[ WP ] Without warning , a national news station broadcasts its emergency `` End of the World '' tape , and cuts to static .

Part one of? 
 
 Everyone called it `` The End of the World'' but it was really just the end of humanity. The first broadcast came at ten o'clock on Boxing Day. Astor James III, Bachelor of Classics and Ancient History and manager of a fast-food restaurant was watching the Channel Six news in his dressing gown. Aerial footage of holiday-fattened, predatory masses in department stores was cut off by a hastily made-up newsreader, her usually perfect hair in disarray and her microphone hanging off her lapel, speaking of an unconfirmed worldwide crisis, possibly but not yet identified as an infectious disease or possibly but not yet confirmed as the effects of a sudden radiation burst from an unknown source. The camera swayed and then fell, showing the newsreader's cupcake-print pyjama bottoms before blacking out. 
 
 Dangerously prone to cynicism, inhabitants of the Earth suspected some kind of elaborate prank and continued to do so even when all sources of media, both reputable and less so, began reporting widespread sudden deaths. Channel six had been down for two days when a twelve second video, shot in portrait on a mobile phone, became viral. It showed the Prime Minister dying at a public address.
