In 1980, the American professor Thomas A. Sebeok received a call that took him by surprise. He was to participate in a crisis team of the Bechtel corporation. This assembly of renowned scientists was concerned with the question of what should be done with the now accumulated quantities of radioactive waste from military and civilian use. One task was to develop notification systems that would still be able to warn of the dangers of radioactive substances 10,000 years from now.
Jack Gladney, professor of Hitler studies at The-College-on-the-Hill, husband to Babette, and father to four children/stepchildren, is torn asunder by a chemical spill from a rail car that releases an "Airborne Toxic Event" forcing Jack to confront his biggest fear - his own mortality.
A gang of thugs devise a cruel hoax that goes horribly wrong as Melvin, a nerdy emaciated janitor at the local health club, is cast through a third story window into a vat of hazardous toxic waste.
A group of kids discover one of the drums containing a rotting corpse and release the 2-4-5 Trioxin gas into the air, causing the dead to once again rise from the grave and seek out brains.
Two members of Greenpeace discover that a local factory sheds radioactive waste into an active volcano, which has created a terrifying creature that wreaks havoc in the area.
When Tim McFall's young daughter dies as the result of toxic waste dumped in the local river, he tries to shut down the company and everybody turns against him.
A radio astronomer receives the first extraterrestrial radio signal ever picked up on Earth. As the world powers scramble to decipher the message and decide upon a course of action, she must make some difficult decisions between her beliefs, the truth, and reality.
9-year-old Alex Pruitt is home alone with the chicken pox. Turns out, due to a mix-up among nefarious spies, Alex was given a toy car concealing a top-secret microchip.
