Congress was not able to come up with a deal to approve a budget for federal agencies, leading the U.S. government to shut down. Much of the staff of U.S. science and environmental agencies could be hit with furloughs, with possible lost pay.

Would government research continue? How would clinical trials be treated? What happens to Superfund? Here's a quick guide to how science may be affected by a possible shutdown, gleaned from U.S. government contingency plans, recent media reports, and archived stories from the 2013 shutdown.

(Opinion: Shutting down the government undercuts the basic narrative of America.)

The CDC would maintain some of its critical staffing, and some of its programs—such as PEPFAR, its global anti-AIDS initiative—receive funding outside