In Stephen King’s Cell, the event that turns cell-phone users into zombie-like killers is called the Pulse.
The Pulse is a mysterious signal transmitted through the global cellular phone network. When people use their phones during the event, the signal appears to destroy or radically alter their higher reasoning, transforming them into violent, coordinated beings known as “phoners.” The catastrophe begins suddenly and causes society to collapse almost immediately.
The novel follows Clayton Riddell, an artist who witnesses the event in Boston and then tries to reach his young son in Maine. He travels with Tom McCourt and Alice Maxwell, encountering scattered survivors, increasingly organized groups of phoners, and evidence that the signal may have a technological origin.
The Pulse is sometimes confused with a blackout, a radio broadcast, or a conventional infection, but those descriptions miss its defining feature: it travels through cell phones and changes the people who receive it. Cell was published in 2006, before smartphones became everyday technology, which gives the premise an especially pointed anxiety about constant electronic connectivity.