Raccoon City

Raccoon City is a city depicted in the American Midwest that was destroyed during the T-virus outbreak. .

Location and economy
Raccoon City was an industrialized mid-western American town. The economy of Raccoon City was largely dominated by the Umbrella Corporation. The corporation generously financed most of the city's projects, giving the company a positive image to the people of Raccoon City. Although 40% of the citizens were employed by the international corporation, most were unaware of the company's many illegal activities.

The population of the Raccoon City is said to be over 100,000. The urban area is divided into several districts, including "Uptown," "Downtown," and the more industrialized Cedar District. The suburbs also lie to the north and east of the proper. Other districts include Old Court and in film, Raven's Gate. The city sits on several rivers: the Marble River, the Circular River, and the Aimes River, of which the Marble is the largest.

The nearest town to Raccoon City is Stone-Ville, which is connected to the city via train line. The main thoroughfares in the city include Ennerdale Street, Central Street, Raccoon Street, and Mission Street. For a full list of the streets in Raccoon City, see here.

The city appears to be run by a municipal government. This is suggested by the presence of a Mayor and a City Hall.

History
Originally a small hamlet in the middle of a vast forest, Raccoon City became a heavily industrialised city in the twentieth century, mostly from the Umbrella Corporation's use of local herbs for their medicines.

Raccoon City was governed by Mayor Michael Warren, who was elected in 1987 and served in that position for eleven years. Warren was the engineer responsible for the establishment of the cable car transportation system and also made contributions to the city's electrical system. In his campaign to modernize the city, he made a deal with the Umbrella Corporation, which provided funding for several of Warren's projects, including public utilities, welfare work, and law enforcement. The campaign was known as the "A Bright 21st century for Raccoon City" project, financed by the Umbrella Corporation.

Because of Warren's campaign, the fanciful town gradually transformed from a small mountainous community to an industrialized city. However, the city's expansion and modernization was accompanied by rising crime rates and even terrorist activities. The Raccoon Police Department (RPD) established the Special Tactics And Rescue Service (S.T.A.R.S.) in 1996 as a countermeasure to the wave of crime.

Due to Warren's cooperation with Umbrella, the company became a large part of the people's everyday lives, most of whom were employed by Umbrella. Many stores fronted for the corporation and its influences were a major say in the City Council, truly becoming the main leadership of the city with the mayor as a front man for its ambitions.

The Arklay Mountains incident
A series of bizarre cannibal homicides occurred in the forests of the Arklay Mountains north-west of the city, beginning in May 1998. and continuing through the following months. Victims were mauled by dogs and partially eaten by humans or other unidentified creatures. The Raccoon Police were at a loss to explain or stop the phenomenon, blaming it on cult activity. On July 23, S.T.A.R.S. was deployed to the area to investigate. S.T.A.R.S. Bravo team's helicopter made a forced landing in the area due to mechanical problems, and S.T.A.R.S. Alpha team was sent to rescue them. Of the twelve S.T.A.R.S. members and Raccoon City Police Department backup pilot sent to the Arklay Mountains, only five returned alive. They reported having discovered a mansion where the Umbrella Corporation had been conducting illegal biological weapons experiments with a mutagenic agent called the "tyrant virus". The grounds were crawling with the results of that research, including Zombies. However, the mansion and all evidence had been destroyed, and due to Umbrella's influence on the city and the corrupt Chief of Police Brian Irons, who was under Umbrella's pay-roll, the survivors' claims were dismissed and no formal investigations were undertaken.

t-virus outbreak


Another viral outbreak involving the same virus occurred two months later on September 22, 1998, when Umbrella attempted to retrieve a sample of the powerful G-virus from William Birkin, one of its more reclusive researchers. After he was shot multiple times, Birkin was left mortally injured and, knowing its regenerative capabilities, injected himself with a sample of the G-virus that the Umbrella personnel sent to retrieve anything the virus didn't take. Unfortunately, its mutagenic properties overtook his humanity and transformed him into an unstoppable mutant, killing machine. He destroyed the paramilitary team which had attempted to steal the virus from him, and in the process, vials containing the t-virus were dropped, releasing it into the sewers. The t-virus was then carried by rats throughout the city, leading to a full-scale outbreak. By the 24th of September, the city was in total chaos.

Recognizing an "incident", Umbrella officials called for an evacuation of the city, placing high priorities on key, essential members. By dawn of September 25, U.S. Army units were called in to evacuate citizens and began setting up barricades around the city's perimeter, effectively enforcing a quarantine. The RPD tried and failed to contain the hordes of zombies created by the t-virus, using barricades and heavy force.

Matters were not helped by the actions of Brian Irons, who attempted to trap officers and civilians within the police station, scattered weapons and ammunition around the building and cut off communication to the outside. The police station itself was besieged on September 26. The officers then made a last attempt to destroy the zombies in the streets on September 27, but failed when their road block was overrun by hordes of zombies. The survivors within held off the zombies for days until only three living officers remained, Brian Irons, Officer Marvin Branagh, and an unnamed officer. Umbrella also sent in several Umbrella Biohazard Countermeasure Service (UBCS) platoons for search-and-rescue missions on the 26th and the 27th, which ended disastrously for the survivors. The supervisors of these squads were also secretly tasked with gathering field data about Umbrella's bio-weapons as well as destroying any incriminating evidence. The US Army units, as well as a Special Forces unit deployed to Raccoon City to rescue civilians was also killed by multiple Tyrants and as a result the military did not risk any further search and rescue missions. By September 28, only a handful of U.B.C.S members were left alive, who would help Jill Valentine to escape.

By September 29, nearly everyone in the city had either been killed by the monsters and bio-weapons released from Umbrella's laboratories, or had succumbed to the t-virus and become zombies. The military barricades surrounding the city had begun to fail in some places, allowing unwary visitors such as Leon Kennedy and Claire Redfield to enter the city, and allowing some of the city's few survivors to escape.

Destruction
On the night of September 30, faced with the possibility of the infection escaping the city and causing a nationwide outbreak, the President and Congress of the United States decided to sterilize Raccoon City despite attempts by Umbrella operatives within the government to convince the government to hold off on the strike. The operation, which was codenamed "Mission Code: XX", and called "Bacillus Terminate Operation" in a news report concerning the destruction of the city, consisting of a nuclear missile strike aimed at the city center. The entire area of Raccoon City was obliterated at dawn on October 1 and the death toll was estimated to have exceeded 100,000 people. The President resigned after this event, faced with public outrage at his decision to destroy the city.

What was left of Raccoon City and the surrounding area was searched and categorized thoroughly for any possible survivors and biohazard threats by the U.S. government and Umbrella in early October 1998. By March 1999, the search and categorizing operation ended with no survivors found. But there were small traces of active "t" found. The ruins of Raccoon City and twenty miles around it were declared a possible biohazard threat and became a highly-classified, restricted area that only the U.S. government and Umbrella personnel could enter.

The area that used to be Raccoon City was gated off from the rest of the world, and Umbrella had built a classified research and testing facility. All that is known about this facility is that it as used for experiments and testing and it keeps a close watch for any trespassers or biohazard threats. But as of 2003, when Umbrella collapsed, the U.S. government took over the facility. Now that the complex is run by the U.S. military, it focuses on the close watch duties in the gated and surrounding areas that the Umbrella Corporation once did.

Destruction
See also: Mission Code XX Raccoon City has been destroyed differently throughout the series.

In Resident Evil 3: Nemesis, a single missile is seen detonating near Raccoon City Hall. The blast wipes the city clean with an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) ahead of it.

In Resident Evil Outbreak, three conventional cruise-missiles are seen striking the city. A photograph in the epilogue shows a large, shallow crater dwarfing the other three. This large crater may suggest that the city was destroyed by three cruise missiles AND a nuclear missile.

Resident Evil Outbreak File  shows sixteen air-to-land missiles hitting the city via a computer screen at Heaven's Gate.

Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles shows the Nuclear missile hitting the city, but in other scenes it shows three conventional weapons.

Raccoon City in other media
In the non-canon Resident Evil film series, Raccoon City was a huge metropolis built by the Umbrella Corporation and was used for conducting scientific research and experimentation. The Raccoon City in the films was much larger than in the games, with a population approaching 1 million people and a sprawling city center.

Resident Evil
In the 2002 film Resident Evil, Raccoon City was built by the Umbrella Corporation and staged research in a large top-secret underground facility called The Hive. Most of its 853,200 residents were oblivious to the experiments beneath its streets.

In 2002, the t-virus escaped into the ventilation systems. Then, the giant supercomputer known as The Red Queen shut down The Hive, gassed some of its employees with Halon, dropped the occupied elevators at high speed, and drowned the others. Umbrella later sent in a special elite team of commandos in order to retrieve information about what had happened.

The team entered The Hive through a secret passage located within a mansion. It is later revealed, that the viral outbreak was intentionally done in order to smuggle out the t-virus and sell it on the black market. Just hours later, only two survivors emerged from The Hive, Matt Addison and Alice. Both were seized by Umbrella's scientists and taken to the Raccoon City Hospital for quarantine and experimentation.

Resident Evil: Apocalypse
In the 2004 film Resident Evil: Apocalypse, the Umbrella Corporation sent in a research team to re-open The Hive. The team's insertion point was the main entrance beneath Raccoon City. Shortly after entering The Hive the entire team was slaughtered by T-virus zombies that had been sealed within the complex. With the entrance now open, Umbrella realized that before long, these highly infectious zombies would make their way to the surface and begin an unstoppable amplification of the infection.

Knowing that containing the outbreak would be nearly impossible, an emergency plan to evacuate key Umbrella personnel from the city was activated. Important researchers and administrators were collected by two-man teams and removed from the city. After the completion of this operation, the city was sealed. Raccoon City was considered a loss, and to keep the infection from spreading past the city limits, gates at the entry and egress points of the city were closed. Traffic into and out of the city was halted.

A screening center was established at one such point, Raven's Gate Bridge, the city's primary traffic artery. Manned by medics and heavily armed corporate soldiers, this checkpoint was a minor effort to save some civilians from the rapidly expanding disaster. Uninfected civilians were permitted to pass, and control of the increasingly panicked population was maintained by Raccoon City Police units and Umbrella soldiers. However, once an infected civilian did reach the blockade (and was subsequently killed), orders were given to completely seal the city. The gates were closed and locked down, stranding the helpless civilians still within the city limits.

Mercenary soldiers working for Umbrella attempted, and failed, to turn the tide of the zombie onslaught. Losses were staggering and not effective. With nearly all of the units dead, Umbrella's last-line plan was put into motion.

Shortly before dawn on September 30, 2002, a cruise missile equipped with a thermonuclear warhead was launched into the heart of downtown Raccoon City. Umbrella Corporation public relations spin doctors were able to feed a convincing story to the media, who then reported that the city's destruction was due to a terrible accident at the Raccoon City Nuclear Power Facility nearby. Attempts by some of the survivors to spread the truth about what had really happened, met with failure.

Trivia

 * At the beginning of Resident Evil 2, the player comes across a store named Arukas. Spelled backwards, it reads Sakura, a reference to the Capcom series Street Fighter.
 * In Resident Evil 3: Nemesis, Jill comes across Eagle's Pet Shop. Eagle is a reference to the Street Fighter character. There are also many signs above doors with a royal symbol surrounding the name, CAPCOM.
 * In Umbrella Chronicles, during the Death's Door scenario, a roadsign can be seen as Ada exits the back of the Apple Inn that reads, "Mexico, Guatemala, Cuba" with arrows pointing in respective directions. As Raccoon City takes place in the Midwest, why this sign exists is a mystery.
 * In Resident Evil 3 one can see a sign reading: "Biohazard 4", on the street outside the restaurant.