Ill Wind by Kevin J Anderson

The largest oil spill in history prompts the oil company to release an untested designer virus to break down the oil spill. This designer virus is an oil eating microbe designed to consume and break down anything made from petrocarbons like oil, petrol... and plastic.

Before long the microbe has adapted to propagate through the air, emptying car tanks and destroying all plastics.

This is a really great premise for a book and the research that as been carried out is spot on, its one of these stories like "the day after tomorrow", meaning it wouldn't take a huge leap for it to really happen. The story also has very plausible characters, and pulls no punches with no fear of a major character dying along the way.

While a little slow to begin with, this novel is one of those very few stories that really do make you sit up and think about the things we take for granted, and how we would cope without any modern convienences like electricity and mass transport.