Post-Apoc Thought (RPG not Futurism)

Artwork by Michael Hartlieb for Glow.

So Putin drops an atomic bomb on Istanbul claiming self defense. I mean "the West" was just like sending ships into obviously Russian waters supporting a NATO-founded country called Ukraine. The Autocrat is defending the "Western values" of the Eastern Orthodox Church after all. Something about growing a beard and being stupid, but who really wants to explain it to willfully ignorant folks. The real world goes mad, and most of western Russia becomes a-glow after western missiles respond. A lot of the US gets hit by one out of every 1,148 Russian missile attacks. Sadly, most American-born Russian apologists won't actually be living in the parts stricken while they jerk off to what they want to be Ragnarok. They will strive to be the leaders of tomorrow in the new world of IT SUCKS hopefully after a shower. 

 Just to let you know all of our nuclear power plants in the world will not exactly explode without constant intelligent, whether it is human or machine, maintenance. They will though, without constant cooling sources, melt into themselves and melt their surroundings, becoming hotter, yet heavier, and sinking into the ground underneath them.  Sooner or later they, the mounds of blazing uranium and whatnot, will find ground water, which will act as their coolant and stabilizing them into more than ten thousand years of radioactive water. This is while releasing plumes of radioactive steam on the scale of about 1/80th the radiation released by A-Bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki back in the 40s every year to 18 months. Depending on weather patterns, folks will be looking at tear-shaped patterns of highly radioactive areas where folks being near die quickly but still too slowly, for about 150 to 420 miles.

These "dead zones" aren't exactly dying though. Sure plenty of mileage is sterilized, but once again weather patterns from unaffected regions will blow into the region. Winds blowing soot/dust, soil, seeds, and insects into there. Meanwhile birds and squirrels are looking for new spots to hang. Sure the newcomers die quickly, but just not quickly enough to stop breeding. Over the next ten centuries, we're dealing with Gamma World-like mutations.

Meanwhile, in the not dead zones, that's most of the 50-70% less irradiated world, people stop worrying about moneys coming from overseas. They find that starch-based alcohols can run cars and houses can be powered by solar and wind based technologies rather than going to far off, exotic places like the Gulf of Mexico or Calgary, Canada in search of crude oil. Those Anti-American right-wingers are making all the hay that they can of American values not being upheld, become a serious political force.

While the new American States, mostly a coalition of neo-fascists regimes, have access to jet engines and hydraulic machines, three hundred miles away are quite mysterious to them-- Corn alcohol is just not jet fuel. Those far away areas are working their way through their particularly specific problems and adopt mutations as helpful tools towards doing so-- this looks like magic to everyone except the local scientists. Here we have a Rifts style like campaign.

Is this a good starting point for anybody?

Artwork Michael Hartlieb for Glow