Balthazar Marduk | 19 Jul 2016 3:01 a.m. PST |
The title establishes the setting. How would you guys game out the immediate aftermath of the apocalypse? How would you speculate on the reaction of civilians and the remaining military and police forces in your nation of choice? |
McWong73 | 19 Jul 2016 3:06 a.m. PST |
What sort of apocalypse? Eco? Nuclear? Singularity? Pizza? |
Zargon | 19 Jul 2016 3:48 a.m. PST |
Lots of ammo-full auto-no looking back, and maybe, just maybe you'll survive. Sounds like the game I'd want to play. |
Balthazar Marduk | 19 Jul 2016 4:01 a.m. PST |
McWong73, in my own setting, it's a nanotechnology apocalypse that closely resembles a fatal flu epidemic… But since it's nanites that are adaptive, they can rapidly mutate and guarantee a massive loss of life. Anyone that survives possesses a rare genetic immunity. A similarly small fraction of survivors are bioformed into an extinct alien race. Once that is discovered by what remains of the previous military order… It gets worse. |
robert piepenbrink | 19 Jul 2016 4:51 a.m. PST |
Balthazar, I'd modify that. If all you do is kill off 99% or 99.9% of the population, you'll get a breakdown in civil order, sure--but then all you get is people quarreling about stuff, and plenty of stuff to go around. It will be a brief and half-hearted fight. For a serious post-Apocalypse, you need survivors with an agenda, which is what makes zombies so popular. Try wiping out food instead of people. Or let isolated groups of fanatics survive the nanites. |
Frederick | 19 Jul 2016 5:12 a.m. PST |
As noted it kind of depends on what caused the apocalypse If mass casualties, could be people grouping together to re-establish some sort of civil order and while there might be some fighting it might not be so intense If – as noted astutely – what happens is that you run out of food (or electricity – see the Emberverse series by SM Stirling) then it gets ugly – lots of people but not much food; real ugly real fast |
Balthazar Marduk | 19 Jul 2016 5:13 a.m. PST |
Most of the conflict comes from political squabbling from the old world in this setting. Disparate groups fighting over the huge amount of resources that are left because bad blood and hatred make them unwilling to try and co-exist. And they ignore the monsters until it's too late, of course. Then there's the collective trauma of everyone left having lost everyone and everything that they loved. |
Balthazar Marduk | 19 Jul 2016 5:21 a.m. PST |
And then there's the whole issue of the nanites killing most biological life and/or replacing it with something entirely different than what we need to survive. The only saving grace of humanity is that there's pretty significant, isolated, space infrastructure that has been mostly unaffected by the plague… So, seed and gene banks and such. |
McWong73 | 19 Jul 2016 5:30 a.m. PST |
If it takes out enough of the ecosystem you're screwed no matter what, so unless you want to game The Road I'd just have it wipe out most primates and let the fun commence! |
Balthazar Marduk | 19 Jul 2016 5:57 a.m. PST |
I'm using this campaign setting as a pretext to my science fiction setting… Both are sci-fi but at different levels. Like I said, there's orbital infrastructure and the technology to get people out of there… But the immediate apocalyptic conditions are what I'm interested in. Hope comes later. |
tberry7403 | 19 Jul 2016 6:23 a.m. PST |
"You have to survive the 'short-term' in order to worry about the 'long-term'." |
Garand | 19 Jul 2016 6:35 a.m. PST |
Dunno, but it would probably involve hot rods and mowhawks… Damon. |
Norman D Landings | 19 Jul 2016 10:10 a.m. PST |
I work in medical research – depending on the specific circumstances of "the Event", I'm either one of the initial victims or the privileged few. And no, I didn't cause it, okay? Well…. maybe I caused it. I suppose it's possible. I mean, never say never, right?
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Sir Walter Rlyeh | 19 Jul 2016 1:14 p.m. PST |
Who do the nanites effect? If the prime adult population dies off, so do the skill sets they represents. If children are more apt to be teraformed into aliens, that will have a profound psychological impact. If they effect Urban areas more than rural areas that will skew the survivor abilities pool. Even the starting location would have a big effect. As North Korea goes under do they launch a nuclear strike on a perceived enemy? |
goragrad | 19 Jul 2016 2:01 p.m. PST |
Try William R. Forstchen's 'One Second After.' The premise is a massive EMP attack that takes the US back to the 18th century in technology. He did his doctorate on the history of technology with a military focus. There is a sequel – 'One Year After' as well. |
piper909 | 19 Jul 2016 2:28 p.m. PST |
Lucifer's Hammer by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle is still tops in my book for looking at this scenario in a realistic setting (no zombies, no mutants, simply a multiple comet strike that tears down civilization in an hour). Some people try to get ready for it, others are caught unawares. All struggle to survive the aftermath of the planetary cataclysm. The most fantastical element is the doomsday cult that links up with army survivors and turns to ritual cannibalism. But hey, the third act of the book needed personified baddies! |
Balthazar Marduk | 19 Jul 2016 4:15 p.m. PST |
Sir Walter, that's actually one of the biggest cliches that I'm working on happily… The nanites don't kill pre-pubescent children. The nanites are adaptable to the extreme, but infection naturally lags in more remote regions and takes off in cosmopolitan areas. |
M1Fanboy | 20 Jul 2016 6:13 a.m. PST |
I read somewhere that with apocalyptic events, there is always a "primary kill", aka the event itself, and a "secondary kill", aka what Stephen King called in the Stand, "those Emergency Room blues" as civilization broke down and things like hospitals went with it. |
Balthazar Marduk | 21 Jul 2016 2:25 a.m. PST |
Well, like the others said, there's a glut of left over resources, but no one to use them. Crops would go unplanted, power plants untended, hospitals unmanned and so on… So while there's tons of guns and ammunition, canned food would run dry after awhile and you would have to completely reorganize your life from top to bottom. Learning how to farm from scratch doesn't sound too easy. Nanites completely reordering the physiological nature of the ecosystem doesn't help either. |