The microbe contains chemical elements required for terrestrial life ( hydrogen and carbon) and appears to have a crystalline structure, but lacks the DNA, RNA, proteins, and amino acids present in all forms of terrestrial life, and directly transforms energy to matter with no discernible byproducts. The team studies the organism using animal subjects, an electron microscope, and culturing in various growth media in an attempt to learn how it behaves.
#The andromeda strain movie story code
The greenish, throbbing life form is assigned the code name "Andromeda." Inhaled through the lungs Andromeda kills animal life almost instantly via a blood clot in the brain and blood clotting causing asphyxiation and appears to be highly virulent. Hall is entrusted with the only key that can deactivate the device, the theory being that an unmarried male is the most dispassionate person within a group to make critical decisions in a crisis.īy examining the satellite with powerful cameras, the team discovers the microscopic alien organism responsible for the deaths in New Mexico. If the organism threatens to escape, the Wildfire facility includes an automatic nuclear self-destruct mechanism to incinerate all infectious agents. Upon arrival, they undergo extreme decontamination procedures, descending through four disinfection levels to a fifth level where laboratories are located. Ruth Leavitt, who are summoned to a top-secret underground facility, code named Wildfire, located in Nevada. In addition to Stone and Hall, the elite team also includes Dr. Stone and Hall retrieve the satellite and find two survivors, a 69-year-old alcoholic man named Peter Jackson and a six-month-old infant, Manuel Rios. Two other townspeople have committed suicide after going insane. They soon discover that almost all of the victims' blood has crystallized, causing rapid death. They find that the town's doctor had opened the satellite in his office and that all of his blood has crystallized into a powder. Mark Hall, a surgeon, are dropped in Piedmont by helicopter. Suspecting that the satellite has brought back an alien organism, the military activates an elite team of scientists. A military recovery team from Vandenberg Air Force Base tries to recover the satellite but is unsuccessful.
government satellite crashes near the small rural town of Piedmont, New Mexico, almost all of the town's residents die. Jeremy Stone as he testifies before the United States Senate Committee on Space Sciences:Īfter a U.S. Things steadily go from bad to worse resulting in a similar rise in the tension level of the film which is only released at the conclusion except for an after word to the story which gives the audience a little bit to take home as a creepy souvenir.The story unfolds in flashback, told by Dr. Once the team is in the lab, they begin to put their previous speculations to the test, cleverly sneaking the audience along for a ride through the scientific process. During this time we also see incident scenes of what is happening in the outside world from military and political perspectives. He cleverly does this by including speculations amongst the Wildfire team about the new life form during the numerous decontamination steps they must proceed through to get to the super sterile environment of the Wildfire facility to ultimately study the life form that will later be given the code name Andromeda. Wise manages to take the topics of incident response and science, things that would normally bore most people to death, and makes them entertaining. The most amazing feature of this film is the pacing. Mark Hall (Olsen) to determine the common link that kept both of them alive in order to prevent whatever killed the rest of Piedmont’s population from becoming a planet wide catastrophe. The key seems to rest with the only two survivors of Peidmont, an old alcoholic and a young baby. Jeremy Stone (Hill) who created project Wildfire to deal with just such a contingency. This triggers the formation of a Wildfire incident team led by Dr. The satellite recovery team enters the town to discover that all of the inhabitants appear to be dead before quickly succumbing themselves to whatever got everyone else.
A military satellite has crashed in the small town of Piedmont, New Mexico. This “faux documentary” opening has the subtle effect of setting up the hard science fiction tone of this film. 'The Andromeda Strain' opens with a couple of statements that the events portrayed in the film are actual incidents that occurred surrounding a top secret military program called Project Scoop.