Reflecting mankind's fear of the unknown, quarantine is our most powerful response to uncertainty. Here Geoff Manaugh and Nicola Twilley track the history and future of quarantine around the globe, chasing the story of emergency isolation from the crumbling lazarettos of the Mediterranean to an experimental Ebola unit in London, and from the hallways of the CDC to closed-door simulations where epidemiologists prepare for future epidemics. Manaugh and Nicola Twilley also tour a nuclear-waste isolation facility beneath the New Mexican desert, see plants stricken with a disease that threatens the world's wheat supply; and meet NASA's Planetary Protection Officer, tasked with saving Earth from extraterrestrial infections.