It's the mid-1960s, a strange parasite infestation have spread around the planet like wildfire, overtaking entire cities and collapsing governments by sheer overwhelming civilian panic. The violent, raging mutagen nearly wiped out the entire human population, turning men and animals into horrifying abominations, leaving only few small nucleuses of elites hiding in heavily fortified bunkers from the monstrosities that dominate the ground above.
In an act of desperation, the US and the USSR collaborated to work on eliminating this parasitic threat by freezing the entire planet over; Operation White Skies was conceived. Enormous quantities of highly reflective nanoparticles was mass produced, and dispersed by bombers and strato-burst ICBMs.
One cosmonaut was tasked with overseeing the operation on the Vostok-2 spacecraft, tasked with transmitting images and data to ground control, unfortunately, as the particles saturate the stratosphere, communication was blocked off. Unable to contact anyone for a specific landing corridor and rescue team, the cosmonaut had no choice but to calculate his own descent into the frozen taiga landscape.
Landing was rough, but there was still one important question in mind, did we succeed? Did the parasites die off?
He is alone, no one is coming to help him. The satellite radio won't work, the night is coming, the temperature is falling and he swore he caught a glimpse of one of those "things" peeking from the treelines.
The fight isn't over, the cosmonaut unpacks his survival gear and with Makarov in hand, presses on towards the nearest city.