Somewhere in the dark vastness of outer space, a starship hurtles through the galaxy. Eight astronauts, suspended in cryogenic chambers for nearly a century, wake to find the human race obliterated by a nuclear holocaust back on earth.

Jim is an infirmary patient who wakes up from a coma to find an empty room, in a vacant hospital, in the deserted city of London. A powerful virus, which locks victims into a permanent state of murderous rage, has transformed the world around him into a seemingly desolate wasteland. He runs into a mob of crazed plague victims. He gradually finds other still-human survivors with whom he heads off across the abandoned countryside to find the source...