After deciding the basics of our characters and plot, I wanted to do more research on what would happen if the pandemic was worse than it is at the moment. Right now, food stocks haven’t been depleted, and people haven’t started fighting each other or breaking the law for food. Similarly, otherwise healthy people are likely to survive. Anna and I want to create a story that is similar to the pandemic we are facing right now, but make the outcome worse. Still, because this is the worst pandemic I’ve ever been in, I wanted to do some research to see how a worse pandemic would unfold.

To do this, I watched the movie Contagion. In the movie, one in four cases are fatal, and it spreads across the world relatively quickly. I think the movie lasts about a month, and in that time almost everyone in the world has it.

I found it to be very informative. I thought several scenes really helped me figure out what I wanted to include in the story, and some scenes helped me figure out where I didn’t want the story to go.