Jack Gladney introduces himself as the founder and chairman of Hitler studies at College-on-the-Hill in Blacksmith.

Denise tells Jack at the supermarket that Babette has been secretly taking an unidentified prescription drug.

Jack and Babette argue over who would die first; Jack privately admits he prefers loneliness to death.

Heinrich spots a derailed train car and a growing black cloud of smoke from the roof with binoculars.

The Gladney family evacuates Blacksmith, and Jack is exposed to Nyodene D for two minutes while pumping gas.

A SIMUVAC technician tells Jack his Nyodene D levels are dangerously high and results won't be clear for fifteen years.

Jack decides to keep the news of his toxic chemical exposure completely secret from his family.

Jack discovers a bottle of Dylar taped to the underside of the bathroom radiator.

Babette confesses that Dylar suppresses the brain's fear of death and that she obtained the drug by sleeping with Mr. Gray.

Jack finally reveals to Babette that he was exposed to high levels of Nyodene D; she cries and beats his chest.

Murray argues that if Jack cannot repress his fear of death, he must conquer it by becoming a killer rather than a dier.

Winnie Richards reveals that Mr. Gray's real name is Willie Mink and that he still lives in a motel in Iron City.

Jack finds Willie Mink in a motel room, incoherent from Dylar addiction and shoveling fistfuls of pills into his mouth.

Jack shoots Willie Mink twice in the stomach; Willie fires back and grazes Jack's wrist, shattering Jack's violent resolve.

Wilder tricycles across a busy multilane highway and miraculously survives; Jack later reflects at the supermarket on waves and radiation.

Jack Gladney, the founder of Hitler studies at College-on-the-Hill, quietly harbors a paralyzing fear of death that he hides even from his wife Babette. When a chemical train derailment triggers a town-wide evacuation, Jack is briefly exposed to the toxic chemical Nyodene D, and a computer technician warns him that his levels are dangerously high with no clear prognosis for at least fifteen years. Jack keeps this diagnosis entirely secret while separately uncovering that Babette has been hiding a drug called Dylar, obtained through a sexual arrangement with a man known only as Mr. Gray. After Babette's confession, Jack finally reveals his own toxic secret, and together the couple confronts their shared obsession with death. Advised by his colleague Murray that conquering death requires becoming a killer rather than a dier, Jack tracks down Mr. Gray, whose real name is Willie Mink, and shoots him in a motel room. The plan unravels when Willie shoots back and wounds Jack, prompting Jack to save Willie's life instead, and the novel closes ambiguously as Jack reflects on mortality at the supermarket.

The headline events of Jack Gladney's collision with death.

Murray and Jack visit The Most Photographed Barn in America, where Murray argues its aura of fame makes it impossible to truly see.

Babette establishes a weekly Friday night television ritual for the family, believing structured viewing will reduce her children's interest in the medium.

Jack begins taking German lessons from Howard Dunlop, ashamed he cannot speak the language central to his Hitler studies career.

Authorities evacuate the local grade school after children report headaches and a metallic taste; men in Mylex suits arrive to investigate.

Mr. Treadwell and his sister go missing from their home and are found days later, dazed and lost in an abandoned mall kiosk.

Jack drives to the airport to collect his daughter Bee; nearby, survivors of a near-crash plane share their harrowing ordeal with onlookers.

The Gladney family watches television and sees Babette broadcasting live on a local cable access channel; Wilder reaches out to touch the screen.

Winds shift direction during the evacuation, forcing the Gladney family to flee the Boy Scout camp and drive toward Iron City.

A man in the Iron City quarantine shelter angrily complains that national media has completely ignored their toxic disaster.

Murray learns that his rival in Elvis studies, Dimitrios Cotsakis, drowned on vacation, clearing the path for Murray's academic ambitions.

Winnie Richards reports that a Dylar pill is an advanced drug-delivery system targeting a specific brain region with an unknown purpose.

Babette's father Vernon Dickey arrives unannounced at the Gladney house; Jack initially mistakes the white-haired figure in the backyard for death itself.

Before leaving the Gladney home, Vernon Dickey presses an untraceable loaded pistol into Jack's hands as a parting gift.

A doctor at the Autumn Harvest Farms facility confirms Jack has Nyodene D in his blood and that exposure can cause fatal growths.

A German nun at the hospital tells Jack that she and all nuns are atheists who only pretend to believe in God.

Before catastrophe strikes, the rhythms of the Gladney household are shaped by consumerist rituals, academic rivalries, and the creeping presence of technology in everyday life. Murray's influential theories about barn auras and television radiation establish the novel's philosophical landscape, while minor emergencies such as school evacuations and the Treadwells' disappearance hint at a town perpetually teetering on the edge of disaster. The Airborne Toxic Event sends the family on a harrowing series of evacuations, ultimately stranding them in a karate studio alongside neighbors who feel cheated by the national media's indifference to their suffering. As the third part unfolds, Jack enlists the neurochemist Winnie Richards to analyze the mysterious Dylar, while Babette's father Vernon arrives unannounced and leaves behind the pistol that will change everything. Medical confirmation of Jack's toxic exposure pushes him toward desperation, and the novel reaches an unexpected theological turn when a German nun shatters Jack's assumptions about faith and the afterlife.

The supporting events that build the world of Blacksmith.

Jack screens Nazi propaganda films for his Advanced Nazism class and declares that plotting edges humanity closer to death.

Jack wakes in a sweaty panic in the night, consumed by dread over his approaching fifty-first birthday.

Jack and Babette dine at Murray's home, where Murray describes the television set as a primal transmitter of mystical waves and radiation.

Denise searches the Physicians' Desk Reference and tells Jack she cannot find Dylar anywhere, suggesting the drug is experimental and dangerous.

Jack delivers a guest lecture to Murray's students, arguing that Hitler's crowds gathered to form a collective shield against death.

Wilder cries without stopping for seven hours; Jack finds unexpected solace in the child's sustained and wordless expression of suffering.

The Gladney family's Christmas shopping trip at the Mid-Village Mall fills Jack with consumerist euphoria that collapses into isolation and alienation.

Jack and Babette share their mutual terror of dying and imagine together that death might be nothing but uniform, eternal white noise.

Babette refuses to reveal Mr. Gray's identity to Jack, convinced that Jack will be driven to murder the man if he learns it.

Denise tells Jack she secretly disposed of the remaining Dylar pills by throwing the whole bottle into the household garbage compactor.

Jack tears open a compacted garbage cube on the garage floor and sifts through the waste desperately searching for the Dylar pills.

At the Hitler conference, Jack delivers a five-minute speech of words identical in English and German, then hides in his office.

Jack steals his neighbors' car and drives toward Iron City, having resolved to shoot Willie Mink rather than reason with him.

Jack convinces a delirious Willie Mink that he accidentally shot himself, then drives the wounded man to a hospital to save his life.

As summer passes, the chemical-laced sunsets over Blacksmith grow ever more beautiful while men in Mylex suits still roam the streets.

Jack's fear of death manifests long before the Airborne Toxic Event, revealed through a midnight panic about aging, an obsessive fascination with Hitler's death-defying crowds, and the peculiar comfort he draws from Wilder's seven-hour crying episode. Denise's investigation of the Physicians' Desk Reference exposes Dylar as a rogue experimental drug, while Murray's dinner-table theories about television and radiation foreshadow the novel's vision of technology and mortality as inseparable forces. The Christmas shopping euphoria and its subsequent crash crystallize Jack's dependence on consumerism as a substitute for genuine spiritual comfort. The emotional core of the novel arrives when Jack and Babette name their shared terror together, imagining death as nothing but white noise, before Babette refuses to give up Mr. Gray's identity and Denise reveals she has already destroyed the last of the pills. Jack's journey ends with a desperate act of theft and premeditated violence ultimately transformed into an act of mercy, as the chemical-soaked sunsets of summer suggest an uneasy peace with the mortality he has spent the novel fleeing.