Riffing on Gamma World
Feb 5, 2022 13:30:54 GMT -5
The Semi-Retired Gamer, hengest, and 1 more like this
Post by True Black Raven on Feb 5, 2022 13:30:54 GMT -5
"The pockets of humanity that have survived are few, scattered throughout a world where a moment's lack of caution may mean instant and painful death." The world is described as "a near world-wide wilderness".
Here is my idea.
1. Our current bug was a biological weapon released deliberately by that big red country with assistance from hundreds of traitors in our country, it was engineered to affect non-big red country people worse or so they thought and so it seemed. And if they lost 40-50 million, they have plenty more, so Big Leader did not care. But this was the test run. The big thing here was the collection of lots of DNA samples from around the world to see how different peoples responded to the bug.
2. The second release was the real attack with a 99.99% kill rate around the world, but due to a mistake there was also 99.999% kill rate throughout the big red country and 99.9999% in the cities of the big red country so it back fired in a big way. The second bug was more contagious than measles, also airborne and was a combination of the worse viruses known to man. It was supposed to be engineered to ignore the most pure blooded people of the big red country, but that was a major failure.
3. Electricity, water and other service began to fail within days. As they were not cared for most nuclear reactors went the way of Chernobyl but many were worse. Chemical plants of all kinds suffered from explosions and fires spreading all kinds of pollutants around. Fire raged everywhere. Then the earthquakes hit and pipelines ruptured pouring oil onto the land and into streams and rivers. Clouds of natural gas and propane flowed into the air until they reached an ignition source resulting in massive BLEVE explosions and fires.
4. The population was reduced to about 700,000 spread around the world, survivors could search for quite a while before finding anyone else.
5. Two main groups survived initially of those who seemed to have some degree of natural immunity. Those who had access to abundant existing food stores and those who continued farming as they always had with pre-industrial farming techniques, although animal powered machinery existed in some areas and an effort was made to store and protect the parts and machines. Others used the more primitive methods they were using before the disaster.
6. About 25% of the survivors suffered genetic damage from radiation and chemicals and so mutants where born. Gradually the pure-blooded and the mutants separated into different communities and by the time of the present (300 years after the disaster) these two groups were at war. The mutant groups were growing because they had larger families that matured slightly faster and because they could eat rougher food. Things are going to get spicy!
