The Dead Zone Trivia Quiz

Answer: Wheel of Fortune

As a 6-year-old, Johnny Smith once went ice skating. Skating backwards through a hockey game, it was then that he collided with another skater, hitting his head on the ice and blacking out. It was during this fall that he had a vision-- 'the explosion, the acid, don't jump it.' No one understood that he was foreseeing an accident Chuck Spier would have months later when his car battery exploded.

In 1970, Johnny becomes a young teacher at a high school in Cleaves Mills, just outside the city of Orono, Maine. Spending the night at the fair with fellow teacher and girlfriend, Sarah Bracknell, the two end their night with the Wheel of Fortune game, the only thing still open at the end of the evening. It is there that Johnny leverages his instincts, falling into a lucky streak and winning $540. Sarah, falling ill during their time at the fair, asks him to take her home. Though he planned on staying the night, he instead calls a cab. It is the last time they have the chance to speak with one another for years.

Answer: Car accident

When Johnny gets into the front seat of a cab heading out from Sarah's home, he doesn't know that he will be in a life-changing accident. His cab is destroyed when it drives into the path of two drag-racing vehicles.

Johnny's parents, Herb and Vera, get the news that night; Sarah hears about his critical condition in the morning. Johnny is unlikely to wake up at all, having sustained serious head injuries, a very grave subdural hematoma that forces him into a coma.

Around the same time, someone in Castle Rock, Maine kills a local waitress by the name of Alma Frenchette, and she won't be their last victim.

As time passes, Vera Smith descends into religious mania while Sarah struggles to move on. Meeting Sarah at the hospital, Herb continues to write her and even attend her inevitable wedding, in 1973, to Walter Hazlett.

In New Hampshire at this time, a man by the name of Greg Stillson, sitting in his insurance and real estate office, commences a new racket. Also in New Hampshire, a man by the name of Andrew Dohay tries to sell lightning rods.

Answer: Four and a half years

When 1974 rolls around, Sarah finds herself pregnant with her first child, giving birth to him on Halloween. Elsewhere, Vera Smith sells all the furniture in the Smith household in an effort to support religious outlets. Herb gives her one final ultimatum.

At the start of 1975, a fourth body is found; Carol Dunbarger is yet another woman killed by a serial killer.

A couple of weeks after this, on May 17, Johnny awakens from a bad dream, leaving the darkness and returning to the waking world. His time in the coma nearly tops out at five years. When he grabs a nurse by his bedside, he finds he knows the details of her life. He undergoes a battery of tests, finding that certain innocuous images are blocked as though they're in little dead zones. His neurologist believes that it may have something to do with the way his brain healed after an earlier trauma in his life. It's then that he sees his neurologist's history...and then his mother's life through a photograph.

Answer: In her luggage

Things changed when Johnny slept. As surgeries are held to repair Johnny's body, his neurologist, Sam Weizak, suggests that the word of his alleged 'second sight' will almost certainly leak out to the press. The visions don't stop, however. When Sarah finally visits, Johnny touches her and sees everything, indicating to her that she lost her wedding ring, misplacing it in her luggage on her honeymoon in Montreal. Sure enough, she finds it there, stowed away in the attic.

Vera's attitude doesn't change and she stops taking her new medicine. When Johnny touches her, he gets the sense that she won't last much longer, likely dying of a stroke by Christmas. He does all he can to urge his father to convince her of their importance.

At the same time, Johnny is invited back to work at the high school, albeit in the second semester. He also happens to be courting a potential book deal based on his experiences. These bright spots fall by the wayside, however, when he comes into contact with his physical therapist, Eileen, determining that she left the burner on on her stove. When they call the fire department, sure enough her house is nearly ready to burst into flames.

Answer: 'Inside Views'

After the fire, reporters start to show up, brought in by rumours spread by the hospital's nursing staff. One of the reporters, skeptical of Johnny's abilities, forces him to touch a particular family heirloom to prove his mettle and, as could be expected, Johnny finds that he can understand many hidden parts of the man's life. The instance is caught on camera and broadcast on the news, and that's why Vera has her inevitable stroke. Sam Weizak drives Johnny across the state to his mother's hospital and she dies that night, telling him to do the duty God bestowed upon him.

By October, Johnny lives back with his father in Maine. Sarah plans to visit him for the first time out of the hospital, but in the meantime, a reporter from the tabloid 'Inside Views' offers him a job-- one he promptly refuses on account of his interest in keeping his new abilities out of the limelight.

Answer: Castle Rock

While Johnny stays with his father, Sarah brings Denny by for a visit and they make good on the date that they would have had if Johnny had not been in the accident. Unfortunately for both of them, it's as far as their relationship would go; Johnny wouldn't see her again for another few years.

By November, 'Inside Views' decries Johnny as a hoax in their November issue. Nonetheless, he's contacted by Castle Rock's Sheriff Bannerman (on a recommendation from Sam Weizak). The Castle Rock Strangler has claimed his sixth victim, this time a nine year old girl, and he has nowhere else to turn for answers.

Greg Stillson, now the mayor of a New Hampshire town, harasses a college kid at a police station. With his political career snowballing he plans on running for the House of Representatives within a year and he strong-arms a local banker into running his campaign, even if it takes blackmail to convince him.

Answer: A cop

Sheriff Bannerman calls upon Johnny as a last-ditch solution, bringing him to a local diner and outlining the facts of the case. There seems to be no trace of the killer save for a cigarette pack left at the most recent crime scene with no markings or DNA. When they head off to the town office building so that Johnny can investigate the evidence, the pack proves to be a dead end altogether.

What does help, however, is a visit to the commons where the Castle Rock Strangler committed their last kill, and it's there that Johnny is able to see the whole scene with vivid intensity, identifying the killer as local policeman Frank Dodd. He and Bannerman head to Dodd's house to find that they've arrived too late; Frank has committed suicide in his bathroom, leaving a confession with his body and providing closure to the case.

All of these activities lead Johnny to head into the hospital for further tests, but the notoriety of the case and his involvement in it seem to be the cause of the subsequent loss of his teaching job, previously thought to be a secure deal. He vows to quit doing the psychic stuff altogether.

Answer: Nuclear war

In February 1976, Johnny moves out of Maine and out to New Hampshire looking for work, eventually scoring a tutoring job for a seventeen-year-old rich kid named Chuck Chatsworth, who struggles with a reading problem.

A lot seems to be happening in the state at the same time. with an election looming, Greg Stillson's men threaten anyone who acts against his political plans. Johnny gets a snap feeling when he shakes hands with Jimmy Carter, recognizing that the man will become President. On the flip side of this, the New Hampshire elections also prove to be aberrant with Stillson's platform being run on virtual chaos. Johnny ends up in the town of Trimbull for a rally and he shakes Stillson's hand to foresee an apocalyptic future in which the man wins the presidency and leads the way to nuclear thermonuclear war. He's attacked by Stillson's men until he blacks out.

Answer: Lightning strike

Stillson ends up winning the election in New Hampshire and Johnny comes to realize that the situation is more dire than anticipated. He becomes a Stillsonophile while the world continues around him. While his father pops the question to a new woman, Sarah finds herself pregnant with a second child. Johnny, meanwhile, starts asking people what they would do if they had the ability to go back in time to kill Hitler.

Towards the end of the school year, Chuck's graduating class expects to go to a party at Cathy's Steakhouse but when Johnny touches Chuck and sees the future, he warns the boy to stay away from the building; he believes it will set on fire, getting struck by lightning and killing everyone inside. Sure enough, the building does go up in flames but Johnny's warning saves many of the kids who would have been inside.

The event leads Johnny to leave New Hampshire altogether. Chuck's father pays off the remaining medical bills as others try to contact him. Weizak recommends, via letters, that Johnny see a doctor. Stillson, meanwhile, continues to rise in popularity.

Answer: No

Greg Stillson is re-elected and creates a problematic, new political party called America Now and Johnny knows he needs to do something about the situation. Time starts to run out quickly for more reasons than one. The day after Christmas, Johnny buys a gun; the next day it's an attache case. He takes a train from Phoenix to New York City and then from Port Authority to New Hampshire, staking out the town of Jackson and hiding in the town hall building overnight, just in time for a Stillson rally.

When Stillson finally takes to the podium the next morning, Johnny takes his chance and fires his gun, missing several times. He's shot and killed by Stillson's men, but in the chaos, Stillson grabs a child from the audience, using them as a shield while a photographer captures the moment. It turns out to be enough to force Stillson to plummet in the polls. In his dying moments, Johnny grabs Stillson and sees that his efforts have succeeded.

In a letter to his father and throughout the subsequent trial, it's clear that something changed in Arizona, where Johnny ended up after travelling through the States. On Sam Weizak's request, Johnny saw the neurologist and discovered a terminal brain tumour in his parietal lobe.