AFollowing the use of germ warfare in a 1975 apocalyptic war between China and the Soviet Union, a plague has wiped out most of the human race, killing everyone except a 'family' of deformed, light-sensitive, albino mutants, led by former newscaster Jonathan Matthias (Anthony Zerbe), In Los Angeles, another survivor, U.S. Army Colonel Robert Neville (Charlton Heston), who previously immunized himself with an experimental vaccine and now finds that he is immune to the plague, struggles to find a cure while attempting to stay alive against the constant nighttime attacks of the family, who are hellbent on destroying all remnants of the prior science- and technology-driven civilization that led to the holocaust...especially Neville.