The Millennium Group is a fictional secret society featured in the crime thriller television series Millennium, and briefly on The X-Files. Having begun life as a Christian sect at the end of the 1st century AD, the Group grew into a far-reaching network which, as the 3rd millennium approached, presented itself as a private investigative firm liaising with law enforcement organizations. Despite being fraught with internal schisms, the Group tried on several occasions to artificially instigate the end of the world as the year 2000 approached. The Millennium Group's role as an investigative organization was based on the real-life Academy Group, a society of retired law enforcement agents in the United States. The presentation of the Group varied as the series progressed, with its role changing from that of a benevolent investigative group to an antagonistic mystic sect. The Millennium Group has met with negative responses, with its vacillating depiction being a focus of criticism both from critics and from series star Lance Henriksen. Fictional history The Millennium Group first started life as an early Christian sect around the year 100 AD. By the late 10th century, the Group had adopted the ouroboros as its symbol, and the phrase "this is who we are" as a motto. However, around this time schisms within the group began to form as members fought for control of an artifact—the preserved hand of a saint said to be capable of ultimately defeating the devil. Despite these internal rivalries, the group persisted into the 20th century. The Group's modern organization stems from J. Edgar Hoover, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, who began the process of turning the Group's attention to criminal investigation in order to monitor individuals and societal trends. As the 3rd millennium approached, the Group's internal differences began to manifest into two factions—the "Roosters", who believed in a religiously eschatological view of the end of the world, and the "Owls", who believed the world would end with a secular natural disaster. Attempting to instigate the end of the world artificially, the Rooster faction began to develop a lethal virus; in 1998 they released this virus in the Pacific Northwest, killing upwards of seventy people before the outbreak was contained. A year later, a vastly depleted Millennium Group staged one last attempt to trigger the apocalypse, resurrecting deceased members in order to create the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse; when this