The paths of two travellers, Jeremiah and Kurdy, converge on the way to a town named Clarefield, where they become involved with a man who claims to come from the end of the world.

Fifteen years ago, a disease now known as the Big Death killed six billion people within six months. It only killed anyone above the age of puberty. It spread so fast that it ironically wiped itself out by killing everyone who carried it. Now people live in small towns or travel from place to place, bartering different supplies. One such town is Clarefield.

Jeremiah tells Theo that he's seen more raiding parties recently, ranging further afield to find supplies; and that skinheads have almost taken over Montana, and are making moves around Clarefield. We see one such group, who blame the Big Death on "inferior breeds". Big cities such as Chicago, New York and Detroit are pretty deserted. More Southern states such as Florida, Louisiana and North Carolina and returning to farming methods.

Simon comes from "Thunder Mountain", the nickname given to the Cheyenne Mountain Facility in Colorado. Built to survive a nuclear attack, a group have been living there since the Big Death.

Jeremiah writes letters to his father to "keep you alive in my words", which he then burns.

Judging by a flashback, Jeremiah's father's name is Devon. He and Jeremiah's mother left, saying "there's one last plane leaving for Valhalla Sector in an hour", promising they would return before then to collect Jeremiah and his brother. They never came back. Jeremiah is still trying to find Valhalla Sector, but Theo claims never to have heard of it. She herself is trying to find "the End of the World", a place where they still have electricity and weapons. Kurdy's searching for something too, but he isn't sure what; but when he meets Elizabeth, he thinks he's found it. He suggests that he and Jeremiah team up, and they agree to Markus' proposal to continue Simon's work.

Kurdy says he is too young to remember the Big Death. He claimed that he doesn't consider other people's problems to be his responsibility, but he does have something of a conscience, debating with himself whether to steal Jeremiah's fish while he sleeps; and when he sees Jeremiah get captured, he says it's not his problem but comes up with a rescue plan anyway. He's pragmatic, but not an idealist, unlike Jeremiah, who has a sense of fairness, reminding Theo of the Clarefield market slogan "one thing for another", and criticising Markus for keeping Thunder Mountain closed down while people are dying outside.

Clarefield is run by a woman named Theo, who has a deputy called Sam. She also has some intelligent individuals working for her, including one called Keith, who are trying to rediscover technology. They succeed in generating a small amount of electricity during this episode. She uses the local school as a base.

Jeremiah's younger brother was killed.

Simon tries to convince Jeremiah to join him. He says he is with a group who "haven't given up on the dream of making something that's... something that's better than this." Jeremiah initially says he isn't interested. Shortly after, Simon meets with a group of hooded figures who show him something that shocks him but we don't see what. Simon also has a Rover, which he tries to hide, but Theo's group find it and take Simon prisoner. It transpires that Simon is from a place called Thunder Mountain. His job was to investigate the Big Death - where it came from, what it was, and whether it might be returning. He is shot and fatally wounded when they try to escape, and the last thing he does is tell Jeremiah to warn Thunder Mountain what he has discovered - that the Big Death may be returning. He kept a journal which Markus gives to Jeremiah, though there is no entry for the meeting with the hooded figures. His journal does contain a reference to Valhalla Sector, though. Markus says Simon was looking into that when he died, and so the journal may give Jeremiah a lead to find the place.

A man named Markus Alexander is in charge of Thunder Mountain. He spoke with Simon after Simon made contact with Jeremiah. Although they have about half a dozen "search teams" on the road gathering information, Markus has refused to use Thunder Mountain's resources to help the outside world on the grounds that if knowledge about the place was widespread it would soon be compromised. However, Jeremiah persuades him to consider a more proactive approach, and together they rescue a group of prisoners from a nearby skinhead group.

Simon recommended Lee Chen as a recruit for Thunder Mountain.

Sarah, a Thunder Mountain resident, is involved with newcomer integration and orientation.

Elizabeth Munro was Simon's girlfriend - they had been seeing each other for around a year. Simon used to bring her back glass ornaments. Kurdy found one such ornament, a glass swan, in the Rover. He promises to find her a glass cat.

Three times we see a mysterious long-haired man. At first he offers a warning / blessing to Jeremiah before disappearing suddenly. We briefly glimpse him in the Clarefield tavern looking concerned; and finally he informs somebody using a radio that Jeremiah and Kurdy are on their way, as they drive the Rover away from Thunder Mountain at the end of the episode.

"The thunder will change you forever - but everyone you love will fall at the end of the world", says the mysterious long-haired man at the start of the story.

"I would be so completely, supremely, eternally fucked that I don't even think there's a word for that level of fuckosity!" - Kurdy

Among several great Theo moments are "Let me show you the world according to Theo!" and "Cheerleaders for everybody!"

When Theo asks Simon, "Where is the End of the World?" his cryptic first reply is "closer than you think".

Simon's grim message for Thunder Mountain: "It's coming again."

Kurdy: "I'm not going in there with you. I'm going in with what's gonna be my car after whatever's in there eats your ass."

Markus' speech sums up the theme of the series: "Question is, what comes next? For fifteen years, we've been living off the scraps of the old world. Now those scraps are almost gone. Playtime's over. Do we let the world keep falling apart or start building a new world out of the ashes of the old one? But the shape that world takes will be determined either by us in here or by the monsters out there."

Just as importantly, in a later speech to Jeremiah and Kurdy, he defines the format of the season: "Go back outside. Find out who our potential friends and enemies are. Look for resources we could use in the future. Reconstruct Simon's list of contacts. Find out what you can about the Big Death - so we can prepare for the worst if necessary. At the end of the day - try to come home alive." Jeremiah agrees, on one condition: "While we're out there you let me look for places where we can use your resources here to start helping people pick themselves back up again."

In real life, the Cheyenne Mountain Complex is near Colorado Springs, El Paso County, Colorado. It was built into Cheyenne Mountain, which is 7100 feet above sea level, beginning in May 1961. NORAD, mentioned by Jeremiah, was set up there in April 1966.

CMC is run by the US Air Force. The NORAD Operations Center is designed for tracking nuclear missiles. CMC is also home to SPADOC, the Space Defence Operations Center, which tracks some 8500 items orbiting the Earth to ensure a six-mile "safety box" around shuttles.

The main entrance is through a tunnel with two doors three-foot thick which weigh 25 tons. The image above shows the entrance as depicted on Jeremiah; this photo, taken from the Federation of American Scientists website, shows the entrance to the real place. Just for completeness sake, here's the entrance as seen on the South Park episode "Trapper Keeper". ;-)

Inside, there are fifteen buildings in the 4½ acres of space. Each is a rectangular box made from steel, varying in size from a small room to the size of a small house. The boxes are suspended on over thirteen hundred springs, each weighing a thousand pounds, designed to absorb major disturbances such as a nuclear explosion. 115 thousand rock bolts, ranging in length from 6 to 32 feet, prevent implosion.

Twelve hundred people work there. Military staff, drawn from both the US and Canadian military, work in the Space Control Center, the Missile Warning Center, the Battle Management Center and the Combined Command Center.

In the event of lock-down, there are enough stored resources for 800 people to live for a month with enough food, water (4.5 gallons), air and power.

Interesting links for the Cheyenne Mountain Complex:

• Cheyenne Mountain, from Wikipedia
• Cheyenne Mountain Complex (Federation of American Scientists). Contains links to interesting articles such as "Going Ballistic!" by Phil Patton and "Mountain Nerve Center Remains Relevant to War-fighting" by Douglas J Gillert.
• Cheyenne Mountain Operations Center Website
• CNN Cold War. Has some interesting videos.

In a flashback sequence, Jeremiah's mother says "ten more deaths in New Delhi and three this morning in Paris." This seems to be near the start of the outbreak.

The Clarefield tavern is full of theories concerning the Big Death. One is that the adults are not really dead, merely in a very deep sleep, and "every night, all over Chicago, the dead come back". Another is that "there are armies building up on the east coast of China, getting ready to move in". Perhaps the most plausible is that "somebody fucked up. Something got loose that wasn't meant to get loose. Somebody grew this thing in a lab, and he felt real proud of himself and he thought how smart he was, and how he was gonna get a raise, and be real important. Only one day, that thing in the lab got bigger than he was, and it bit him, and it escaped, out into the world. And the dying started." Another claim is that the Government's coming back.

Markus' name would appear to be spelt with a 'k', though as we only see it written on a child's drawing, it could be a mis-spelling.

Although not named during the episode, the closing titles indicate the long-haired prophet is named Ezekiel.

As you can see, this guide lists "The Long Road" as two episodes, but discusses it as a single story. This is because two versions exist of the pilot. It has been shown as a two-part story in, for example, the UK, where each episode had the standard Season One style of opening and closing credit sequences. The original US broadcast, however, was as a single, 90 minute TV movie. In this version, there is no opening title sequence except for a brief appearance of the title Jeremiah near the start, and the closing theme is the song used for the opening theme of the second season of Jeremiah. In the two-part version, the first episode ends on Jeremiah's reaction to Simon's admission that the End of the World is real; the first new scene of Part Two sees Kurdy in the Clarefield Tavern with his stick of rock. Many thanks to Abyss forum member "Belbo" for help with tracking down these differences.

Additional - added 4 March 2006:

The region 1 DVD release contains a fifteen minute reel of scenes shot for the episode but not included or trimmed in the broadcast edit. Details about the background of the show revealed in these sequences include Jeremiah's mother saying there was a suspected case of the Big Death in New York in addition to the cases in New Delhi and Paris; one of the hooded figures indicating to Simon that whatever was under the blanket, it was the only one they'd found; Sarah saying that around 2000 people live in Thunder Mountain and that she was brought in when she was a young girl; and that she is Markus' liaison with the "advisory council", composed of eight elected members. Of course, as these scenes where never broadcast, later episodes are not bound to follow these details. In addition, the sheet of paper we briefly see Markus looking at turns out to belong to either Jeremiah or Kurdy; it's a copy of "Ulysses" by Alfred Lord Tennyson. This poem is obviously important to Straczynski as it was also used in Babylon 5. The poem can be read here.

The region 1 DVD release also contains a commentary track with Luke Perry and Malcolm Jamal-Warner for this episode.

Markus says Matthew (Simon's partner) died by his side. How does he know this? Presumably Jeremiah told him and Markus believed him because the rest of his story fitted what Markus already knew.

Thunder Mountain is built into the side of a mountain and was designed to resist nuclear attack - why are they so concerned about anyone outside knowing about them? Arguably it's infiltration they most fear, and they are still vulnerable to a frontal attack by anyone who can get hold of a keycard to open the door, as Jeremiah and Kurdy did.

Although the momentum dips a little about two-thirds through, this stands up to re-watching very well. Most of the key characters and concepts of the first season are introduced with economy and the exposition is generally subtle. Luke Perry gives us a commendably dry Jeremiah, but the acting honours go to Kim Hawthorne, who effortlessly brings out Theo's curious mix of intimidation, charm and occasional hysteria. I might have been tempted to hold Ezekiel back for an episode or two - cryptic messages and mysterious vanishings can seem pretentious to a casual viewer - but the feel of the show is great: no compromises on violence, language and sexual content; the camera work combines tight close-ups allowing for nuanced performances with unsettling hand-held work; and Tim Truman's haunting, folkish score.