[i]There aren't many alive today who would remember the world as it was over sixty years ago. Many of those who could even claim it are closing on dead. And the stories they told to their sons and their grandsons are just that: stories. It's all become a nostalgic memory, a part of our past as we look to now. Too much has changed to ever make it believable. Even the survivors have begun to doubt their memories. But we cling, oh how we cling to that shimmering thought.

Many born today are not in the mind to remember. They listen to us as we pass through, telling stories of wagons that moved on their own. Machines that flew through the air. They gawk at the weathered rifles we keep on our backs and the sadly mismatched bows slung in our packs. We're teachers to the new world about the old.

Our written collective tells us much. It tells us what we need to know. It says be the year 2016 the nation that was the United States was split in debate. Arguments over economic fears in rising inflation, job loss welled together with infighting over the rights of personal health in a debate over healthcare that many said refused to die. Many had drawn their swords, demanding they set sail across the Great Oceans to bring stability in a land called Eastern Europe as another nation named Russia rears.

But no matter their efforts, the situation slipped and the topics polarized more as two sides tugged and pulled. But ultimately, the end never came by the efforts of man and man alone. Though the elders would say it never helped.

On June 2nd, 2021 the lights went dark. Slipping out and dying not with the bang man waited for. And across the sky colors slid like water. Ghosts of green and blues sucking out the power that had made mankind. And as the sun rose, the night did end for humanity and the light did not return. Society had paralyzed itself. Armies stopped in their tracks. And what came the following morning burned such a mark that there needs not to be any writing to record the Second Suns that bloomed on the horizon that day.

Nuclear missiles, as many old enough that knew that by that name whispered. Atomic fire. Some theorized that it was a last launch of some rival, angry at us that the lights went dead and their cars stopped cold, that ships ceased sailing the Great Ocean and we could no longer talk across the globe. That people died in hospital that day, and the flying machines crashed into the cities killing many more.

Others had said that perhaps it was the dying breath of a system in some corner of the world. That in some cruel loop a launch was made against an enemy that never attacked. But whether it was revenge, or the last of a faulty component, it did not bathe us in fire and turn the Earth black.

Earth, our mother, lives on as we do. But humanity as it was is a legend now. Things are beyond what we knew it.[/i]

[b]Concept – Abstract[/b]

The year is 2081, sixty years after the modern world as we know it came to an abrupt, silent end. In this world, the light-switches went out to never come on again. To many, the end could have come on the tongues of disease, of the fist of nuclear fire. We could have been torn apart by an asteroid. Instead what we got was the most silent of deaths.

Though lost in confusion, June 2nd marked a massive solar storm from the sun that bathed the skies in as much solar radiation needed to create an electrical discharge that burned out many electrical components on Earth. This breath of sunlight effectively bringing an end to normality on the ground as mass-panic ensued just seconds after. Airplanes came crashing down across the world as car motors and ship engines stuttered dead. Computers went dark, ending the stock market. And in Russia, the electrical back-feed raced through the nuclear kill-switch creating a false flag for launch, though not all missiles launched and not all managed to even go anywhere.

And mass accidents and nuclear launched aside, the world ended with humanity as wide-spread as it was. So as to be expected, the abandoned, panicked peoples of the world were forced out into an unfamiliar world and over the next few days added to the problem as riot became the next to come, displacing and killing many as the modern military of the world were left incapable of enforcing order.

And for the people who inhabit this world, this all stories.

Also for those who would remember it (I know who you are), this largely serves as a continuing line of beloved failures as a spiritual successor to a number of Roleplays on other forums, mostly held and conducted by my friends and I.

In that nature, this is designed as an RP to try and get the fullest breadth of possible post-apocalypse tropes while having in its canon a point where humanity's population was unchanged from it. There will be a location (or several) where one may run a modified zombie trope either through socially accepted cannibalism or a mixture of disease and industrial pollution to create a dullened and aggressive zombie-like people. Or just straight-up radiation.

This RP will also be:

-This is a Strat/Sandbox roleplay. I'm using that term to differentiate this roleplay from those strategy roleplays that often emulate strategy video games. The objective of this roleplay is not to build up a nation to be more powerful. Rather, the objective is to describe a society. Emphasis should be placed on characters and cultures rather then weapons and armies.

-This is going to be a "Scavenger World" style apocalypse roleplay. This means that emphasis should be placed on creative use of your surroundings. I would much rather see crossbows made from household items then assault rifles. This is not to say that conventional weapons will be banned, but rather that they are discouraged. 

[b]The Region[/b]

For the interests of centralization and to keep everyone in a small enough area we'll be directly relevant at some point, but big enough still we'll have some breathing room, this RP will be set in the greater Great Lakes region.

[img]http://www.amaps.com/mapstoprint/OUTLINE%20MAPS/Outline%20map%20image%20files/greatlakesot.jpg[/img]

For the full thread I'll clip out the unneeded areas. But the states most directly related are those on the Great Lakes, this includes Canada too.

There will also be areas affected by the nuclear launch. The current nuclear wasteland crater being Chicago, with the spread of its fallout going across southern Michigan and northern Indiana.