The Stand is a post-apocalyptic dark fantasy novel written by American author Stephen King and first published in 1978 by Doubleday.

The plot centers on a deadly pandemic of weaponized influenza and its aftermath, in which some of the few surviving humans gather into factions that are each led by a personification of either good or evil and seem fated to clash with each other.

King restored over 400 pages of text that had been removed from his original manuscript, revised the order of the chapters, shifted the novel's setting 10 years forward from 1980 to 1990, and accordingly corrected a number of cultural references.

[2] An extremely contagious and lethal strain of influenza, resistant to antibodies and vaccines, is developed as a biological weapon within a secret Department of Defense installation in the Mojave Desert, and is accidentally released.

The laboratory staff die, but security guard Charles Campion manages to escape and takes his family out of state.

The United States Army attempts to isolate Arnette, going as far as to execute unarmed civilians, but the efforts are in vain – the virus, christened by journalists as the "superflu" or "Captain Trips", spreads across the country and travels beyond its borders, triggering a global pandemic of apocalyptic proportions.

A prism of several personal tragedies describes the collapse of society, explosions of violence, the inability of the government and martial law to stop the pandemic, and the near-extinction of humanity.

Stuart Redman, one of the people present at the gas station when Campion crashes his car, proves immune to the virus.

He meets with sociology professor Glen Bateman and his Irish Setter Kojak, pregnant college student Frannie Goldsmith, and teenage outcast Harold Lauder.

Meanwhile, in Las Vegas, Randall Flagg, the dark man, possessing supernatural abilities, creates his own society from people called by his visions.

A pyromaniac nicknamed "The Trashcan Man", after destroying oil tanks in Gary, Indiana and meeting a power-hungry madman named "The Kid", joins Flagg's group and becomes a weapons specialist.

During her absence, the Free Zone's leadership committee decides to secretly send three people to Flagg's territory to act as spies.

Before dying of exhaustion, Mother Abagail reports God's will – Stuart, Glen, Larry and Ralph must go to Las Vegas and destroy Flagg.

When Tom's fleeting presence in Las Vegas as the sole surviving spy belatedly comes to light, Nadine takes advantage of Flagg's unsettled state to goad him into killing her and her unborn child.

Lloyd kills Glen for refusing to grovel before Flagg, who gathers his entire collective to witness the execution of Ralph and Larry.

Tom finds Stu near death, but a verbal apparition of Nick leading to a supply of antibiotics saves his life.

The author also mentions George R. Stewart's novel Earth Abides, which describes the odyssey of one of the last human survivors after the population is nearly annihilated by a plague, as one of the main inspirations: With my Patty Hearst book, I never found the right way in... and during that entire six-week period, something else was nagging very quietly at the back of my mind.

That got me remembering a chemical spill in Utah, that killed a bunch of sheep (these were canisters on their way to some burial ground; they fell off the truck and ruptured).

This incident later served as the basis of a movie called Rage, starring George C. Scott, but before it was released, I was deep into The Stand, finally writing my American fantasy epic, set in a plague-decimated USA.

In an attempt to resolve this, he added the part of the storyline where Harold and Nadine construct a bomb, which explodes in a Free Zone committee meeting, killing Nick Andros, Chad Norris, and Susan Stern.

Later, Mother Abagail explains on her deathbed that God permitted the bombing out of dissatisfaction with the heroes' focus on petty politics, and not on the ultimate quest of destroying Flagg.

According to King, Blue Öyster Cult's 1976 song "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" also served as a source of inspiration for the novel.

When the novel was originally published in 1978, Doubleday warned King that the book's size would make it too expensive for the market to bear.

In the 1990 Complete and Uncut edition of the book, King admitted he had in mind a few fan castings for his characters, those being Robert Duvall as Randall Flagg and Marshall Crenshaw as Larry Underwood.

[23] In November, Boone planned to split his adaptation into four full-length feature films in an effort to remain true to the breadth of King's sprawling novel.

[24][25] In June 2015, Warner Bros. proposed an eight-part Showtime miniseries to set up the story, which would culminate in Josh Boone's film.

[29] Alexander Skarsgard, James Marsden, Amber Heard, Whoopi Goldberg, Greg Kinnear, Odessa Young, and Henry Zaga were all in consideration for the roles of Randall Flagg, Stu Redman, Nadine Cross, Mother Abagail, Glen Bateman, Frannie Goldsmith, and Nick Andros, respectively.

The song contained lyrics directly related to the book, such as "I met the walking dude, religious, with his worn out cowboy boots", and "Hey Trashcan, where you going boy?"