Operation Bacillus Terminate
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"Operation: Bacillus Terminate" was a fictional United States Air Force military operation carried out in October of 1998 to halt the spread of the T-Virus, in the Sony PlayStation video game, Resident Evil 3: Nemesis.
"Operation: Bacillus Terminate" was the code used by the U.S. Air Force for the launch of a thermonuclear air-to-surface missile at Raccoon City, after an outbreak of the T-Virus virtually wiped out its entire population. Initially, the U.S. Army was deployed to evacuate surviving citizens and quell the outbreak through the use of conventional weaponry. However, the taskforce attempting to accomplish this goal suffered the same fate as the R.P.D.'s "Select Police Force" unit and the Umbrella Corporation's U.B.C.S. division, which were both charged with similar objectives.
Finally, continued incursion was deemed a wasted effort and too greater risk so "Operation: Bacillus Terminate" was proposed as a worst-case-scenario alternative. The mission was personally approved by the U.S. President in a final desperate bid to halt the spread of the T-Virus to the surrounding region, and was successfully executed on the morning of October 1st, 1998.
This event conflicts with the franchise's follow-up titles, Resident Evil: Outbreak and Resident Evil Outbreak: File 2, in which Raccoon City is instead destroyed via the use of a surgical attack designated "Mission Code XX" by a group of twelve conventional warheads. Although the method of destruction differs, the attack is still carried out by the U.S. Air Force, after approval by the President, and still takes place on the morning of October 1st, 1998. Fans of the series have argued as to which method actually took place, with fans of the former arguing that "Operation: Bacillus Terminate" transpired earlier in the series and is therefore the genuine event. Fans of the latter have argued that the leading characters, Jill Valentine, Carlos Oliveira and Barry Burton, would have been killed after their escape from Raccoon City via helicopter, moments before the attack, due to the E.M.P. pulse that is created following the detonation of a nuclear warhead. This pulse would subsequently disable a helicopter's electronics and send it plunging to the ground. However, if "Mission Code XX" was preformed it wouldn't have possibly wiped out the whole infection due to the virus' great resistance and the(reasonably small) radieus of the convential warheads. Furthermore it is depicted that most greater forms of radiation can either destroy, or at least make the T-Virus non-active (usually by further mutation), a state in which it can no more infect new hosts and will soon die due to it's constant exposion to the outside environment (sidenote: tough the T-Virus is able to conduct through air in the first movie, in the games it does not seem to spread through air except for maybe a very short period.) Whether "Mission Code XX" or "Operation: Bacillus Terminate" was used is at this point unclear, though both methods have it's flaws which aren't consistend with the storyline and/or with modern physics (with "Operation: Bacillus Terminate" The helicopter would indeed crash and with "Mission Code XX" the T-Virus wouldn't be completly destroyed) it is however possible that "Mission Code XX" was used and that part of the virus did survive, slowly spreading it's way across the area. This may implicate that the T-Virus may actually return to the Resident Evil series after it's absence in Resident Evil 4, but this has not by any means been confirmed by Capcom and is just a long guess.
Fans of the latter have also argued that ex-Umbrella researchers, Yoko Suzuki and Linda, who managed to escape to the outskirts of Raccoon City moments before its destruction, would have died due to radiation exposure if the attack was indeed nuclear. Due to the fact that the demise of the Umbrella Corporation was entirely the result of the testimonies provided by Yoko and Linda in the Supreme Court, with this event being confirmed in the follow-up title, Resident Evil 4, it would seem apparent that "Mission Code XX" is most likely the canonical event. However fans should also consider Resident Evil as a game of "alternate ends" and should take both into consideration.