Harran Outbreak

The viral outbreak that put Harran under quarantine.

The Harran outbreak is the premise of Dying Light: a mysterious viral outbreak in the fictional Middle Eastern city of Harran turns most of the population into hyper-aggressive zombie-like creatures, forcing Harran's Ministry of Public Defence to quarantine parts of the city. The Global Relief Effort assists the survivors still trapped inside by regularly airdropping supplies.

Lore & Background

Within the quarantine the GRE's undercover operative Kyle Crane learns that the Defence Ministry plans to firebomb Harran to eradicate the outbreak, claiming there are no survivors. With the Embers, a survivor group in Old Town, he sets off bombs in an apartment building in the pattern of a sad face to alert the outside world, but a jet's missile obscures the pattern; he then reactivates a radio tower and alerts the world to the survivors, thwarting the plan. According to Dying Light 2, the 2014 outbreak ended with the death of everyone in Harran, and the GRE later developed a vaccine before a mutated strain, THV, escaped one of its labs in 2021.