The Andromeda Strain is a 2008 science fiction miniseries, based on the 1969 novel of the same name written by Michael Crichton about a team of scientists who investigate a deadly disease of extraterrestrial origin.

A United States government satellite crash lands near Piedmont, Utah, and two teenagers find it and bring it back to town.

They initially discover that the microorganism contains large numbers of buckyballs, and the team believes Andromeda is a product of advanced synthetic biology.

As he investigates further, Chuck Beeter, the Director of the NSA, uses General Mancheck's aide, Colonel Ferrus, to perform assassinations to prevent knowledge of Andromeda from reaching the civilian population.

Nash travels to one of the temporary Army outposts performing quarantine procedures, and witnesses the effects of Andromeda spreading through various modes of transportation.

In an attempt to neutralize the problem, the President of the United States authorizes a small tactical nuclear strike on the quarantine area in hopes of completely irradiating and destroying Andromeda.

Through video feed, the Wildfire team and President watch in shock and horror as all plastic components of the aircraft, including the pilot's visor, disintegrate.

However, repeated tests with this phage prove unsuccessful, causing the Wildfire team to theorize that Andromeda can communicate through an unknown mechanism among its separate parts.

The information included the six-digit number "739528" and the words "Bacillus infernus" encoded in ASCII plus a bitmap image of a symbol with interlocking triangles.

As part of a government conspiracy to preserve cultures of Andromeda for future use, Colonel Ferrus blackmails Dr. Barton to keep a single sample container.

With the elevators deactivated due to the self-destruct sequence, Keane decides to climb to the control panel on the level above through the lab's main exhaust vent.

As the remaining Wildfire team attends the funerals of their fallen colleagues, both General Mancheck and Colonel Ferrus are secretly assassinated.

In the final scene, the saved sample of the Andromeda is inserted into a BSL-4 compartment with the access code "739528", held in a vessel marked with a symbol with interlocking triangles.

The ending implies that the sample saved on the space station is the cause of the outbreak in the future that necessitated sending the organism back to the present via the wormhole, creating an ontological paradox as to the cell's origin.

In September 2004, the Sci Fi Channel announced that they would produce a miniseries of The Andromeda Strain executive-produced by Ridley and Tony Scott and Frank Darabont.

[7] The "author" is a journalism student at the University of California, Berkeley, and the blog discusses his attempts to contact people from his home town of Piedmont after receiving a "bizarre voicemail" from his sister that left him with "a horrible feeling inside".

[8] After the first post in April 2008, the blog revealed further insight into the plot of the miniseries, with cross-links to other fictional sites where players of the game could enter passwords to obtain more information.

[12] Entertainment Weekly complained about the slow pace and stated that "the cluttered remake mires itself in lab work, inane backstories, and bureaucracy.

The site's critical consensus reads: "Infected with an overloaded plot and clunky techno-babble, The Andromeda Strain is a remarkably dull mutation of its source material.