Hey Scott, and all.  I didn't see this mentioned on the Contagious forum, and I didn't see a search so I might of missed something.

In episode 4 you reveal us to the machine that is in orbit droping little nasties on us.    In order to isolate the story to the Michigan, Indiana, Ohio areas you said that it was in a geostationary orbit which just happened to be over that guys oak tree.   Of which I thought was a fantastic tool to get us to look up at the probe.

However, there are two flaws, a minor one you could over come, but  physics really fucks up your story in a bad way.   You simply can't have a geostationary orbit over Northern Indiana.  This blows this shit out of the premise of why the infections are isolated to this area.

First off the minor error.  A geostationary orbit is way the fuck out there. just a tad more than 50 miles. They are actually just over 26,000 miles up.  The International Space Station orbits at 217 miles and it orbits the earth once every 90 minutes.   In order for the period of the orbt to take 24 hours,  it has to be much, much much higher.  It would be easy to fix that and just change your number in the book.  Also, and I'm not sure about this next part, but "Experts" on internet seem to say that the lowest height that would be considered orbiting is 150km or 93 miles.

Geostationary orbits can only be achieved on the equator.   An orbit has to go around the diameter of the planet,  If you wanted to circle around the planet at 41 degrees north latitude you would need constant thrust to keep you there.  Otherwise you would just spiral down and crash into the earth.  Any orbit that goes over 41 degrees north will also go over 41 degrees south.   And the probe would see most of the planet in it's orbit.   It would need another reason to pick Michigan/Indiana/Ohio as the beach head.

Polar orbits would be most efficient for the probe becase it would be able to map the entire planet every few days and pick the absolute best spot where no people would know until the star destroyers are deployed.

I suppose the probe could have a alien propulsion system that can keep it over Michigan. But it does not seem very efficient.  What is the reaon why you would expend extra energy to stay over Michican, when you could orbit the whole planet, or do a geostationary over the equator for free?

A thought is to put it inside the atmosphere,  make the thing boyant so it can float like a baloon.  However it's going to blow in the jetstream and would also need lots of energy and a particular reason to stay over Michican.  This method would make it less problematic getting the capsules to the surface without them burning up on entry at orbital speeds. 

If the probe is indeed going to be in orbit,  It's orbit is going to take it all over the world unless you move the setting of the whole trilogy to Brazi, Congo, or Indonesia where a geostationary orbit will be parked over some guys palm tree.

All in all it boils down to you need a new reason why this thing likes the midwest so much.