Jericho Season 1

After mushroom clouds appear on the horizon, fear of the unknown propels the small, isolated community of Jericho, Kansas into social, psychological and physical mayhem when all communication and power is shut down. The town starts to come apart at the seams as terror, anger and confusion cause an initial outbreak of panic and conflict, resolved largely through the solid, calming presence of Mayor Johnston Green. Jake, the mayor's prodigal son in town for the first time in five years, becomes a reluctant hero when a school bus crashes as a result of the explosion; here Jake first meets Heather, who is also on the bus. The sheriff and a deputy are killed by escaped convicts.

With only an hour before the fallout from the nuclear blast in Denver hits Jericho, Jake rushes to get the townspeople inside and away from the rain so that they won't get radiation poisoning. (Hawkins, who warns the town, says he knows this because of his training as a St. Louis cop.) When Jake and the others find that one of the two town shelters is in disrepair and unusable, they have to come up with other protection fast; in the end Jake leads them to the town's salt mine,where he must set charges to detonate the entrance to protect the citizens inside. Meanwhile, Emily and Bonnie are held hostage by two escaped convicts posing as police officers, and Jake has to leave the people at the mine to try to rescue them.

After a satellite television in the local bar broadcasts an Asian news program showing the extent of the nuclear attacks and Stanley, hospitalized after exposure to the fallout rain, claims to have seen tanks headed toward Denver, Jake recommends sending out four search parties in different directions to get a sense of what is going on outside of town. Jake, driving north, finds two abandoned airliners that have landed on a stretch of highway and are blocking the road. The fight recorder he retrieves has reports of mushroom clouds over Denver, Lawrence, KS, and southern Texas (maybe Houston). He also learns that the flight Emily's fiance, Roger, was traveling on, landed safely in a cornfield in Nebraska. Roger is alive.

When Jake and Heather find a stranger who is sick from radiation poisoning and has broken into the pharmacy, they must decide whether to help him and risk contamination or do nothing and allow him to die. After they decide to help the stranger and take him to the hospital, Jake and Hawkins sit vigil in hopes that he will be able to give them information about what's going on outside of Jericho. When Jake is out of the room, it becomes clear that Hawkins knowns the man, Vince, and is a part of Hawkins's unknown past. Meanwhile, when the generator at the hospital is low on gas and supplies in town begin to dwindle, the police must ask disgruntled and panicked townspeople to siphon gas from their cars.

The people of Jericho receive a recorded phone call from Homeland Security telling them to stand by and that help is on the way. The townspeople start to think that life might be returning to normal when the power and phones return. Their hopes are dashed, however, when power surges cause electrical lines to go down and fires to break out all over town, including one at the library that traps a little girl and another that heads for Eric's house. While Jake and Hawkins work together to fight the fires, they discover that neither one of them is who he claims to be. Meanwhile, still desperate for information, the townspeople vigilantly watch the satellite television in Bailey's with the hope that another signal will come through.

An electromagnetic pulse fries everything with a circuit board at 9:02 pm, plunging the town into darkness. Before the power goes out, the citizens of Jericho see Minuteman missiles launched into the sky. Meanwhile, Allison, Hawkins's daughter, starts to question her father's motive for moving their family to Jericho. Not all electronic devices were disabled: Hawkins has a shielded satellite enabled laptop and a shielded basement room. We also learn in this episode that Jake's sudden departure from Jericho had to do with Mitch and Emily's brother, Chris, who was killed. Mitch is suspected of stealing Gail's horses. Mimi comes to stay with Stanley, whose crop is threatened by an infestation; Gracie accuses Stanley of stealing pesticide.

While the town prepares to celebrate Halloween, Gray Anderson returns after traveling outside of town and reports back on the horrific things he saw while he was away. Having witnessed unspeakable terror, Gray is determined to protect the citizens of Jericho from danger. To this end, he wants to interrogate all the new families who came to town before or after the attacks, including Rob Hawkins. Meanwhile, Jake tries to negotiate with Jonah Prowse, who came back to town to retrieve a member of his gang who was arrested for stealing horses and food. Johnston is diagnosed with sepsis, requiring drugs the town no longer has. Before Jake leaves to find medicine for his father, Heather lends him her car and unexpectedly steals a kiss.

Jake and Eric drive to the distant county seat, Rogue River, to find medicine for their father. They find the city evacuated due to a contaminated water table, and the hospital littered with corpses perforated with bullets from automatic weapons. The brothers encounter an employee of defense contractor Ravenwood, who have gone rogue. Also still in the hospital is an ER surgeon, Kenchy Dhuwhalia, who is desperately, and futilely, trying to save the victims of the attack. When Ravenwood returns, Eric and Jake barely escape with Kenchy, but Eric left behind his ID. April tells Gail she's pregnant, but Eric tells Jake he's leaving April for Mary. As acting mayor, Gray interrogates the Hawkins family and finds an apparently authentic FBI badge.

When Eric realizes he left his ID in Rogue River, Jake realizes they need a plan to keep intruders out. Emotions run high when the townspeople meet to discuss ideas for securing their borders. One solution that strikes a nerve with several citizens involves a strategy that would isolate a large part of the town from the other. Jake and Hawkins decide to blow up the bridge to the east of town, even though Stanley's farm, and others are beyond it; Eric, acting as mayor, passionately objects and in the end seeks Jonah's help in fending off the Ravenwood gang. Meanwhile, Emily wakes up on the day she was supposed to get married and imagines how her wedding day would have gone if Roger were still there.

Jake works to train his newly assembled group of Rangers, taking them turkey hunting as Thanksgiving approaches. Though the hunt is a failure, Jake and Stanley find food anyway: an airdrop of food with Chinese writing. A total of eleven fall near the town, some with food, others with medical and other supplies, and one with a generator. Tensions mount as the mayor cautiously refuses to distribute the possibly tainted food to the hungry town; meanwhile Jonah's crew steals the generator after the mayor gets Gracie to cancel her agreement to distribute Jonah's scavenged supplies. In the ensuing confrontation Emily sneaks into Jonah's compound and drives the truck with the generator out, knowing her father won't fire on her.