This is the way the world ends: with a nanosecond of computer error in a Defense Department laboratory and a million casual contacts that form the links in a chain letter of death. And here is the bleak new world of the day after: a world stripped of its institutions and emptied of 99 percent of its people. A world in which a handful of panicky survivors choose sides--or are chosen. A world in which good rides on the frail shoulders of the 108-year-old Mother Abagail--and the worst nightmares of evil are embodied in a man with a lethal smile and unspeakable powers: Randall Flagg, the dark man. In 1978 Stephen King published The Stand Now Stephen King's apocalyptic vision of a world blasted by plague and embroiled in an elemental struggle between good and evil has been restored to its entirety. The Stand For hundreds of thousands of fans who read The StandThe Stand for the first time will discover a triumphant and eerily plausible work of the imagination that takes on the issues that will determine our survival.