Water stops running across California in an event called the Tap-Out, leaving Alyssa's family without any supply.

Uncle Basil takes Alyssa and Garrett to the grocery store, but all water has already been bought.

Kelton helps Alyssa's family unload supplies and reveals that the McCracken family are preppers with a large water reserve.

Garrett accidentally spills cleaning powder into the family's bathtub water supply, destroying their only reserve.

Alyssa's parents leave the house with empty containers to collect water from desalination machines at the beach.

The neighborhood power goes out permanently, leaving only prepper families like the McCrackens with electricity.

Kelton leaves his own house at night to stay with Alyssa and Garrett and protect them from outside threats.

A stranger named Jacqui takes Kelton's gun and holds it to a boy's head to free Alyssa from his grip.

Kelton's father shoots an intruder entering the back door, only to discover he has killed his own son Brady.

Neighbors break into the McCracken house while Kelton's parents grieve over Brady's body.

The group arrives in Dove Canyon and discovers that a young boy named Henry runs a ruthless water-selling business.

The group reaches the McCracken family bug-out only to find it empty — Brady had been living there and depleted all supplies.

Henry's supposed box of water cans is opened and found to contain only promotional brochures.

Kelton shoots and kills two dangerous men in the woods to stop them from attacking Alyssa and the rest of the group.

A water bomber pilot ignores his orders and drops his water load on the fire surrounding the trapped kids, saving them.

The Tap-Out strikes California without warning, cutting off all municipal water and forcing Alyssa's family to scramble for resources with help from their prepper neighbor Kelton. When Alyssa's parents disappear searching for water and a tragedy destroys the McCracken household, the kids are forced to flee and fend for themselves. Seeking supplies and a means to escape, they travel to Dove Canyon and then toward Kelton's family bug-out shelter in the forest. Each plan falls apart in turn — the bug-out is empty, Henry's water supply is revealed as a fraud, and a desperate push toward the reservoir leads the group into deadly danger. After Kelton kills two threatening men in the forest, wildfire traps the survivors and brings them to the very edge of death. A water bomber pilot makes a last-second decision to ignore his orders and save the trapped kids, ending their harrowing journey.

The essential crisis and survival of Alyssa's group through the Tap-Out.

Uncle Basil packs his belongings and leaves the Morrow home to avoid depleting the family's limited supplies.

Sofia's family packs up to flee to relatives in Mexico, leaving Alyssa without her closest friend.

A neighbor approaches the McCracken house to propose pooling the neighborhood's resources, but Mr. McCracken firmly refuses.

Kelton fires a paintball at a desperate neighbor to stop his father from shooting the man with a real gun.

An angry mob overtakes a municipal water delivery truck and storms a power plant to seize its water supply.

Alyssa's group reaches the beach to find the desalination machines destroyed and scattered cellphones left behind from a riot.

Jacqui agrees to drive the three kids home in a stolen BMW in exchange for Kelton treating her infected arm wound.

Alyssa sneaks out to an HOA meeting and offers to share water, but the adults' fighting frightens her into leaving.

A government alert declares martial law across Los Angeles, alarming the entire McCracken household.

Alyssa knocks Kelton unconscious to prevent him from shooting, and the group flees the ransacked McCracken house in the BMW.

The group confronts Henry over the truck in Dove Canyon, and Kelton disarms him by dislocating his shoulder.

A soldier finds marijuana in the truck at a military checkpoint, and Alyssa talks the group out of serious trouble.

Henry slips away inside the evacuation center and secures the truck keys by trading away the group's water supply.

The group stops for the night at Charity's roadside commune, where survivors share resources and skills to keep each other alive.

After the Tap-Out ends, Alyssa and Kelton learn that her mother was hospitalized and her father was jailed, but both survived.

As the Tap-Out takes hold, neighbors and families make critical choices — some flee California, some fight over dwindling resources, and some share while others hoard. Kelton uses a paintball gun to de-escalate a deadly standoff between his father and a desperate neighbor, revealing the fractures within the McCracken family. After Jacqui joins the group and the household briefly shelters everyone, violence and chaos force a desperate escape in the BMW. Traveling through Dove Canyon and past military checkpoints, the group faces bureaucratic obstruction and Henry's self-serving manipulations at every turn. A night at Charity's roadside commune offers a glimpse of cooperative survival before the group presses onward, and once the Tap-Out ends, the fates of Alyssa's missing parents are finally revealed.

The social unraveling, survival decisions, and aftermath surrounding the main crisis.

Garrett drinks freely from a Gatorade without grasping the need to conserve, showing neither sibling yet understands the Tap-Out's stakes.

Kelton and Alyssa spot military trucks guarding the school swimming pool, making the scale of the crisis suddenly real.

When a boy grabs Alyssa at the beach, Kelton aims his gun but freezes and cannot bring himself to pull the trigger.

The Morrow family home is found with the front door kicked in and everything inside ransacked by strangers.

Kelton realizes that his father, despite years of prepping, is simply a frightened and fallible human being.

Jacqui wanders into a bedroom in Dove Canyon and finds Daphne barely alive, staring blankly at nothing.

Kelton pulls Alyssa aside in Dove Canyon and warns her that everyone in the community is sick from a tainted water supply.

Henry negotiates his way into the group by offering to hand over the keys to Uncle Basil's truck.

Kelton reveals to Alyssa that the evacuation center is essentially a prison, trapping thousands of desperate and waterless people inside.

Henry manipulates Garrett into revealing that Kelton once secretly spied on Alyssa, then uses the secret to drive them apart.

Kelton apologizes to Alyssa for spying on her years ago; she slaps him across the face and then kisses him on the cheek.

Jacqui nearly crashes the truck from severe dehydration while driving the group toward the reservoir.

Alyssa takes a dying woman's cup of water by force in a camper and rushes it back to the barely-conscious Garrett.

Jacqui chooses not to steal the cup of water from Alyssa, declaring that she has finally found her own humanity.

Alyssa and Kelton watch a news report revealing Henry is only thirteen years old and is falsely claiming credit for heroism.

From Garrett's early carelessness with a Gatorade to Kelton's paralyzing inability to shoot an attacker, the Tap-Out forces every character to confront the gap between who they believe they are and who they truly are. Small but decisive moments of recognition — military vehicles in the school parking lot, Daphne's hollow gaze, the evacuation center's hidden fences — steadily reshape how the group understands the world around them. Betrayals and confessions fracture relationships, from Henry's calculated manipulation of Alyssa to Kelton's admission that he once secretly spied on her. As dehydration brings the group to the brink of death, individual moral lines are both crossed and discovered — Alyssa stealing water by force, Jacqui choosing not to. The final revelation that Henry is only thirteen years old and a televised fraud provides a darkly fitting close to the disaster, while the survivors begin piecing their lives back together.