Totally random [@LetMeDoStuff].

And from separate states across the American west and midwest. They are people who live alone and are middle and lower class citizens. Nurses, mechanics, secretaries, mail carriers, convenience store cashiers, construction workers, etcetera. 

You were seized from your bed in the night by masked men in black, drugged repeatedly, and finally awake in a large concrete cell with five complete strangers that suffer the same fate as you. It's then that a speaker comes on from within the cell and explains everything, and shortly after the "game" begins.