The Outbreak

=November 23= Banknotes coated with Variola Chimera - a highly contagious smallpox strain now called "The Green Poison" - circulate in New York City on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving and the biggest shopping day of the year. Packed crowds moving in frenetic, wide-ranging patterns spread the infection quickly. With a seven-day incubation period, the deadly virus remains undetected as shoppers, tourists, and other travelers carry it away from Ground Zero.

=December 1-5= Disease symptoms begin to emerge, and within days a first wave of the contagion rages across the city's populace. The initial surge of cases quickly swamps local medical facilities. As a result, the federal government's Disease Control Division (DCD) and other federal authorities step in quickly and declare a state of emergency.

But the spread is so fast that containment is impossible. The National Guard is summoned, and New York City is locked down. Troops and local authorities block roads, suspend public transport, and prohibit crosstown travel. The populace is ordered to shelter in place and stay in their homes. All businesses close. The next day, New Yorkers awaken to an eerily silent city.

=December 6-10= U.S. President Lawrence Waller orders U.S. military forces to surround and seal off New York City, including all waterways via naval blockade.

The Catastrophic Emergency Response Agency (CERA) begins mass vaccinations using existing stockpiles. The initial focus is on first responders in the primary contagion vectors. But soon health workers are inoculating the public at large at clinics, workplaces, parking lots... wherever CERA can reach people.

In this strange calm, city life seems to shift back toward normal. Stores reopen for limited periods, with people allowed back on the streets between strictly enforced curfew hours. CERA establishes field clinics throughout the city, distributing supplies, antiviral medications, and personal protective equipment.

CERA also sets up a mass treatment facility for advanced smallpox cases inside a central section of Midtown Manhattan - a sealed-off "sick zone" inside the quarantined borough. A number of Manhattan's most iconic landmarks inhabit this neighborhood: Carnegie Hall, the Empire State Building, the Plaza Hotel, Rockefeller Center, Radio City Music Hall, and Trump Tower. Medical personnel begin to round up and bus infected citizens into this sector. Construction of a reinforced perimeter wall begins.

Within days, two sad truths become clear. First, the existing smallpox vaccine does not work against the new strain of the virus. And second, the relaxation of movement restrictions has allowed the disease to spread faster and farther. Thousands of new cases spring up - and the first horrifying wave of deaths sweeps across the city.

=December 11-14= The World Health Organization officially declares the outbreak a pandemic. The president invokes martial law nationwide.

In New York, food and supplies begin to run low. Black markets and smugglers begin to flourish. The first signs of civil unrest appear: looters break curfews and threaten hospitals and stores. Fear and anarchy start to spread like a new contagion. Panicked New Yorkers, trying to escape the city, clash with troops enforcing the quarantine lines. Streets grow increasingly lawless.

Heavily outnumbered and rattled by mob violence. security teams begin to withdraw from certain chaotic neighborhoods. Surviving police and military units consolidate to form the Joint Task Force.

The JTF locks down all five boroughs and restricts travel between them. Although this makes citywide safety management easier, it also puts immense pressure on teams operating in the densest and hardest hit borough: Manhattan.

The pandemic reaches Washington, D.C. and spreads quickly. Lurid media coverage of New York City chaos spurs D.C. residents to react with panic, and civil unrest spreads almost overnight. Public services break down within seventy-two hours.

=December 15-17= Federal authorities designate new containment zones in Manhattan to control crowd migration across the island. Military engineers begin erecting makeshift perimeter barriers called Dividing Lines at 14th Street and 58th Street. These split the borough into three distinct sections: Lower, Midtown, and Upper.

The sealed-off central Midtown "sick zone", where CERA has been busing and detaining smallpox victims, is becoming increasingly dangerous. Raging mobs, violent escape attempts, and other lawless activities are getting worse. As JTF wits suffer heavier losses, they begin to leave entire blocks unpatrolled.

In Washington, D.C., the U.S. Capitol Police and Metro Police lock down the entire District of Columbia. National Guard units are summoned to provide extra protection for federal workers and government officials.

 Note on D.C. National Guard  When DCNG assistance is needed, the mayor, or the Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency (HSEMA) director acting as the mayor's agent, must coordinate the request through the Commanding General of the DCNG. The Commanding General notifies the under secretary of the army of the request and its nature. The under secretary consults with the attorney General and the secretary of defense on the request. The attorney General establishes policies to be observed by military forces in the event they are used for military support to civil authorities in the District. If approved by the under secretary of the army, the Commanding General advises the mayor of the decision and commits resources as necessary to assist within the parameters established by the under secretary and the attorney General. If advance coordination is possible, HSEMA will coordinate with the DCNG military support officer.

=December 18-20= President Waller invokes National Security Presidential Directive 51 to ensure continuity of the federal government in the face of growing crisis. Boarding Marine One, POTUS is evacuated from The White House to Camp David in Maryland along with his family, cabinet and senior staff.

The president immediately activates the first wave of Strategic Homeland Division agents embedded in New York City.

Two days later, a rolling blackout strikes the sealed-off Midtown "sick zone." The sector-now a death trap filled with piles of infected corpses, fires burning unchecked, and predatory gangs-soon acquires a new name: The Dark Zone. At night, the streets turn into a grim "no man's land" of disease, death, and feral savagery.

Within twenty-four hours, the JTF and all medical personnel are forced to abandon the Dark Zone's mass treatment facilities and beat a hasty retreat south. They pull back to the James Farley Post Office in Midtown Manhattan, a massive building that occupies two full city blocks and serves as a critical base of operations for both CERA and the JTF.

=Late December= The first wave of Division agents deploys into the Dark Zone to set up an outpost, seeking to quell the violence and restore order. Their disturbing reports suggest an almost unimaginable level of chaos, more primitive than anywhere else in the city.

Over the next several days, JTF base dispatchers gradually lose contact with the entire Division team. None return. Meanwhile, Rioters threaten to overrun the James Farley Post Office.

As the New Year approaches, New York City is in the vise grip of an unprecedented humanitarian disaster. Preliminary counts suggest more than two hundred thousand citizens have succumbed to the contagion and violence. Many more have been displaced and linger in shelters or clinics. All basic civic services have shut down.

A mass breakout from Rikers Island, the New York City Department of Correction's four hundred-acre jail complex on the East River, releases thousands of violent, desperate criminals into the diseased cityscape. Many convicts band together to form a powerful gang called the "Rikers". Like urban warlords, they start taking brutal control of neighborhoods.

=January 1-5= The president activates Division agents in the District of Columbia, where food and gas shortages combined with widespread power outages have triggered large-scale rioting and looting. High level government officials begin to relocate to secure sites around the country.

Following the precedent set in New York City all military and the law enforcement agencies in Washington, D.C. are combined under a single command called the Joint Task Force. The National Park Service helps CERA establish a quarantine zone for D.C.-area infected patients on Theodore Roosevelt Island, the 88.5-acre national memorial site on the Potomac River.

CERA also establishes a sizeable refugee camp inside the Smithsonian Castle on the National Mall. Known as The Castle, the camp is created as a safe haven for out-of-towners stranded in southern D.C. after the early evacuations.

=January 6= POTUS activates a second wave of Division agents in New York City. Despite suffering key losses during the airlift into Manhattan's harbor district, the new team moves swiftly to dispel Rioters and lift the siege of the James Farley Post Office. Once the Manhattan operational hub is secured, the JTF (with heavy Division support) begins to expand its presence across the stricken borough, block by block.

=January 7= President Waller dies from cardiac arrest. Rumors spread that he succumbed to the virus, triggering a new shockwave of panic. Vice President Thomas Eliezer Mendez is sworn in as POTUS. He refuses to leave D.C. for a remote location.

=January 10= The Joint Task Force promotes the head of the Maryland National Guard, Colonel Antwon Ridgeway, to JTF Field Commander, Southeast Region, with the new rank of General. Ridgeway begins a merciless crackdown on mob violence in the capital.

=Late January= Civilian communications in Washington, D.C. go mostly offline as the city's infrastructure crisis continues.

Sizeable National Guard camps and field distribution centers help maintain order in the southern part of the district. But continuing gas shortages trigger riots north of Pennsylvania Avenue, and fierce gang fighting spreads across the northern neighborhoods.

=Early February= As the situation in Washington, D.C. worsens, the U.S. military is thrown into crisis. Many units are crippled after suffering from a broken chain of command, a rash of desertions, and widespread deaths—both to smallpox and the attrition from multiple uprisings in metropolitan areas.

International trade shuts down, knocking local economies across the globe into a tailspin. This exacerbates the food and security crises that are arising as a result of the contagion as it inevitably spreads from region to region.

=February 14= In D.C., several major criminal gangs fighting viciously for control of the region north of Pennsylvania Avenue call a truce and form a council. This meeting unites the murderous factions into a loose confederation called the Hyenas who employ insurgent-style tactics.

=Late February= General Ridgeway's overzealous and increasingly lethal measures in support of the forced quarantine leads to reprimands and eventually arrest, a court martial, and incarceration. But loyal members of his JTF unit break him out. Under Ridgeway's leadership, the renegade force forms a highly trained and well-equipped militia known as the True Sons. Their aim: to establish territory and dominate the populace.

Military and paramilitary operatives are suddenly recalled from their deployments worldwide, and are quietly installed into quarantined areas within the U.S.

=Early March= Spring eases some emergency situations that were worsened by winter weather, and communities nationwide begin adapting to the new reality. But in Washington, D.C., the collapse and withdrawal of the JTF cedes much of the city to gang control.

Bitter survivors of a forced quarantine on Theodore Roosevelt Island in the Potomac River overthrow the camp to form a vengeful faction calling themselves the Outcasts. Led by the charismatic Emeline Shaw, the faction sets up its stronghold in the Potomac Event Center and starts pushing eastward from the Potomac.

A CERA refugee center in the University Vard at The George Washington University just west of The White House begins to achieve self-reliance and self-defense. Residents build the area into a settlement community known as The Campus.

In the east, General Ridgeway's True Sons militia seizes control of the U.S. Capitol Building and establishes its headquarters there: a powerful symbolic victory.

=Late March= Desperate civilians seeking refuge from savage street fighting in north-east D.C. continue to gather in historic Ford's Theater. Led by former Division agent Odessa Sawyer after the death of the settlement's previous leader, the residents fortify the structure and build a self-sufficient settlement referred to simply as "The Theater".

=April 9= Just three months after being sworn in, President Mendez dies from an apparent suicide, however the circumstances surrounding his death indicate that the Secret Service may be compromised. Holed up in NORAD HQ with other members of Congress, Speaker of the House Andrew Ellis is sworn in as the new POTUS.

=Early May= Anti-air missiles strike Air Force One as it returns President Ellis from NORAD to Washington, D.C. The plane crash-lands near the Capitol. Ellis survives, but is captured and held hostage by the Hyenas.

The SHD Network mysteriously goes down. Division operatives, cut off from each other, enact their operational guidelines which lead them back to the nation's capital. Over the following days and weeks, agents arrive from various points across the United States to find the agency's White House Base of Operations besieged by hostile factions.

=Late May= The three surviving Washington, D.C. settlements - The Castle, The Campus, and The Theater - come under increasing pressure from local aggressors - the True Sons, the Outcasts and the Hyenas. With The Division's main base reeling from devastating attacks as well, agency teams are forced to spread their limited resources ever thinner as they defend the settlements, hoping to expand the city's network of safe areas and resource trading.

=Early June= The True Sons launch a chemical attack on the settlement at the old Smithsonian Castle. The Castle's defenses fall almost immediately. Most residents are either killed in the fighting or executed upon surrender, but a handful are extracted to safety.

=Late June= Black Tusk - the organization revealed to be responsible for the SHD Network sabotage - advances on D.C. President Ellis is extracted from the World Bank by Division agents and holds a speech at The White House.

=July= After a mission to the Capitol, Division agents recover a briefcase that is required to access the location of a potential broad-spectrum antiviral. Ellis disappears without a trace as Black Tusk invade D.C. and put the city under siege. They capture key locations across the city and breach an underground facility, seizing the broad-spectrum antivirals before The Division has a chance to intervene.

Appearances

 * Tom Clancy's The Division
 * Tom Clancy's The Division: Extremis Malis
 * Tom Clancy's The Division: Broken Dawn
 * Tom Clancy's The Division 2