28 Ways Later

If Dan­ny Boyle and Alex Gar­land’s much-fet­ed 28 Years Lat­er taught us any­thing, it’s that the UK has strug­gled to cope with being Ground Zero for a zom­bie apoc­a­lypse. Cut off from the rest of the world, the nation’s infra­struc­ture and cul­ture crum­bled at the point of ori­gin: some­time in late 2001 (when 28 Days Lat­er was filmed). With this in mind – plus the gonzo out-of-nowhere end­ing of the film, large­ly inde­ci­pher­able to non-British audi­ences with no knowl­edge of who Jim­my Sav­ille is – we’ve been think­ing. How else might the rage virus and demise of the British Isles impact­ed the world? Until Alex Gar­land reveals more lore in 2026’s 28 Years Lat­er: The Bone Tem­ple, allow us to speculate…

1. The last-ever Pre­mier League table is topped by Sam Allardyce’s Bolton Wanderers.
2. Based on the stream­ing video capa­bil­i­ties of the cir­ca-2001 inter­net, it is unlike­ly that any sur­vivors, cer­tain­ly by the time of 28 Years Lat­er, had ever rubbed one out to online pornog­ra­phy. Old copies of FHM and Loaded have become their own form of currency.
3. The cast of recent­ly-broad­cast sit­com The Office trag­i­cal­ly suc­cumbed to the rage virus, ensur­ing that Ricky Ger­vais’ career nev­er took off and that the US was nev­er real­ly exposed to it in any mean­ing­ful capac­i­ty. Mike Schur nev­er remakes the show for a US audi­ence, there­by nar­row­ly avoid­ing ruin­ing net­work tele­vi­sion for years to come.
4. JK Rowl­ing’s brain worms were unable to fight back the rage virus, and the final three Har­ry Pot­ter books were nev­er writ­ten. Not only does this lead to the anti-trans move­ment in the UK nev­er real­ly tak­ing hold, it results in the first Har­ry Pot­ter movie nev­er being released in late 2001. Decades lat­er, peo­ple talk about it like The Day the Clown Cried.
5. With­out music execs Simon Fuller and Simon Cow­ell liv­ing long enough to ensure Pop Idol​’s suc­cess, Amer­i­can Idol and The X Fac­tor nev­er exist, com­plete­ly chang­ing the tele­vi­sion and music land­scape of the 2000s. More trag­i­cal­ly: One Direc­tion were nev­er formed.
6. Mar­garet Thatch­er, who began to exhib­it symp­toms of mem­o­ry loss around 2000 but did not retire from pub­lic life until ear­ly 2002, died not of a stroke but of being eat­en by an infect­ed, and was almost cer­tain­ly lucid enough to under­stand what was happening.
7. Sim­i­lar­ly, Britain’s then-Prime Min­is­ter, Tony Blair, was eat­en by a zom­bie while try­ing to flee the cap­i­tal on a chop­per short­ly after giv­ing a radio broad­cast urg­ing the nation to main­tain calm and dignity.
8. Char­li XCX sur­vives the rage virus as a child, but instead of ded­i­cat­ing her life to music, she starts her own Jim­my-style cult in Essex, in which she refers to all her peers as brats. As such, Brat Sum­mer still hap­pens. Just with more sev­ered heads.
9. Banksy, who was in Mex­i­co in 2001 work­ing with an art activism col­lec­tive, inad­ver­tent­ly sur­vives by virtue of being out of the coun­try. He becomes even more famous, his art gets even worse, and he wins the Nobel Peace Prize for installing a large mir­ror against the exte­ri­or wall of the aban­doned British Con­sulate in New York, with a sign that reads ​‘The Real Zombie’.
10. Instead of Love Island ever com­ing to pass, a real­i­ty tele­vi­sion series fund­ed by a French pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny is briefly pilot­ed. Enti­tled ​‘Peste Île’ (Plague Island) it sees a team of wilder­ness enthu­si­asts attempt to sur­vive in the For­est of Dean for a fort­night. The project is aban­doned after all 20 con­tes­tants die with­in a week.
11. The final Num­ber One sin­gle the UK ever expe­ri­enced was Bob the Builder’s cov­er of Mam­bo Num­ber Five.
12. After word gets out about the rage virus first devel­op­ing in apes, ani­mal test­ing is banned glob­al­ly. Greater aware­ness and empa­thy towards the great apes leads to greater con­ser­va­tion efforts; none of the species are endangered.
13. Padding­ton Bear nev­er received a revival via Paul King’s charm­ing films. Instead, fol­low­ing glob­al demand for British nos­tal­gia prod­ucts, it is Rupert the Bear who becomes the world’s favourite fic­tion­al ursine character.
14. With no inter­net and lim­it­ed access to pow­er, watch­ing VHS tapes is a rare treat for the peo­ple of Eng­land. Most­ly they relay what they remem­ber of old films and tele­vi­sion shows through word of mouth. This leads to some obvi­ous embell­ish­ments and alter­nate ver­sions. No one can agree on what exact­ly Nod­dy was.
15. Elton John, who was in LA at the time of the out­break, record­ed anoth­er char­i­ty ver­sion of ​‘Can­dle in the Wind’ ded­i­cat­ed to all those lost to the rage virus. All the pro­ceeds go to sur­vivors who made it out of the Unit­ed King­dom before it was declared a no-go zone.
16. The loss of the UK actors delays the pro­duc­tion of the tele­vi­sion adap­tion of George R. R. Martin’s Game of Thrones even more than it already was, and the author feels less pres­sure to ful­fil expec­ta­tions. At the same time he also does­n’t become embar­rass­ing­ly rich, which reduces his dis­trac­tions. The ​’A Song of Ice and Fire’ series con­cludes in a time­ly fash­ion. Even­tu­al­ly plans for a tele­vi­sion adap­ta­tion are aban­doned alto­geth­er because they can’t find enough actors who can do good North­ern accents.
17. Boris John­son is trag­i­cal­ly killed try­ing to prove zom­bies are ​“per­fect­ly harm­less with the right han­dling” dur­ing a pub­lic­i­ty stunt in an abort­ed may­oral cam­paign for the Lon­don enclave.
18. As we see in 28 Years Lat­er, the Angel of the North remains stand­ing – as do many of the UK’s land­marks, includ­ing the Clifton Sus­pen­sion Bridge and the Folke­stone White Horse. Big Ben, how­ev­er, stops bing-bong­ing three years into the pan­dem­ic due to lack of main­te­nance. The large crowd of zom­bies drawn towards it every hour due to the noisy bing-bongs are most confused.
19. Top Gear nev­er aired, thus pre­vent­ing a gen­er­a­tion of men from build­ing their entire sense of humour around it.
20. Due to the chaos of the virus, many ani­mals escaped from zoos. Although most were eat­en by the infect­ed or des­per­ate humans, some sur­vived and even thrived. Notable addi­tions to the UK wildlife include a herd of zebras run­ning loose on Can­nock Chase and Chester Zoo’s big cat col­lec­tion, who thrive on the England/​Wales border.
21. Goril­laz only released a sin­gle, self-titled album, with the fate of Albarn and Hewlett unknown to the wider world, ele­vat­ed to myth­i­cal sta­tus. But in real­i­ty, they con­tin­ue to work on the project well into the end times. ​‘Demon Days’ nev­er makes it out of the UK, but becomes the stuff of leg­end with­in the island, with bootlegs cas­settes dupli­cat­ed and shared around by trav­el­ling merchants.
22. The Oscars’ annu­al ​‘In Mem­o­ri­um’ seg­ment was replaced with a musi­cal trib­ute to Great Britain. There was a taste­ful pow­er­point fea­tur­ing var­i­ous British actors who suc­cumbed to the virvirus,ile Elton John per­formed his new cov­er of ​‘Can­dle in the Wind’.
23. Die Anoth­er Day was nev­er filmed, and Pierce Brosnan’s time as Bond fin­ished with The World Is Not Enough. After a decade of war­ring over the rights, Hol­ly­wood went ahead with a reboot. It absolute­ly tanked.
24. A decade after the rage virus out­break, David Finch­er and Aaron Sorkin teamed up to make a taste­ful dra­ma about it called ​‘The Viral Net­work’. It won Best Pic­ture at the 2012 Oscars.
25. Mean­while, numer­ous film projects are scrapped in the inter­est of good taste because their dis­ease-relat­ed plots are con­sid­ered to be ​“too soon.” The zom­bie genre is effec­tive­ly dead for at least a decade, while aca­d­e­mics pon­tif­i­cate on how in ret­ro­spect, it’s obvi­ous that the pop cul­ture about pan­demics was a col­lec­tive antic­i­pa­tion of Rage. George R. Romero retires and lives the rest of his life in haunt­ed shame for things he real­ly has no con­trol over. How­ev­er, in the ear­ly 2010s, an upstart film­mak­er named Eli Roth (whose debut, Cab­in Fever, was shelved due to the out­break) makes the first major zom­bie movie in a long time, draw­ing tremen­dous con­tro­ver­sy but a huge box office take, reviv­ing the genre.
26. Prince William, on his gap year in Africa, is the only sur­viv­ing mem­ber of the Roy­al Fam­i­ly after the Queen Moth­er turned and infect­ed every­one at San­dring­ham. He reset­tles in Cape Town and in sub­se­quent years haunts the Euro­pean par­ty cir­cuit, befriend­ing the deposed Haps­burg and Bour­bon claimants, and wav­ing to an increas­ing­ly indif­fer­ent crowd at F1 races (which Ver­stap­pen dom­i­nates to a tir­ing degree in the absence of Lewis Hamil­ton). He is referred to col­lo­qui­al­ly as ​“The Dauphin of Rage Island”.
27. The Great British High Street is frozen in time at its zenith. No vape shops, no Amer­i­can can­dy shops, no Har­ry Pot­ter sou­venir shops or Cash Con­vert­ers. On Tik­Tok, teenagers post grainy pho­tographs of ran­dom British town cen­tres with ​‘Take me back to this <3’ set to Rob­bie Williams’ ​‘Angels’.
28. For obvi­ous rea­sons, the 2012 Lon­don Olympics nev­er hap­pened. Dan­ny Boyle nev­er directs the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny. Hang on…did Dan­ny Boyle sur­vive the zom­bie apocalypse?