A Man-made Virus called KV, originally created as a cancer vaccine, wipes out the population of New York City in 2009, leaving virologist Robert Neville (Will Smith) the last human survivor in the city and possibly the world. Neville lives alone with his dog for three years, attempting to contact and find other possible survivors. He is watched by nocturnal mutant victims of the plague. The virus instantly killed 90% of the people on the planet, roughly 5.4 billion. Less than 1% of humans are immune, which Neville theorizes would leave roughly 12 million people immune. The remaining 588 million people were infected but did not die, instead losing all normal human behavior and degenerating into a primal state driven by cannibalistic hunger. Sunlight kills the infected, so they hide in the dark underground and in buildings then swarm out at night. By three years after the plague swept the globe, Neville has not seen another normal human being for years and suspects that the infected have succeeded in killing the remainder of the survivors in the New York City area and possibly the entire world. Neville finds himself outnumbered by the infected and running out of time.
Neville is also haunted by the intense psychological trauma not only of having everyone he ever knew die, but physically being completely isolated from all human contact for three years, with his only companions being his dog and various department store dummies he has set up and assigned names. The total isolation has begun to take its toll on Neville's mind, with his sanity nearly at the breaking point. Multiple times throughout the narrative, Neville witnesses semi-surreal events which it is not clear are indeed real or if Neville has simply begun to hallucinate. After meeting two other survivors and developing a cure for the plague, he sacrifices himself so the other two immune humans can escape. They eventually travel to an isolated community of survivors.
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