[PAH] 50 years After

[Michael Hopcroft]

Assuming there are any survivors at all, what sort of society or living conditions might exist fifty years after a global civilization-shattering catastrophe? And what sort of setting for PAH would that make?

 

Very few would remember the pre-catastrophe days after fifty years; the few who do would be very old in a world with limited if any abilities to deal with the diseases of old age.

 

The question involved with what sort of world would emerge is what sort of stories could be told of it and what sort of campaigns run there? How would society function, if it functioned at all? what would be the highest level of social organization? If mutants still existed, would they have established their own communities? If wars are fought, on what scale and with what sorts of weapons? what are the everyman skills of such a setting? How common or desirable is the ability to read and write?

[Captain Obvious]

Re: [PAH] 50 years After

 

I'd guess it would be all over the technology scale. Some places you'd have people living in caves or crude shelters, scrounging up acorns and grubs, and losing a good chunk of the population every winter, and in other places you'd have steam engines (or better) running factories. I would imagine most places would be at around the medieval level of technology, using muscle power for most applications, and using crop rotation to keep fields productive.

[Bygoneyrs]

Re: [PAH] 50 years After

 

Well first off I guess you will need to define what caused civilization

to crash in the first case. Being a fan of both Gamma World and flesh

eating Zombies let me give you a chain of events leading to PAH

 

 

A corporation discovered a new gene altering drug that would create

'super' humans - thus GST's. The drug increases the human normal

average to above it's current state, in regards to all levels of health,

agility, and brain power. So GST humans are super physically and

mentally in every way to a standard human. Now this drug was hard

to create and being so was quite expensive to obtain. So being in

high demand but existing in small amounts, the price went through

the roof. It was further discovered that anoth big side effect was it

cured or prevented a GST human from getting most diseases.

 

Now in a attempt to calm the masses a 'cheaper' version of the GST

drug was created for the rest of the world by another corporation.

Now their drug didn't make men supermen, but it did have the effect

of making people immune to many of the standard diseases that

plagued mankind. This drug was rushed into service and was given

to many world wide.

 

So even with the Super Drug, many in the world still wanted the GST

instead. Now it further became clear that the GST drug was only being

offerred in mass to the US, Canada, UK, and Japan. Some of the GST

was getting to a small few in other countries, but there was a great

uproar. Many seeing this as a chance to push their politicics, used

terrorist tactics to use some mini-nukes in a few countries. The

setting off of these nukes, caused many countries to declare martial

law. The world was on the edge of war.

 

It in the trouble times, it was discovered that those folks that had

taken the GST were also immune to the effects of radiation and even

if they got sick they eventually recovered. Now those that took the

Super Drug were immune to only low levels of radiation, but did not

survive higher exposer levels. Once again thee was a great outcry

for GST drug. Then the Corp that came up with the Super Drug,

announced a new drug that would have the effect of making one

immune to radiation in much the same way as GST drug does. With

this announcement the drug was pressed in service immediately

world wide.

 

Then overnight 'Apocolyptic Event' happened. The same Corp that

came up with the Super Drug and Anti-Radiation Drug, had a

Bio-Hazard accident and the "Gesturbanie Plague" was released

into the world. Think Dawn of the Dead/Resident Evil "Flesh eating

Zombies".

 

Here is how it spread, Zombie bights normal human they get sick

and die and stay dead. Zombie bightes either human that has taken

either Super Drug alon, or Super Drup and Anti Radiation Drug and

they get sick die and are reborn as "Flesh Eating Zombies". Finally

Zombie bights GST-human, and the human has a nasty wound but

heals completely with no further ill effects.

 

So within 60 days of the outbreak 80% of the worlds population

was dead with another 5% as Zombies. The remaining pop are

mostlty GST or Super/Anti Radiation Humans in USA, Canada, UK

and Japan. Each nation tried to survive as best they could. Now

these plague Zombies have some limitations, like if they don't

eat flesh (human or animal) they will burn out and die for good.

Also damage to their brains will take them out perminately as well.

So within 1 year of the outbreak most Zombies have starved and

burned out to dry husks.

 

Thus within a few years when children are born to the GST's, their

children are pure strain human and have higher physical and mental

abilities, and are immune to all disease...thus super human. Next

the children of the humans that took Super/Anti Radiation shots,

there children were born as either normal humans OR could have

the Mutant Gene(allows for Hero character types).

 

So 50 yrs later, that would be either the 2nd or 3rd generation after

the plague. Thus you have a Post - Apocolyptic campign setting idea.

Now this is only a rough idea I came up with on the fly here at work.

 

Penn

[Lawnmower Boy]

Re: [PAH] 50 years After

 

What happened? People are resilient, so big changes require either a largescale effect or else fantastic changes in the nature of things.

i) Grim and gritty, big smash: cavemen.

ii) Fantastic, big smash: mutant metis priests riding telepathic moose fight zombies!

iii) Grim and gritty, small smash: everyone picks up and rebuilds best they can. There's a lot of horse-rustling, because there weren't many of them around before, and they're really valuable now. The richest family in the region used to run a hayride with Clydesdales, and now have the postal monopoly.

iv) Fantastic, small smash: half-elven werewolves are jacked into the cybernet!

[Markdoc]

Re: [PAH] 50 years After

 

Well, realistically, any kind of big crash is going to hit the developed world pretty hard. Most people live in big population centres and most population centres draw their food and power from all over. Expect a mass exodus with plenty of violence and lots of death.

 

On the other hand, don't expect mutants or the sudden disappearance of technology.

 

A massive nuclear war or a huge plague or even armies of flesh-eating zombies are not going to suddenly destroy the billions of internal combustion engines lying around. They're not terribly complicated, last for decades with a little care and can be jury-rigged to run just about anything. In places where there isn't oil, expect to see biofuel vehicles. I doubt they'd be common, but neither need they be rare. The only place you wouldn't find them was places with no oil no gas and a climate that was too poor to grow much.

 

Likewise, guns and ammo. There's about a brazilian tons of guns and ammo sloshing about the world. Ammo lasts for decades (when I was a kid I was buying and shooting with el cheapo WW2 ammo. You got the occasional misfire, but it was rare). Properly cared for guns last even longer and again, are not that complicated. Look at Pakistan, where smiths turn out perfectly functional, fully automatic weapons with hand tools.

 

And the same applies to books: they can last centuries and reading/writing is easily transmitted - look at central Asia's traveling teachers, who move from village to village carrying their chalk and blackboard (no, really!) teaching kids to read.

 

What won't be so easy to rebuild would be the political and finacial systems that hold the world together. So... I'd say a pretty good idea of what the world would look like 50 years post apocalypse is a range from say, 1950's central america (functioning countries run by a cartel of tough guys with guns - all the way down to Somalia: gangs of toughs fighting it out).

 

cheers, Mark

[Lawnmower Boy]

Re: [PAH] 50 years After

 

Looking at the "small smash" grim and gritty model. I'll assume a spontaneous meltdown of largescale infrastructure. The POL in the pipeline and tanks just goes away.

The main problem: there's not food where most people are (big cities.) People are mobile, and will go where there's food, although big cities are also built over a great deal of agricultural land, much of which is reasonably accessible in North American cities, at least. The earlier the exodus/planting-the-park happens, the more lives will be saved. But it will be a mob scene. Just how violent and unpleasant is left to the people involved, but most survivalists expect to have to defend their self-sufficient nuclear plants/farms in the middle of nowhere from desperate mobs of urban cannibals. That's cause they're dorks, but it doesn't meant they're wrong.

The next stage is rebuilding economies appropriate to a more spartan transportation system. Assuming POL isn't available still, IC will be a luxury, since they burn fuel oil. Steam locomotives are another matter. Modern ones are few and far between, but hardly unknown. On the other hand, I suspect that railroad park enthusiasts could turn them out of LRT chasses pretty durn quickly, if you don't demand too much in the way of drawing power. I'd say that the result would be an 1850s-style economy.

Local road transport links to the restoration of local economic balance. The big change since 1914 has been the collapse of the very large portion of the agricultural economy that produced grass (and other feed) for horses and cattle. There's no way to restore the hundred million-and-more working horses that existed on Earth in 1900 overnight, but cattle stocks would be replenished much more quickly. Here in British Columbia you might see massive cattle drives from the Interior ranching country to the much wetter Coast, where pastures are crying out for hooves. Oxcarts would be a good bet within a few years. Carpenters would really miss their power tools, so that might be an island of rapid reindustrialisation. Water/wind mills/steam engines to generate electricity, electricity to run the ol' Black and Decker.

Guns are not overwhelmingly hard to make, but at least in the short term, modern ammunition is even easier. An industrial chemist could turn out fulminate and cordite without too much trouble (barring the occasional explosion), and that's all that's required for a home reloader. Cartridge shells would be another matter. Hold onto your brass! How much ammunition is another question. Anarchy and tyranny make for a cool adventure hook, but are not nearly as common a mode of social organisation as some people think. Mob justice, random executions, houses burning down in the night and local feuds settled by "unsolved" shootings? That's another matter. 'Course, that kind of thing quickly leads to a countryside organised into two well-armed factions that transfer most of their aggression to court. Look for a county seat where some luckless executive trys to steer a middle course between the factions to get anything done, ending up instead randomly swerving from one faction to another, political shifts being signalled by either elections or "conspiracy" plots accompanied by random executions. See seventeenth century history (any) for details. Once intellectuals get involved, expect a veneer of principles to be laid over the naked competition for positions as county dike warden, road contractor, and sheriff.

[Bygoneyrs]

Re: [PAH] 50 years After

 

Late 1800's early 1900's tech it would be mostly as average when everything settled down,

but there would be some higher tech still around and working too. The Movie called the

Postman comes to mind as a good example of what life might be like. I still like the Flesh

Eating Zombies as a ever present threat to deal with from time to time too.