In March 1975, biological warfare between the People's Republic of China and the Soviet Union kills most of the world's population. U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel Robert Neville, M.D., a scientist based in Los Angeles, California, begins to succumb to the plague but injects himself with an experimental vaccine just in time, rendering himself immune. The plague's surviving victims, meanwhile, join together as "The Family," a cult of nocturnal albino mutants who seek to destroy all technology.