Investigative journalist Annie Jacobsen’s Biological War: A Scenario (2026) is a work of narrative nonfiction that combines investigative reporting with a hypothetical biological-war scenario. A Pulitzer Prize finalist for her book The Pentagon’s Brain, Jacobsen has written extensively about national security, intelligence, and classified government programs. Biological War follows her previous bestseller, Nuclear War: A Scenario, using a similar scenario-based structure to examine biological warfare. The central scenario begins with an accidental explosion at the Vector Institute, a Russian BSL-4 research facility where Jacobsen depicts covert biological-weapons research taking place. The accident allows genetically modified pneumonic plague to escape. The story follows the pathogen’s global spread and the resulting breakdown of public health systems, government institutions, and social order.

Drawing on exclusive interviews with military officials, intelligence officers, and scientists, the book uses the scenario to examine several recurring themes. The narrative highlights The Fragility of Modern Infrastructure, depicting how interconnected global systems—from healthcare and transportation to national defense—can fail under the pressure of a hypervirulent pathogen. It also examines The Weaponization of Scientific Progress, tracing the history from recombinant DNA research to Soviet efforts to engineer biological weapons capable of defeating existing medical countermeasures. The book develops The Collapse of the Social Contract by depicting how an incurable contagion and resource scarcity could erode public trust and social order, contributing to violence and anarchy.

This guide refers to the 2026 Dutton edition.

Content Warning: The source text and this guide contain depictions of graphic violence, illness, death, substance use, and cursing.

Summary

The scenario of Biological War begins with an explosion at the Vector Institute, a Russian BSL-4 (Biosafety Level 4) biological research facility in Koltsovo, Siberia, where Jacobsen depicts secret biological-weapons research taking place. On Day One of the crisis, the blast is detected by the US intelligence community, including the National Reconnaissance Office and National Security Agency, which immediately use satellite imagery and signals intelligence to gather information about the explosion. Suspecting a lab leak of a weaponized pathogen, the president’s top national security advisors, known as the Principals Committee, convene. They consider and reject a preemptive nuclear strike to sterilize the facility and find their diplomatic outreach to Russia stonewalled. Meanwhile, the contagion begins its silent spread. The Vector scientist responsible for the accident confesses to a priest, infecting him and a young premed student waiting nearby. The student carries the infection from Siberia to Los Angeles, where he attends university. The dying scientist is then discovered in the woods by a group of ten international big-game hunters, who become infected while rendering aid. These hunters depart from Novosibirsk, spreading the disease across six continents and accelerating the global outbreak.

As the US government scrambles for information, Russia attributes the outbreak to contaminated marmot meat at a wet market—an explanation the CIA finds inconsistent with its intelligence. At the end of Day Two, one of the infected hunters, a Dominican tech entrepreneur, returns home and causes superspreader events at a gym and restaurant, contributing to a rapidly worsening outbreak and an eventual mass exodus by sea. Another hunter, an elderly German judge, boards the Diamond Princess cruise ship, where the airborne pathogen spreads rapidly among the 3,700 passengers and crew. A Vietnamese hotelier, also from the hunting party, infects two US Navy sailors, who then carry the disease aboard the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt, where the disease begins spreading among its 5,000 crew members. In Los Angeles, the premed student from Siberia has unknowingly spread the plague among the homeless population on Skid Row. Against the backdrop of an existing drug crisis and previous mass-overdose incidents, emergency responders and public-health officials initially mistake the emerging outbreak for fentanyl poisoning.

On Day Five, US public-health authorities are alerted to suspected plague when another of the hunters, an American oilman from Texas, collapses on a flight from Frankfurt to Dallas. Because of his documented travel through Novosibirsk, a Texas public-health official suspects plague, prompting Texas health officials to notify the CDC. The passenger dies, and a sample of the pathogen is rushed to the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) at Fort Detrick, Maryland, for analysis. Meanwhile, as the situation in Los Angeles worsens, the governor of California declares a state of emergency. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the US Surgeon General hold a national press conference to announce the arrival of pneumonic plague on US soil, but reporters question them about live footage of the chaos in Los Angeles that the officials have not yet seen. The city is now descending into anarchy, while a popular internet influencer livestreams the violence and circulates conspiracy theories about the crisis. With law enforcement and hospitals overwhelmed, the mayor eventually orders police and fire personnel to pull back.

The president, now aware of the dual outbreaks, makes an emergency declaration under the Stafford Act and authorizes US Northern Command (NORTHCOM) to move from Warning Order status to an Execution Order, allowing military response forces to deploy domestically. As the crisis worsens, the president is moved to an undisclosed location, while the government moves to COGCON 1, its highest continuity-of-government readiness level, and activates Devolution, a plan that disperses government leaders and transfers essential functions to backup personnel and command centers. On Day Six, as instability spreads internationally, the president authorizes DEFCON 1, the military’s highest readiness level. Shortly afterward, USAMRIID reports the results of its analysis of the pathogen.

Scientists discover that the pathogen is a chimera bioweapon, a genetically modified strain of Yersinia pestis engineered with a Venezuelan equine encephalitis component that is activated when an infected person receives standard antibiotics. Antibiotic treatment therefore triggers an untreatable neurological disease. As the domestic crisis continues, the government invokes the Insurrection Act, and the president orders the internet shut down as unrest spreads across the country.

Under martial law, the US military’s mission expands as troops deploy across the country to preserve government operations, distribute medical supplies, and secure critical infrastructure and nuclear-weapons facilities such as the Pantex Plant amid widespread civil unrest. The Strategic National Stockpile depots, containing antibiotics sought by people desperate for treatment, face being overrun by desperate, mostly armed citizens. As public order breaks down, fires and violence spread through Los Angeles while military forces secure critical sites and support quarantine enforcement.

The epilogue moves years into the future, depicting the aftermath of the pandemic. Much of the human population has died. The survivors are primarily military personnel who had access to government-issued gas masks, leaving a population that is predominantly male, while the United States remains under occupation. Russia also experiences a near-extinction-level event; its unproven plague vaccine, deployed before trials are complete, causes widespread birth defects. Jacobsen depicts Russian women subsequently refusing to have children, and more than a year passes without a healthy birth. The scenario concludes with Jacobsen warning that even the accidental release of a genetically modified biological weapon could represent a catastrophic failure of human foresight and restraint.