The film opens with white words on a black screen: This is the way the world ends/This is the way the world ends/This is the way the world ends/Not with a bang but a whimper. (These four lines are the final stanza from T.S. Eliot's poem "The Hollow Men".)
In some TV network versions, 'The Plague' opens with a different text on a black screen of a passage from the Bible. 'Revelations 6:8; When the Lamb broke open the fourth seal, I looked and there was a pale-colored horse. It's rider's name was Death and the horse's name was Hades. They were given authority over one fourth of the earth to kill by means of war, famine, disease and wild animals.'