Their extinction will be the beginning of ours.... All over the world, birds falling out of the sky cause countless traffic accidents. Reports of dead fish washing up follow. As the mysterious death of animals increases and a terrifying future unfolds, a family in a small Vermont town grapples with the inexplicable. With emergency phone lines tied up, Emily Mansfield, a science teacher, finds herself stranded miles from home with an injury and forced into a race against time when strangers kidnap her child for unknown reasons.

Clint Redshaw walks into a port facility meeting expecting an ordinary day arguing about the budget. When the shaking starts, he keeps calm. But as the tremors stretch on and on, the ground rips apart, the dock disintegrates, and chunks of land fall into the Strait. When the quake finally ends, there's only one thing on his mind: his daughter. Mika's singing songs and laughing with a gaggle of other sixteen-year-olds as they climb into the Pacific Northwest mountains for a scout weekend. One minute, it's sunshine and good vibes, and the next, it's screaming and chaos.

Something bad is happening.... One touch and a person begins aging rapidly. Years in a single day. Before anyone can react or stop it, entire cities are crippled. As survivors flee to their homes, Elizabeth and her children watch with an increasing sense of dread as the death toll climbs. Then, when a terrifying way to slow the aging is witnessed online, the enormity of the event becomes clear.

At the end of the world. Nick Peterson never expected to be stuck with a bunch of kids. A 17-year-old boy shouldn’t be responsible for keeping other people alive. But he didn’t have much choice in the matter. That’s what happens when everyone else dies.

Doctor Anna Hastings is no stranger to disasters, having spent much of her career as an aid worker in conflict zones around the world. Yet when an electrical phenomenon known as an EMP brings down the power grid, Anna faces catastrophe on a scale she never imagined. She must learn what it means to be a doctor in a world deprived of almost all technology.