''Smallpox 2002: Silent Weapon'' is a

fictional Fiction is any creative work, chiefly any narrative work, portraying individuals, events, or places that are imaginary, or in ways that are imaginary. Fictional portrayals are thus inconsistent with history, fact, or plausibility. In a traditio ...

docudrama Docudrama (or documentary drama) is a genre of television and film, which features dramatized re-enactments of actual events. It is described as a hybrid of documentary and drama and "a fact-based representation of real event". Docudramas typ ...

produced by Wall to Wall, showing how a single act of

bioterrorism Bioterrorism is terrorism involving the intentional release or dissemination of biological agents. These agents are bacteria, viruses, insects, fungi, and/or toxins, and may be in a naturally occurring or a human-modified form, in much the sa ...

leads to terrifying consequences globally.

Background

The premise of it was one man who, in 2002, creates the

smallpox Smallpox was an infectious disease caused by variola virus (often called smallpox virus) which belongs to the genus Orthopoxvirus. The last naturally occurring case was diagnosed in October 1977, and the World Health Organization (WHO) ce ...

virus himself, infects himself, and touches ten people in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the U ...

. This eventually leads to a

pandemic A pandemic () is an epidemic of an infectious disease that has spread across a large region, for instance multiple continents or worldwide, affecting a substantial number of individuals. A widespread endemic disease with a stable number of i ...

across the world that is later defeated, but not before 60 million people are killed. The film was commissioned before the

September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commerc ...

and is presented in the form of a

fictional documentary A mockumentary (a blend of ''mock'' and ''documentary''), fake documentary or docu-comedy is a type of film or television show depicting fictional events but presented as a documentary. These productions are often used to analyze or comment on c ...

, including false interviews and stock footage. The tagline for the movie was, "Drama, until it happens".

Reception

Newspaper reviews of the documentary were mixed, varying from "a sick stunt" to "extraordinarily good". The docudrama proved very popular with viewers, attracting 3.4m viewers, 15% of the audience, to a 9:00pm slot on

BBC2 BBC Two is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network owned and operated by the BBC. It covers a wide range of subject matter, with a remit "to broadcast programmes of depth and substance" in contrast to the more mainstream ...

according to overnight returns.Smallpox proves infectious for BBC2

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper A newspaper is a periodical publication containing written information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background. Newspapers can cover a wide ...

, 6 February 2002

Notes

*The film was renamed ''Smallpox'' when it aired on FX on 2 January 2005.

References

External links

* {{IMDb title, 0320482, Smallpox 2002: Silent Weapon BBC television docudramas Films about viral outbreaks Science docudramas Smallpox in fiction