Miracle Day

This article is about the in-universe event. "Miracle Day" is also the umbrella title for series 4 of Torchwood.

"Miracle Day" was the name given to the day in the early 21st century on which humans on Earth stopped dying.

Without any immediately obvious cause, awareness of the event took time to develop. One of the earliest survivals was Oswald Danes, a convicted prisoner in the United States about to be executed; although his lethal injection was carried out flawlessly, the only effect was intense but temporary pain from the drugs. A legal loophoe meant he was released. As hours passed, doctors around the planet began to realise that deaths of patients under their care (such as Rex Matheson, who was impaled by a metal pole) had abruptly dropped to zero. Age, disease, trauma, and all other normally fatal conditions continued to hurt and debilitate their victims, but without killing them. News media and the general public also began to realise the change. Eventually, the name of the event emerged on the back of the word "miracle," which began to trend across social networking sites. Individuals and societies started to react to Miracle Day in myriad ways:

• Fighting in Somalia ceased, as the combatants could no longer stand to fight enemies that would not die.
• The North Korean regime viewed its population as immortal soldiers and began to mobilise troops along its border with South Korea.
• In Cardiff, friends and family of those who should have died held vigils outside a city hospital.
• An assassin who attempted to suicide bomb the archives in an attempt to eliminate remaining Torchwood records was virtually physically destroyed, his entire body having been almost totally pulverised, yet he apparently retained consciousness even after his head was detached from the rest of his body.
• Operating under the 456 protocols, the Central Intelligence Agency detained former members of Torchwood on British soil for rendition to the US.
• Gwen Cooper and her family emerged from protective isolation to visit Gwen's stricken but still living father in Cardiff.
• Jack Harkness, an immortal human, became vulnerable to injury and death.

Without death, the human population began to swell rapidly, increasing pressure on resources and on the species itself. It was estimated that within four months, Miracle Day would cause a complete environmental and social collapse. (TW: The New World)