The Entire 28 Days Later Universe Timeline Explained

Contains spoilers for "28 Years Later: The Bone Temple"

From the first moments of the 2002 film that started it all, "28 Days Later" wastes no time jumping into its terrifying take on the modern zombie mythos: a highly communicable virus that quickly transforms its vectors into mindless, violent monsters stripped of their individuality by a rage so powerful that it makes them seem inhuman. With the release of "28 Years Later: The Bone Temple," the second film of a legacy sequel trilogy, we're finally getting to the point of this dark turn into the human psyche. While other zombie sagas present a dark and often nihilistic vision of the post-civilization world, the "28 Days Later" franchise examines the power of compassion, empathy, community, and hope in the face of a civilization-level crisis. 

"The Bone Temple" begins nearly three decades after the events of "28 Days Later," when bicycle courier Jim (Cillian Murphy) first awakened from his coma to find the streets of London empty, abandoned to roving bands of Infected. By the end of "The Bone Temple," we've learned the psychological features of the Rage virus can be managed with pharmacology, a fact that may not mean much as the man who discovers this new revelation doesn't survive the film. 

Because each film focuses on a microcosm of life after the Rage virus spreads, the "28 Days Later" timeline can be tough to follow. Through additions to the franchise like Steve Niles' 2007 graphic novel, retold as a DVD extra on "28 Weeks Later," and the comic book series centering Selena (Naomie Harris) from "28 Days Later," we can piece together a more complete timeline of the "28 Days Later" universe. Here's a complete breakdown of that timeline so far.

"28 Days Later" begins in media res on the first day of the Rage virus outbreak as we're introduced to a scientist who says they have to understand rage before inhibiting it. It's a prospect that fails miserably and the film is quick to show why. Since the first film primarily focuses on Jim and his companions, we don't learn much about the lore underlying the universe until the comic, "28 Days Later: The Aftermath," which expands greatly on the origins of Rage.

As shown in "Part 1: Development," the virus is the twisted lovechild of two deeply shady Cambridge scientists named Warren and Clive, who are developing a rage inhibitor in the world's most toxic work environment. Warren is extorting Clive over claims of spousal abuse, while Clive can't stop harassing his ex. 

When the scientists find themselves short on appropriate test subjects, Warren simply pays off a police captain to get his hands on a violent prisoner using an extrajudicial avenue, much to Clive's disdain. Predictably, said prisoner reacts viciously, causing Warren to retcon the man's involvement in the study (and his existence) using a fire extinguisher. Instead of noting the obvious red flags involved in hiding a corpse, Clive and Warren go full sunken cost fallacy by powering forward and using the Ebola virus as a carrier for their "rage inhibitor." After all, there are heavyweight financiers on board, and paychecks to cash. 

Having thoroughly not enjoyed their latest escalation in criminal enterprising, Clive and Warren begin testing their Ebola-juiced rage inhibitor on chimpanzees, who get pumped full of Ebola Rage, hooked up to a bunch of sensors, and strapped in to watch violent imagery in a "Clockwork Orange" style. Surprising no one but Clive and Warren, this assault on the scientific method goes terribly awry. Not only does the trial not lead to a commune of peaceful Haight-Ashbury apes, but within two weeks, the virus suddenly mutates into a full-blown rage augmentation virus, one that magnifies the emotional hormones of its subjects profoundly. 

Their tense professional relationship already strained, Clive furiously quits the project and heads home to call an ecoterrorist animal rights group (the research scientist version of "swatting"), before attempting to escape responsibility by shuffling himself off this mortal coil. Warren decides to own up to the project's failure, but it turns out the money guys are fine with exploring alternative applications of a virus that turns humans into violent NPCs. 

Around the same time, a London bicycle courier named Jim gets hit by a car and ends up comatose in a hospital, where he remains during the beginning of the outbreak. Elsewhere, siblings Tammy (Imogen Poots) and Andy Harris (Mackintosh Muggleton) head to Spain for camp.

Unfortunately for Warren, whatever plans his benefactors had to generate the big bucks via weaponizing the Rage virus will never come to fruition. At the same time that he is hashing things out with the money guys, his lab is already under assault from Animal Freedom Front, the animal rights extremist group Clive rang up about his experiment. As depicted in the opening scene of "28 Days Later," after Clive's tip, their crew wastes no time booking it to the Cambridge Primate Research Centre. There, they cover the CCTV and break into the lab, photographing the scene and expressing horror at the chimps' treatment. 

While exploring the facility, they encounter a scientist who warns them that the chimps are "highly contagious," having been given an "inhibitor" for rage. Moved to tears at the sight of the chimps crammed into tiny glass cages, one activist releases an ape, who quickly rushes and attacks her. Within seconds, she shows signs of infection, and the situation descends into chaos. At this point, the story lines up with the comic, which depicts Warren stepping out of his office to get attacked by a chimp, who bites him on the face. This causes Warren's eyes to turn red with the virus, making him one of the first human patients to be infected during the first wave of the outbreak. 

Over the course of the next day after the lab leak, the Rage virus quickly spreads through Cambridge and London. Exactly how quickly the virus travels is depicted in  "28 Days Later: The Aftermath," which follows a family of five attempting to enjoy a birthday picnic at Cherry Hinton Hall Park. When Roger, the dad, observes a news article mentioning the lab deaths, his wife chastises him for bringing bad vibes to their family hangout.

 Moments later, the family's youngest child, Liam, is attacked by a red-eyed chimpanzee wearing a metal helmet. Although the family attacks the chimp, Liam is injured and needs a hospital, which are unfortunately all backed up for some "mysterious" reason. The child, who begins to show signs of infection, is loaded onto an ambulance as the Rage virus takes over the park in the background. 

En route to a hospital in London behind the ambulance, the remaining family members observe humans attacking each other before catching up to the ambulance, where Liam is now fully infected. Distraught at his loss but having narrowly escaped with their own lives, the surviving and now quarantined family listens to the news over the next few days as London falls to the virus. Eventually, they attempt to escape London, passing barricades and hordes of infected along the way. 

A couple of weeks into the outbreak, London's evacuation escalates into a total quarantine. It publicly ends the intense rush to flee the city, but many Londoners are still trying to beg, bribe, and fight their way out. Such is the case with Donald Harris (Robert Carlyle) and his wife Alice (Catherine McCormack), as depicted in "28 Weeks Later." When things start to get rough around London, they leave the metro area without their children, who are in Spain on a school trip, taking refuge in the English countryside as guests in the home of Geoff (Garfield Morgan) and Sally (Amanda Walker), along with Sam (Raymond Waring), Karen (Emily Beecham), and Jacob (Shahid Ahmed).

As Selena and her husband are packing to fly out of London before the quarantine hits, their home gets attacked by Infected and Selena's husband catches the virus, forcing her to kill him (as shown in the comic series). The rush to evacuate by way of the last planes and trains leaving is so intense that Mark (Noah Huntley) loses his family amid the chaos of a crowd crush. Elsewhere, Liam's surviving siblings escape London by jumping from a bridge as their parents are overcome by the infected and Jim's parents leave a note for him as they choose to die at home. 

As the virus is beginning to spread across England, it begins to spread throughout the Scottish Highlands (seen in "28 Years Later"), where it reaches the wife, kids, and extended family of the local vicar as they shelter in the vicarage adjacent to the local parish church. The minister remains cloistered, instead of protecting his family. 

To keep all of the children distracted, the adults put on "Teletubbies," warning the kids not to move under any circumstances. When the adults fail to ward off an attack of Infected, the only person to escape is the vicar's son, the Teletubby-obsessed 8-year-old, Jimmy Crystal (Rocco Haynes), who runs to the church in search of his father (Sandy Batchelor), arriving seconds before the Infected do.

When Jimmy tells his father he's afraid, the vicar replies that this has all been "perfectly foretold," himself convinced that this is the Biblical Day of Judgment. After passing his cross necklace to his son, the vicar welcomes his own infection, succumbing to the horde as his terrified son looks on from beneath an ecclesiastical floor grate. Jimmy's young mind confuses his father's religious fanaticism, causing him to grow up with the belief that the former vicar is Old Nick, AKA Satan. 

While Jim snoozes his way through the early apocalypse, a now-quarantined London is also beginning to quiet down. It's around this time that the power goes out across the region. Having lost their effort to push back the outbreak, Major Henry West (Christopher Eccleston) and his remaining officers take refuge in Worsley House, where they shortly adopt the collective dream of enslaving women to forcibly repopulate England, a byproduct of Major West's desperate promise to keep his men from losing hope altogether ("28 Days Later"). 

Meanwhile, left alone and presumed dead as her husband escaped, a confused and apparently immune Alice returns to her home in the evacuation zone. Unable to return back to England, Alice and Don's children are rerouted to a refugee camp at around three weeks into the outbreak ("28 Weeks Later"). 

Around the same time, a young Jimmy Crystal (Rocco Haynes) is watching "Teletubbies" with his cousins when the Rage virus hits his home, forcing him to flee. These events also roughly coincide with Selena and Mark teaming up and spotting their last healthy human until Jim for a while. Paralleling a Rip Van Winkle trope that dates back at least as far as the 1949 post-apocalyptic sci-fi novel "Earth Abides" (and Rick Grimes' nonsensical medical care-free coma snooze from "The Walking Dead"), Jim wakes up in nothing but his birthday suit to find London eerily abandoned. That's the power of a too-long nap.

As outlined in "Stage 3: Decimation," part of "28 Days Later: The Aftermath," the period of London's post-Rage-apocalyptic journey following Jim's wake-up marks a time of hardship for the remaining survivors still trapped in the London Metro area. With no supply chain, no fresh food, no healthcare, no police, or anything else they might need, small bands of survivors are reduced to survival by scavenging and looting. 

But it's not all bad news. Like those impressive few individuals who have somehow managed to survive the entirety of "The Walking Dead" universe, the folks who are still alive and kicking in London nigh a month later are a bunch of pretty tough cookies. They're starting to fight back, and actually land a few blows against their situation. By the time Jim meets Mark and Selena, the pair are a two-soldier paramilitary, weapons and all. But perhaps most impressive are the military skills of "Aftermath" character Hugh Baker, with his eagle-eyed observation that the Ragers use their olfactory senses to locate their victims, a fact he exploits by dousing mannequins with perfume to lure and ambush hordes of Infected. 

Unlike most survivors, Hugh actually chose to remain behind through the evacuation and is committed to fighting for his country. He ends up becoming one of the last remaining survivors in the London area before getting rescued and sent to a refugee camp where he meets Sophie — and the scientist, Clive, who survived his attempt to end himself.                                                            

28 days (56 days total, now) after waking up in the hospital, Jim and his traveling companions Selena and Hannah (Megan Burns) have made it out of London, gotten through the ruins of Manchester, and escaped the vile soldiers of Worsley House — not to mention countless Infected. Having long since taken up residence in a remote and bucolic English cottage, where they work together to sew and unfurl a massive fabric sign reading "HELLO," the trio manages to catch the attention of a survey jet flying over the area.

If the comics are upheld as canon in the new trilogy (something that remains to be seen, as of yet), this is the point they get rescued. After their rescue, the three companions receive international notoriety for their story, along with earning the news media nickname "The Manchester Three." But, as depicted in the later comic book series, despite their worldwide fame and popularity, the trio is not so well-liked by the British government. They place the orphaned Hannah in the foster care system, ship Selena off to Norway's Bergen Refugee Camp, and eventually prosecute Jim, sentencing him to death by firing squad for his role in the death of Major West's depraved platoon. 

If the comics are to be upheld as canon, it's possible Jim chose to return to England as an alternative to execution. Since "28 Years Later" was emphatic that NATO is patrolling the island to keep mainlanders from leaving, it is also possible that the three never made it off of the mainland, negating the comic timeline and leaving Jim and the survivors at the cottage. 

Around the 11th week after the Rage outbreak begins, NATO initiates Operation Rising Dawn, a full-scale operation to clean up, repatriate, and repopulate Great Britain, which is depicted in detail throughout "28 Weeks Later." Although the operation doesn't begin in earnest until around the 24th week, post-outbreak, NATO forces, under the direction of the United States military began showing up far earlier.

The operation begins by securing London's Isle of Dogs, the East London peninsula along the Thames River; naming this initial safezone District One and building out a stable infrastructure that includes housing, medical care, utilities, and a supermarket. New arrivals even receive a little welcome care package. As NATO troops begin repatriating British citizens, the Harris children, Tammy and Andy, move in to become the first minors in the district. Don is reunited with his kids and given a job. 

Around Week 18, England is declared completely free of Infected after it is discovered that, unlike the apparently immortal Walkers of "The Walking Dead" universe, the Infected of "28 Days Later" will eventually starve out when you cut off their food supply. But despite England's great strides with District One, it's worth noting that the vast majority of Brits are still living in refugee camps.

Don's joy at reuniting with his children is never fully realized, as he is silently tormented by the bitter truth that he fled from the cottage in the beginning of "28 Weeks Later," leaving his wife to be eaten by enraged zombies. Worse, he can vividly remember seeing her stand there, pounding on the window of the farmhouse. As the father of her children, Don made a conscious decision to leave her behind. It's a calculated decision that would merely be tragic and haunting — if not for the fact that she managed to defy the odds and survive infection, making her the first known example of an asymptomatic carrier. And, potentially, the savior of the human race.

But none of that really matters after Don, in all of his shame and remorse, begs for her forgiveness. He receives it, along with a loving kiss. That matters, because asymptomatic carriers are still carriers. That means he is infected the moment she kisses him. This immediately ignites the second wave of the virus, which rapidly spreads throughout the shortlived Isle of Dogs community.

Having already seen how fast the virus wiped out London the first time and keen on not watching it spread even further a second, NATO forces immediately go full-bore "destroy with extreme prejudice" on the Isle of Dogs, mowing down citizens with bullets and eventually resorting to wholesale firebombing to contain the threat.

Thousands of citizens are killed in the mayhem as US-led forces take out the people they were meant to protect just the day previous, and laying to waste all of the infrastructure these people had been working so hard to build. As terrified citizens attempt to flee, snipers' guns take them out indiscriminately. 

But as cruel as that may seem, it makes sense when we're shown that the virus has already reached Paris toward the end of the film, ultimately implying that the virus will spread to become a full-blown pandemic. Although we later learn that the virus is pushed back and contained to England once more, the possibility of it spreading further is always hanging above us, like the proverbial sword of Damocles. 

Although decades have passed between "28 Weeks Later" and its brilliant follow-up "28 Years Later," and the virus has been driven back from mainland Europe, it continues to persist throughout the British Isles like a bad case of head lice. Great Britain remains under quarantine, leaving the small enclaves of survivors that still exist; completely isolated from the world outside.

While the first wave of infection eventually led to starvation among the initial Infected, there is much more variety in those roaming the British mainland when the later generations of Infected are introduced. This includes the slow-moving and severely bloated "Slow-Low" types who often subsist on worms, the standard fast-moving Infected, and the Alphas, larger Infected males with superhuman strength. 

The Infected tend to follow an Alpha and can use some degree of verbal communication, calling out to each other when they spy uninfected humans. It's also revealed that Infected mothers can give birth to uninfected babies, due to the placental barrier.

Sometime after the onset of quarantine, a physician named Dr. Ian Kelson (Ralph Fiennes) becomes committed to building a massive ossuary as a memento mori – a monument meant to serve as a reminder that the Infected are still human beings underneath their rage. Working alone, Kelson begins sterilizing the bones of both Infected and non-infected alike, respectfully placing them within his memorial in honor of the lives that were lost. Over time, this becomes an expansive open-air Bone Temple. 

As Kelson is working on his ossuary, a hunting party from a tidal island commune on Lindisfarne, a safe, isolated community accessible only via tidal strait, encounters his project. Misunderstanding the rows of bodies Kelson is burning as a sign that he has mentally cracked, they avoid him moving forward, despite Kelson's status as the only remaining doctor in the region.

Aside from his work on the ossuary, Kelson spends his time researching the virus and the local Infected population, covering his skin with rust-colored iodine to reduce his chance of infection, and using pharmaceutical darts to allow him to get closer to the Infected. 

Shortly after returning to the mainland, Spike finds himself overwhelmed by a herd of Infected. He is rescued by a band of tracksuit-wearing young people in low-grade blonde wigs under the leadership of the now-grown Jimmy Crystal (Jack O'Connell), who save Spike before forcing him to fight one of its members to the death. Spike quickly finds himself a part of "The Jimmys," a Satanic Teletubby cult under the thumb of their tiara-wearing leader, who calls himself "Sir Lord Jimmy Crystal." 

In the years since his escape in the Highlands, Sir Jimmy has fully come to believe his father was Satan ("Old Nick"). Believing he hears Satan's voice in his mind, Sir Jimmy demands his acolytes (the "Seven Fingers") give "charity" to survivors they meet in the form of medieval torture. 

While attempting to escape, the terrified Spike develops a connection with fellow Finger Jimmy Ink (Erin Kellyman), who saves him from another Jimmy. While exploring the landscape, Jimmy Ink spies the Bone Temple, mistaking the iodine-painted Kelson for Old Nick cavorting with demons (Samson) amid his bone castle. Terrified he is about to meet his father, Sir Jimmy goes alone to speak with Kelson, who explains that he is an atheist doctor simply paying memorial to the dead. Sir Jimmy agrees to let Kelson avoid his charity if the doctor will agree to pose as Old Nick, directing Sir Jimmy's followers to listen to him without question. 

While observing the Infected around his ossuary, Kelson develops an interest in an Alpha he calls Samson (Chi Lewis-Parry). After the doctor sedates Samson to tend to his wound, Samson starts coming around daily to experience an almost psychic relief from the Rage virus, as provided by the hard narcotics contained in Kelson's darts. What begins as a tense experiment evolves into a daily therapy session as Kelson and Samson gradually blow through the doctor's morphine supply. Through these sessions, Kelson begins to theorize that the Rage virus envelops the mind like psychosis. 

Realizing his morphine is almost depleted, Kelson sets out to humanely euthanize Samson but feels conflicted without Samson's informed consent. As Kelson begins to plunge the hypodermic needle, Samson does something no other Infected has done thus far, clearly saying the word "moon." This convinces Kelson to try an experimental drug cocktail in hopes of unearthing Samson's conscious mind. However, when he wakes the next morning, Samson is gone.   

Perhaps not fully realizing what Sir Jimmy is capable of, Kelson decides to give the Jimmys the show of their lives at the Bone Temple to really sell his "Old Nick" ruse. With a little help from the musical stylings of Iron Maiden, some sweet pyrotechnics, a DIY Nosferatu cosplay, and some vibe-enhancing powder from his medicine cabinet, Kelson puts on one heckuva concert. 

The severity of the situation starts to settle in when Sir Jimmy explicitly states their plans to continue torturing and killing. But it's only when he recognizes Spike under one of those wigs that Kelson breaks from his agreement with Jimmy. Still in character as Old Nick with the Fingers hanging on his every word, Kelson tells Jimmy's followers he demands a sacrifice: that of his only son.

An enraged Sir Jimmy wounds Kelson fatally, which only serves to undermine his claim as Satan's son. Jimmy Ink, whose given name is Kellie, takes out the other Jimmys. Meanwhile, Spike stabs Sir Jimmy before the pair crucify him on the upside-down cross Kelson built for his little show.

As Kelson is putting on his Satanist drag show for the Jimmys, Samson is stumbling around the countryside in a half-lucid state as the Rage virus loosens its grip on his mind. Drawn to the ruins of the train car where Isla helped birth the Infected baby in "28 Years Later," Samson fully awakens from his decades-long slumber with the words "I don't have a ticket," the last thought he uttered before getting infected as a child. 

As Samson's consciousness alters, the other Infected begin to sense something different about him, reacting to and violently attacking Samson. Owing to his superhuman size, strength, and the fact that he is already infected with the virus, Samson narrowly escapes the bloody rampage. Now fully conscious, Samson returns to Dr. Kelson at the Bone Temple to thank him. Kelson survives long enough to learn he cured Samson, before passing on to become another set of remains in his ossuary. At the end of the film, it's unclear whether Samson will remain conscious without continued medication.

After Spike and Kelly leave the Bone Temple, they continue traveling together. On the run from a herd of Infected, the pair cross a fence towards a familiar cottage, where we see Jim from "28 Days Later." He is now the father of a teen daughter — possibly Selena's child — preparing her for a homeschool history exam. When they are disrupted by the sound of commotion in the distance, father and daughter head off to help Spike and Kelly, suggesting all of them will be present in the final film of the trilogy.