Warning: This text contains some profanity since it’s supposed to capture the flavor of both the setting of our game and the tone of Apocalypse World itself. If you’re sensitive about profanity, stop reading here.

This is the “intro” text to our new Apocalypse World campaign, which sums up what we came up during Session #1′s setting creation process. Session reports will follow but it’s helpful to understand what we decided about the basis for our apocalypse, which revolves around an environmental one. The “cell phone pulse” stuff is something I added later (unabashedly borrowed from Stephen King’s story “Cell”) to make more sense out of the decision that people avoid the cities. I also wanted some sort of hostile threat out there aside from other survivors in order to add a bit more of a horror element to the game at times.

My granddad says it all started with that damn experiment at CERN – somethin’ to do with new tree nose travelin’ faster than light or some shit like that. I can’t say how long ago it was seein’ as clocks don’t work like they used to. My granddad once told me it was 50 years ago, but like I said, that don’t mean much now, plus he’s not always right in the head.

Where was I? Oh yeah, CERN. Fuckin’ CERN. I guess they never figured that messin’ with nature like that was goin’ to lead to the end or they wouldn’t have done it I suppose. Anyway, whatever they were doin’, somethin’ went wrong that ended in a big flash but that wasn’t the real problem. The real problem was those damn newtreenos did somethin’ to the Earth, slowed its spinnin’ down, like a brake on a wheel, all of a sudden. The days got longer, temperatures got hotter pretty fast, and the oceans started sloshin’ around, drainin’ back to the poles. Who would have thought that was possible? The Dutch went first. Sparks said he read that nearly the entire population of Holland drown in the first hour. Ten or twenty million maybe. Shit. The rest of the Europeans didn’t fare much better. Supposedly it’s all under water now. Russia too. Siberia was nothin’ but lowland, you know. And Canada. There ain’t no more point singin’ “Oh Canada” ‘cuz it’s all under water. Michigan is now prime beach front real estate. I shit you not. So is Idaho. All gone. Tori says she came from the east coast and New York City ain’t nothin’ but the tops of skyscrapers.

Course there’s more land in places. In fact we got one big land goin’ all the way around. People call it Pangone. I think that’s supposed to be ironic or somethin’.

The landscape now is different: Most of the vegetation is gone. I saw my last tree when I was 10 – we chopped that fucker down and used it to help keep us warm. I wish I could find another. Same goes for the plants. There ain’t a lot out there – some scrub grass, some lichen, a few cactii. Sometimes you see flowers when it rains. ‘course it doesn’t rain but maybe once every couple months. At least not here. I’ve heard there are places where it rains all day, every day. But not here. We mainly get by eatin’ lizards, scavenged food (canned foods are worth more than gold nowadays), and whatever animals we can hunt. Which ain’t a lot. Oh and potatoes. They seem to grow good. Sometimes. 

Course, those that died were maybe the lucky ones. See that CERN thin’ sent out some wacky pulse that fried the brains of other people. Anybody on a cell phone supposedly got fried. Left him hollowed out, but mean. Real mean. They got the basic instincts: eat, shit, fuck, but not much else other than attack anythin’ they can get their hands on. For some reason they leave each other alone though, unless they’re hungry. Hungry ones are just plain scary. Most of the folks that got fried were in the cities so nowadays you stay way from those places. Unless you’re desperate. Like most of us. 

Given all that you’d think mankind would get their shit together and help each other out. You’d think that but you’d be wrong. Instead it’s pretty much every man for himself. Sure some of us band together, that’s natural and smart. There’s a lot of petty warlords out there, and cannibals, and raiders, and religious freaks. They’re all predators, or prey, dependin’ on how desperate you are. Don’t let anyone kid you, we’re all desperate.

Life is hard.

Our game is set in Michigan, north of Detroit, not far from what is now the northern sea’s coast. The landscape is largely desert thanks to the lack of rain and the ~24 hours of daily (days are 36+ hours long now) sunlight the area gets.