The Autophage is a term used to describe the phenomenon within every human's DNA that will eventually change all of humanity into Zombies. This process is unavoidable and will eventually lead to humanity's extinction. The Autophage was discovered in the late 1990s by Reuben Reed. He found that human DNA is structured in such a way that it will abruptly shift and change in structure after several generations to reach a "zero clock state". This flip in DNA rejects the structure of a eukaryotic multicellular organism and replaces it with a virus-like nanoid whose only function is to destroy and burn itself out. The end result is that it "kills" the affected human and transforms them into an aggressive reanimated corpse to act as a vector to spread the shift in DNA.
Research suggested that the countdown to this phenomenon is not precise and that affected populations would be separated by decades. The first populations to have their countdown's reach zero is estimated to be around the year 2160 with an error margin of +/- 12 years. However, this process can be accelerated if a human is infected with a virus that spoofs the DNA into reaching the zero-clock state. The first known instance of this is the Kuru disease in the Papua New Guinea region. This neurological disease endemic was common among the local tribes as it was transmitted through cannibalism. A virus called Pathogen HK was developed by the Consortium by mixing strains of Kuru and Rabies with HIV. The result was a fast-acting virus that activated the Autophage across several islands in the region such as The Banoi Archipelago. Years later, Reuben Reed developed another virus called HK1 to kickstart the Autophage process. He did this in order to find unique individuals known as Numen who retain their humanity once their zero clock state has been activated. This would then allow him to experiment on the Numen to produce a cure.