In the middle of the Pacific Ocean in 1962, at the height of the cold war, the U.S. military experimented with electromagnetic pulses created by detonating high atmosphere nuclear bombs. The project was code named Starfish Prime. The primary objective was to develop the ability to produce an EMP with enough force to knock out an entire nation's communications, rendering a retaliatory attack impossible. The secondary objective, along with its consequences, was deemed too important to national security to ever be released. In 1983 an American B52 Nuclear Bomber goes missing somewhere near the Bering Strait while delivering a secret cargo at the express order of President Ronald Reagan to an unmapped island. Present day, in the Weddell Sea off the coast of Antarctica, a woman wakes up on a cruise ship to discover she's the only person left aboard, despite no apparent fault with the ship. Sam Reilly, already on a rescue mission to Antarctica to save five French scientists, may be the only person standing in the way of the completion of The Cassidy Project.