The Evacuation Card — Josh's Smallpox Confession
Plot Beats
The narrative micro-steps within this event
Josh reveals his preoccupation with briefing the President on a smallpox article, showcasing his professional anxiety.
Josh confesses receiving an N.S.C. evacuation card, exposing his fear of separation and institutional exclusion.
Josh fixates on the beauty of Schubert's 'Ave Maria', using music as an emotional anchor amidst his anxiety.
Josh delivers a chilling monologue about smallpox's apocalyptic potential, blending professional insight with personal terror.
Who Was There
Characters present in this moment
Concerned and empathetic; lightly amused at first but increasingly serious and intent on calming Josh and restoring communal routine.
Enters with a glass of wine, knocks at the door when unanswered, tries to reinsert normalcy—offering chili, deflecting the worst of Josh's panic with pragmatic reassurance, and eventually exits after urging him to join the group and the President. She listens, briefly counters, and functions as a social tether.
- • To bring Josh back into the group and out of isolation (get him to the chili and the President).
- • To defuse panic and reframe the problem in solvable, practical terms.
- • To preserve morale and keep staff functioning rather than falling into fear.
- • Social cohesion and routine matter in crises; people need to stay together.
- • Practical solutions (making more vaccine, prioritizing communications) will mitigate panic.
- • Her role is to protect the administration's ability to communicate and to steady colleagues emotionally.
Tense and grief-tinged; externally controlled but internally panicked and enraged at the institutional preference that isolates him from friends.
Sitting alone in his office with Schubert playing, Josh reveals that an N.S.C. staffer gave him an evacuation card, turns up the boom box, and delivers a sustained, technical, and terrified monologue about smallpox, the scarcity of vaccine, and the moral consequence of who will be saved. He ends the exchange staring at the closed door.
- • To externalize and make concrete his private fear so it can be acknowledged.
- • To warn and inform immediate colleagues about the practical and moral stakes of the smallpox threat and the evacuation priority.
- • To test the loyalty of his friends by forcing the truth into their awareness.
- • Institutions will protect certain people and exclude others; survival decisions are being quietly made.
- • Biological threats (smallpox) are the new existential danger—not Cold War hotlines—and require urgent, honest preparation.
- • Silence about these choices is morally corrosive and unacceptable.
Objects Involved
Significant items in this scene
Zoey Bartlet's chili is referenced as the social lure C.J. uses to pull Josh back into communal life; it functions narratively as the ordinary, domestic counterweight to Josh's apocalyptic urgency.
The portable boom box plays Schubert's 'Ave Maria' and is physically manipulated by Josh (he turns up the volume). It creates the sonic architecture that amplifies his emotional state and provides the pivotal sensory cue that punctuates his monologue.
C.J.'s glass of wine is carried into the office as a comfort object and social olive branch. It signals an attempt to normalize the night—an invitation to communal warmth—contrasting with Josh's clinical panic about catastrophe.
The N.S.C. evacuation card is the concrete prop Josh references as the catalyst for his breakdown. He reads its implications aloud — plane, bunker, prioritized evacuation — and uses it to prove institutional exclusion and trigger his moral alarm about smallpox and who will be saved.
Location Details
Places and their significance in this event
New York City is invoked as the large-scale arena for Josh's hypothetical smallpox disaster; it amplifies scale, making the stakes global and political rather than local and clinical.
The evacuation plane, named on the N.S.C. card, is invoked as the mobile refuge for prioritized officials and juxtaposed against the vast population left behind; it is an emblem of institutional extraction.
Times Square Station is evoked in Josh's monologue as the imagined locus of the smallpox release — the public microcosm where a single broken test tube becomes a citywide contagion and moral catastrophe.
The N.S.C. evacuation bunker is referenced from the card as the other side of the evacuation protocol — a sealed, prioritized refuge that concretely demonstrates who will be protected and who will be left outside its walls.
Josh's office is the intimate, late-night chamber where the emotional confrontation occurs. It serves as a private refuge and confessional, allowing Josh to disclose the card and the nightmare scenario; the closed door and quiet magnify his isolation and moral urgency.
Narrative Connections
How this event relates to others in the story
"C.J. introduces the smallpox article to Josh, which later fuels his apocalyptic monologue."
"C.J. introduces the smallpox article to Josh, which later fuels his apocalyptic monologue."
"Josh’s receipt of the N.S.C. card leads directly to his confession of it to C.J."
"Josh’s receipt of the N.S.C. card leads directly to his confession of it to C.J."
"Josh’s receipt of the N.S.C. card leads directly to his confession of it to C.J."
"Josh’s initial compartmentalization mirrors his unresolved tension."
"Josh’s initial compartmentalization mirrors his unresolved tension."
"Josh’s initial compartmentalization mirrors his unresolved tension."
"C.J.’s attempt to ground Josh with chili parallels the communal affirmation he later seeks."
"C.J.’s attempt to ground Josh with chili parallels the communal affirmation he later seeks."
Key Dialogue
"JOSH: C.J., an N.S.C. staffer gave me a card with instructions on it for what I'm supposed to do in the event of a nuclear attack. They want me up in the plane or down on a bunker. They don't want you... or Sam, or Toby, for that matter. I didn't want to be friends with you and have you not know."
"JOSH: It's gonna be this. It's gonna be something like this. Smallpox has been gone for 50 years. No one has an acquired immunity. Flies through the air. You get it... you carry a ten foot cloud around with you. One in three people die. If 100 people in New York City got it, you'd have to encircle them with 100 million vaccinated people to contain it. Do you know how many doses of smallpox vaccines exist in the country? Seven. If 100 people in New York City get it, there's gonna be a global medical emergency that's gonna make HIV look like cold and flu season. That's how it's gonna be, a little test tube with a-a rubber cap that's deteriorating... A guy steps out of Times Square Station. Pshht... Smashes it on the sidewalk... There is a world war right there."
"C.J.: Come have chili. The President's asking for you."