isaacs within the facility's depths.

Isaacs taunted Alice by brandishing the canister containing the antivirus, threatening to drop it there and then if Alice didn't surrender. However, Isaacs wasn't the only member of Umbrella's High Command to have been awoken from stasis: Alicia Marcus, Umbrella's true owner, had also been awakened, just so that Isaacs could gloat over her while he reshaped the world in his image. This was a grave error on Isaacs' part as Alicia used her authority to fire Wesker. With Wesker immediately stricken from the company's personnel, the Red Queen was allowed to act against him and slammed a blast door on him, severing his arm and leaving him bleeding to death.

While Claire escaped from the Hive, Alice fought against Dr. Isaacs who had been augmented in some fashion. Alice was able to overpower Isaacs and take the antivirus from him, escaping to the surface just as the explosives went off, destroying the Hive and killing all of the Umbrella staff in stasis. Isaacs managed to get out before the explosion and confronted Alice, but at that same moment his clone arrived with an army of zombies not far behind him. The Isaacs clone refused to accept that he was a fake and violently stabbed his template to death before being attacked by the Undead. Alice then grabbed the antivirus canister and smashed it to the ground, releasing the cure into the air. All of the zombies surrounding her died immediately and Alice herself temporarily lost consciousness. She then awoke to find both Claire and a projection of the Red Queen standing over her, informing her that Umbrella's remaining forces had ceased their attacks on the remaining human settlements and that the cure was killing off all T-virus infected life-forms in its path. It would take years for the cure to spread across the whole planet, but now mankind had a chance to survive and rebuild while Umbrella had been destroyed for good.