But there comes a moment in everybody's life when he must decide whether he'll live among the human beings or not - a fool among fools or a fool alone.
~ Thornton Wilder
Cheyenne Mountain Complex, Cheyenne Mountain, CO, NORAD Command, 27 Weeks Post-Apocalypse
Beth came awake, covered in sweat and hyperventilating, her arm and side stinging in sympathetic pain as she looked up to see her bed a foot above her. She looked around to see the floor next to her and the rest of her torso entangled in the blankets. Had she called out in panic? There wasn't any frantic knocking on the closed door, so she mustn't of cried out in her sleep or when she impacted the floor. She assessed her body for injuries, but aside from the throbbing abrasions from the no-skid floor, she was fine.
That dream was more vivid than she had thought, the Kuzka's Mother bomb, the one that the Russians claimed to have, the one that they didn't detonate for the sake of the earth. Their reticence to using that in test was that they hadn't wanted to set the atmosphere on fire with that large of an explosion. But in her dream, that bomb at a yield of over 100 megatons was more devastating than she had even imagined. Were they in danger from another nuclear detonation; this time by the Russians?
No matter which way Beth mentally turned that dream over, she couldn't make heads or tails out of it. She needed to take in the essence of what Horner and Stafford had said and figure out what her plan was next. If they stayed in power, they would end up going in a flash of a nuclear detonation and the world would be rocked with more devastation. Beth arose from the floor, threw her blankets back on the bed and walked over to the sink to splash her face with water; the cold water shocking her to some semblance of alertness. She looked at her pale reflection in the mirror; knowing that she would have to walk a moral tightrope: to make it seem as though she was acceding to Horner and Stafford, yet in the background, fostering dissension in the ranks. She would have to be careful of whom she discussed matters with; who would be trustworthy and able to be depended on when it came down to setting her plan in motion. As the low woman on the commissioned totem-pole, she would have to gain the trust of senior officers. She would also have to talk to the enlisted personnel but only after gauging carefully who reported to Stafford and Horner whether directly or indirectly. Until then, her best bet was to lay low and observe, and hopefully, Stafford's and Horner's spies wouldn't be alerted to her.
Mt.Storm Emergency Facility; Somewhere in the Blue Mountains. 28 weeks Post-Apocalypse
War was genocide; that much was certain. Animal's rational mind spun at the enormity of the fact that humanity had managed to do what many in the nuclear release chain of command said was impossible to do. It was surprising that anyone had rationalized this course of action, but humans had and the earth had suffered immensely for it. Sitting in a chair in what passed for a shelter; but more like a glorified talpidaean tunnel, Animal wondered if they would ever see the sky again. And even if they did, would they want to, in the sun's eidolic pall barely visible through thick ash clouds, see the devastation that humanity had brought upon the earth. And even so, a part of him yearned for the surface; to see the sky above him, not be constrained by twenty five feet high ceilings marked every quarter km by a bank of fluorescent tube lighting. Animal snorted in derision. If the fluorescent tubes went out; their vaunted vision would be just as useless as that of a blind mole-rat.
A tap on his shoulder caused Animal to startle as he bit off his reaction knowing that he was safe inside the armory. He looked up to see Jen looking concerned. Seeking to reassure her, he nodded that he was alright. She sat down beside him as Animal sighed.
"Do you miss the outdoors?" She asked casually. Jen was always observant and had noticed Animal continually looking up at the ceiling, but not seeing the ceiling. He was gazing up as though looking beyond the steel and stone roof over their heads. He seemed silent…aloof for a long moment while mentally thinking about the question that Jen had posed in his direction and just when Jen thought he hadn't even heard her…
"Have you ever wondered what life would have been like if the bombs hadn't gone off?" Jen looked over at Animal in question to his sudden comment.
"No." Jen replied slowly weighing her response, "But only because, for me, it would have just been the same old routine of getting up, going to work at JAG, and going home again. The what-if scenario would have driven me crazy after the bombs fell. Mainly because we can't go back to the way it was anymore...it's not possible." Jen's voice hitched a little. "All we have…is right now..." She looked at him with her two dark pools of brown eyes, twisted her mouth into a small smile. "...and each other..." She rested her the palm of her hand on his chest. "I can't think of what-if when all we can do is survive."
"The Malcontents aren't making it easy..." Animal opined as he indicated with a look as to what he would want to do to any of such rebels if they were to make their presence known.
"They're jealous of what we have." Jen stated. "That's why we have the armory and the weapons. If they had them, they'd throw us out into the radiation."
Animal had a dark thought pass through him that he'd feel a lot safer if they threw the rebels out into the radiation. "Where's Gunny and Kat?" He asked casually; reassured that Gunny was standing guard, but not so certain about Kat. All it would take would be one person not doing their job and the armory could potentially be unsecured. He wouldn't feel protected until the armory was on a separate level from the main shelter with no ability for the rest of the shelter population to get access to the armory.
"They're out front in the main armory on guard." Jen replied, her hand casually rubbing circles on Animal's chest which was clad in NWUs. You couldn't get the Navy out of this man. Jen thought as she leaned casually against Animal, letting the warmth of her body close to his, arouse him.
"Where's Harm?" Animal tensed up?
"He's with Meg right now." The amused tone of Jen's voice gave him an idea of just what Harm and Meg were up to; the throatiness of her voice indicated as to what she would like to be doing at the moment as well. "Boone's orders…"
"Ah…" was Animal's sarcastic snort. He wasn't too sure of Boone's command either and he missed Lia yet, the tug of his arm by Jen was enough to get him on his feet as Jen pulled him towards his private quarters and drew the privacy curtain.
"Boone's orders to him extended to me as well…so…" Then Jen's descending lips on his quelled any protest as clothes were tossed aside in a torrent of passion as they made love.
USS Birmingham SSBN-588, McMurdo Station, Antarctica, 28 weeks Post-Apocalypse
The wind didn't howl as unnervingly, as it did the week prior, which meant that the storm was dying down, but they were still stuck in the ship as the killing temperatures outside made the trek to McMurdo Station for more supplies untenable and risky. The men onboard the USS Birmingham were on short rations as the storm raged on and on and morale was plummeting at an alarming rate. The reactors were kept functioning as they generated heat within the ship so that they wouldn't freeze to death.
"What about the Russians?" CAPT Van Buren asked CDR Turner who had, with the help of both American and Russian sailors managed to set up a rope and carabiner method of travelling between both submarines, so that they would be able to maintain a line of communications during the storm. But even so; travel between the two ships during the height of the snowstorm was a dangerous business.
Turner looked at Van Buren for a long moment before responding. "Sir, the Russians seem to have stocked supplies for just this very reason." He paused. "They have enough to get them through another week but we're running low on supplies and if this cold persists for another week, we're going to have a mutiny on our hands and it's not going to be pretty, sir."
"I know…" Van Buren replied as he looked over at Commander Turner. "If this storm lasts another week, we're going to have to brave the elements and go up to McMurdo to fetch supplies. Are the men up at the station hunkered down too?"
"As far as I know, they are, sir. They managed to get the generators going and they're locked down tight. The buildings are insulated against the cold." Turner responded.
"All right. See if you can get a team together to make a run for McMurdo and then we'll see if the conditions improve enough to make it there and back to restock the ship enough so that we can manage to outwait the storm."
"Yes, sir." Turner snapped to attention.
"And…Commander. If you're stuck up at McMurdo when the weather comes back in, I want you to stay put there. I don't need you to do anything unnecessary that will lose us personnel. Is that understood?"
"Aye-aye, sir!" Turner responded.
27th Guards Vitebsk Red Banner Rocket Army, Tatischevo, Vladimir, Vladimir Oblast, Russia, 28 Weeks Post-Apocalypse
"Comrade Major General Melyanin." One of the remaining soldiers who were monitoring the rockets left over for a second strike. The rest had deserted their posts and Melyanin could not blame them. They knew that the Russian Federation was finished as a power. Now it would be a series of bunker-states that would vie for supremacy. And those that had nuclear weapons still would be those in control. "Soyedinennyye Shtaty na kolenyakh. Dolzhny li my sledit' za vtorym yadernym udarom? The United States is on their knees. Should we follow up with a second nuclear strike?"
"Tam net neobkhodimosti dlya vtorogo udara, my unichtozhili zemlyu! There is no need for a second strike, we have destroyed the earth!" Major General Melyanin replied as he looked at the scope which was blast-hardened to initiate a follow-up nuclear strike should the United States survive. "Tam net neobkhodimosti, chtoby unichtozhit' yego dal'she. There is no need to destroy it further."
Melyanin was a pragmatic man; there was no need to initiate more conflict. It was enough that there were those who had survived. Those who did would have to rebuild the world. Melyanin could foresee no use for any nuclear weapons that survived unless it was to bring peace by eliminating a threat from the world or a megalomaniacal dictator that would try to use the remaining population as a power-base from which to enslave the entire world.
Ever since the bombs had fallen, he had not heard one radio transmission from Moscow. Evidently that nest of termites and roaches had turned into a festering radioactive crater judging from the number of nuclear missile that had been targeted upon the Russian capital.
Marshal Goprov had given the order to fire rockets and Melyanin was a good general; he had followed the Marshal's order to the letter, however the Marshal was now a heap of radioactive ashes as he had been with the mobile rockets when the bombs fell and the chain of command had now fallen to Major General Melyanin. He nodded his head looking over at the readout from the scope. "YA uveren, chto amerikantsy imeyut gorazdo bol'she na ikh tarelke, chem bespokoit' nas. I am sure that the Americans have much more on their plate than to bother us."
"Ya, konechno, nadeyus', chto tak , tovarishch general-mayor I certainly hope so, Comrade Major General." The soldier said as he continued to watch the scope. It had been months since the exchange and there had been no retaliatory strike. There had only been the one exchange of rockets and that had wreaked enough devastation that they wouldn't want to exchange any more. Besides the futility of sending more destruction would be redundant. Let the rockets left in their silos wait for the order to launch that would never come; they would be left a monument to the stupidity of humanity. If humanity would ever recover from the apocalypse; it was more likely that it wouldn't.
Mt.Storm Emergency Facility; Somewhere in the Blue Mountains. 28 weeks Post-Apocalypse
Sarah Mackenzie pondered the simple fact that the disenfranchised or the Malcontents, as they were called, were few and knowing that the Malcontents had no weaponry other than their fists or their ability to create improvised weaponry. With one of the Privileged injured and in a coma, the Malcontents had a big target on their back and the Privileged had been very angry about the situation as it stood. That put every single Malcontent in the crosshairs where they were suspected for every thing that went wrong. Mac knew that she was treading a dangerous tightrope when it came to a head to head with the Privileged. But considering the level of animosity felt between the two factions, it wouldn't be long before both were at war with each other.
The Sarah Mackenzie she remembered was lost in the conflagration of nuclear warfare. When the blast doors had closed on the would-be survivors, her mental stability had gone with it. As she stared into the bathroom mirror, she saw dark soulless eyes stare back; wells of pain stoked in betrayal, fanned flames of hatred: a soul who thirsted for nothing other than revenge. It was more than vengeance; the reprisal against betrayal that fuelled Sarah Mackenzie. After everything she had done for those she had once considered friends, she was embittered against those exact same ingrates; how they had cashiered in their popularity to ensure that they received privileges beyond the rest of the vault. She remembered their suspicions after the bombs fell; the fear that they saw when they looked into her eyes and she wanted nothing more than to make the Privileged pay for their duplicity against her.
There was no way for her to retrace her steps to become part of the Privileged. She had burned those bridges and they already suspected her. There was no trust any longer. She was an outcast forever maligned and treated with contempt. Was there any remorse in Sarah Mackenzie any longer? It was doubtful as she considered that the Privileged treatment of her brooked no mercy in the end.
Cheyenne Mountain Complex, Cheyenne Mountain, CO, NORAD Command, 28 Weeks Post-Apocalypse
Beth knew that anyone that wasn't in Horner's circle of compatriots was suspected. General Horner was paranoid; consciously aware that he was being measured in terms of leadership ability and such paranoia fed upon itself, turning him into someone that jumped at shadows. Perhaps comical prior to the Apocalypse; afterwards, it made Horner a very dangerous man. He intended for everyone to be in lockstep with the dictates of Stafford and Horner, himself. And if Horner was privy to the thoughts running through Beth's head at the moment, she would be in danger.
There was no one that she could turn to for help. Essentially she was on her own. She wasn't sure exactly which way Shawn Hanson would turn in terms of allegiance; could he even be trusted? For all intents and purposes, she was on her own and that fed into her own paranoia about who to trust and who to keep at arm's length. And she wasn't sure as to how to manage. All she knew was that she had to tread carefully or end up being carried out in a body bag. And if Horner found out, they'd feed her a 9mm hollow-point right at the base of the neck. It wouldn't be pretty, but it would be efficient. And she would be labeled a seditionist with traitorous intent. There would be no-one on her side. So she kept silent and watched with careful eyes what the rest were doing, speaking to no-one about her suspicions and feeling as though eyes were upon her measuring her intent.
She looked up to see Shawn Hanson making his way towards her at the mess-hall area of the vault.
"Hey, how are you?" He said jocularly as he laid his tray down at the table and sat down. "Been pretty busy, so haven't had time to talk much." Hanson said conversationally.
"Been busy here too…" Beth said; her tone non-committal as she picked at her food. She thought it would be best to stick to a harmless topic. She kept her mood and uncertainties carefully masked so that Hanson wouldn't pick up on them. After all, she wasn't one hundred percent sure who she could trust. One misstep is all that it would take.
In a ways, Cheyenne Mountain Vault was like the Wild West: everyone had a side-arm on their person and their mentality was that of survival of the fittest. And all insults to one's person were magnified; already there had been some reports of occupants pulling weapons on one another. And Beth was well-aware that the carefully orchestrated façade of military decorum was breaking down.
"Not much to talk about, is there?" Shawn Hanson looked unhappy with the whole situation in the vault. "It seems like we're stuck like rats in a trap with nowhere to go. The occupants aren't happy about it and it seems like the tension's mounting." He continued looking over at Beth to see what her reaction was to that. Beth knew it all too well, but her only response was a non-committal shrug of her shoulders and a tilt of her head that told him that he wasn't going to get much else out of her.
Was there a motive to his questioning? Beth thought there might be and thus she wasn't keen on giving him much to go on. Unless she knew just where Hanson stood on the situation with Mt. Storm and that would give her a big idea of where he stood with the likes of Horner and Stafford. "So…what do you think about Mount Storm?" An innocent enough question, but one that would allow her to gauge where he stood with regards to the leadership of the vault they were in.
Shawn Hanson paused for a long moment at this question, "We're all a group of vault-states. Each one has the right to self-governance…" he paused a long moment as he looked around at the fellow occupants of the cafeteria area to make sure that no-one was reaching out an ear to listen in on their conversation. He lowered his voice to almost a whisper. "It may not make sense to Stafford or to Horner, but each one of these vaults has a leadership and like nations, can choose whether or not to ally with another vault. Mt. Storm's decisions are its own and each vault has to make its own choices. I may not agree with Mt. Storm's decision to go it alone, but I respect their right to do so." He paused again then spoke slowly. "Everything's breaking down…it's not a good situation…"
"We don't know what the situation is outside." Beth replied succinctly as she looked over at her table-mate. "For now, this shelter is our refuge. We don't even have the ability to wage war in any shape or form. And who know what we'll see when we open up the vault door." His return look was rational enough that she felt that she could continue. "What use will waging war against another vault bring us?"
"I think they think that we'll have another refuge, but there's no way that Mt. Storm will open up the vault door just because we come knocking. Our ability to respond to any threats is diminished and there is no way that we'll be able to breach their door." Hanson commented, finishing the remnants of his meal and then moving as if to get up from the chair, giving her a quizzical expression as if to notify her that he wanted to continue the conversation, preferably someplace a lot more private than where they were. And if there was a situation where they needed to get out of the vault, he would have an ally. And lately, the vault leadership at Cheyenne Mountain was starting to become claustrophobic at the very least. If the situation was tenable topside, then they would need to strike out on their own. It had been over six months since the missiles fell on key military targets and in that time there had been no reprisal. Perhaps now was the time to go it alone for the two of them.
Mt.Storm Emergency Facility; Somewhere in the Blue Mountains. 28 weeks Post-Apocalypse
Meg looked over at Harm as they lay in their bunk, sated after a round of love-making wondering if life was ever going to be normal again. She already knew the answer to that question. Normalcy went out with the first detonation and it never would return. "Harm, do you think that Boone knows what the vault mood is like?" she paused as Harm quizzically looked at her, still drowsy with the after-effects of their amorous encounter and then continued her train of thought. "Does he know that there's a mood of underlying discontent in the vault? And it's not getting any better." She commented, looking at him. "If this continues, we're going to have a major insurrection on our hands and it's not going to turn out well for us."
Harm sighed deeply, sitting up. "I know that…but I don't know if Tom knows that. He's become too insular. He doesn't have a read on how the rest of the vault occupants are feeling and that's become a dangerous situation." He looked over at Meg who gave him a look of disbelief. Boone needed to understand that the situation was rapidly getting out of hand. If the pressure cooker that was the vault occupants who were discontented were lit off by the Malcontent band, it would rip the shelter to shreds in a outburst of violence. Meg fell silent as Harm continued, "He doesn't seem to think that the shelter needs a democratic voice. And he doesn't listen to what is being said."
"Yet you follow his orders." Meg replied disconsolately, as Harm winced. "…and you carry out those orders like good little pawns." Harm looked shocked as he sensed the deep bitterness in Meg's voice.
"What do you want me to do, Meg?" was the answer from Harm that she couldn't answer.
"I don't know…Harm." Meg sighed, her frustration boiling over with suppressed anger focused on Harm "But all I know is that we can't keep sitting on this pressure cooker and not expect it to go off like a bomb. And you need to let Boone know that we're the ones that are going to suffer the consequences of his actions while he's shielded from any and all problems. Don't you see? That's his whole objective. We're his sacrificial lambs."
Harm paused to think about that for a long moment.
Crow Rock, Blue Mountain Ridge, Pennsylvania, 28 weeks Post-Apocalypse
Tracy Manetti and former SECNAV Sheffield had formed a familial bond where each looked after the other, in terms of security. If something looked suspicious, one would inform the other and they would strive to keep from being suspected of subversive activities. Moreland was a nasty piece of work and he had spies all over the vault searching out those suspected of being against his whim. Coded signals could with difficulty be deciphered; while hidden nooks and crannies had cameras and other surveillance. Tracy had to hand it to Moreland. The guy was a paranoid schizophrenic. He suspected plots and sub-plots and machinations against his power.
If he had any idea of what SECNAV Sheffield was doing, he'd have had Sheffield executed by firing squad which Moreland had done to at least three shelter occupants whom he had tried, convicted and sentenced for stealing food from the cafeteria. The entire shelter was on short rations in order to make the shelter food last longer. Crow Rock did not have the facilities for growing their own food as Mount Storm and as such, they needed to institute rationing to make the food last. This meant that many of the shelter occupants were going hungry even though they all had food to eat; maybe not enough to fill the belly, but enough to keep them from starving. Yet it was human nature to want to eat until one's belly was full. But that wouldn't be possible on rationing.
Tracy knew that her body wasn't meeting what would be considered the daily nutritional guidelines for good health and it seemed as though her body wasn't showing the natural resilience as it should. The bones of her elbows were starting to show in stark contrast and the people around her were beginning to look gaunt.
There was also a psychological element to short rations. When human beings were left unable to eat, they resorted to other desperate means. With the brutal suppression of the food-thieves by Moreland, there was more of a desperate hunger to the looks of the shelter occupants. How much longer before there was an uprising. And with only access to the weapons by a select few of Moreland's cronies, any revolt would be viciously eradicated and those responsible for instigating the rebellion against authority would follow the same fates of those who had stolen food. And yet another vile lesson would follow for the shelter occupants.
Tracy knew that the only relief from this brutal dictatorship by Moreland would be to take their chances in the radiation and hope that it wouldn't take long before they could escape the affected area. But even then, what would they encounter? She thought long and hard about the options that she and her godfather had. Would they be able to hot-wire a vehicle; a shielded vehicle and how would they escape? The only vehicles on the premises were the CBRN Stryker vehicles that were located down in the motor-pool in the vault, but they were guarded by Army Rangers with M-16A4s with orders by Moreland to shoot to kill. If she and her godfather were unable to escape, they would be executed by firing squad. There was no way out in the elements to escape the mounting radiation count that their bodies would absorb. The five megaton Dong Feng was a surface blast that had irradiated the surrounding area for twenty miles. That would make it absolutely difficult with an unshielded vehicle to escape the radiation without an intolerable amount of exposure to get out of the blast area. But the crux was whether she could stand to tolerate the violations of her independence that further residence within this vault was to inflict upon her. The only way that she would be able to gain access to a Stryker would be to befriend and sway to her side, one or more of the guards but how to go about doing so without suspicion?
Australian High Command Nuclear Bunker, Alice Springs, Australia – 28 weeks Post-Apocalypse
"Captain Brumby, sir." As the highest ranking Royal Australian naval officer in the bunker, Mic had the most responsibility of all the shelter occupants. The Alice Springs bunker had taken a minimum of five direct hits from Soviet ballistic missiles each measuring eight hundred kilotons each and it had only shaken a slight bit with a bit of dust dribbling down into the corridor from each impact.
Mic sighed as he looked at the USN Lieutenant, "What is it? Lieutenant Miller?" he asked tiredly. If he had known that the post-apocalyptic duty consisted of paperwork and more paperwork, he would have begged off. But at least this wasn't the courtroom. Legal make-work had flown out the window in the face of the nuclear holocaust. And now he had the most responsibility of any commander of a vault in the entire Australian continent; whatever was left of their land down under was an irradiated sandpit as far as they knew. All Mic knew was that the radiation counts were steadily increasing in the corridors nearest the entrance. At least where they were situated deeper into the bunker, they were moderately safe as there was a secondary blast door and another thick wall impeding any gamma radiation and x-rays from entering the main shelter. Each rad-count was done with a Geiger counter in hand and the men were told to not stay up there for more than fifteen minutes. Damn the Seppos and Commies and their ability to make war. Australia had no nuclear weapons, but they were still targeted for destruction. It wasn't fair in the least, Mic thought, but such was life. They had their one chance to get it right and fucked up majorly. Now they all had to live with the consequences.
"The shelter occupants are getting restless. We have no sign of radiation decrease in the last forty eight hours and the residual radiation from the northern hemisphere is getting worse." Lieutenant Miller replied. "The radiation from the surface blasts throwing the radioactive dust into the air in North America and Asia has surrounded the globe and it's bleeding down into the Southern Hemisphere."
Mic nodded perfunctorily. He knew that the outcome of nuclear war would be world-wide irradiation. There was no going back after nuclear war. With the extinction of the planet's ecosystem, the animals and plants above would perish and there would be nothing other than the animals and plants that those planning the vaults would have thought of before-hand to take in with them. "How are our greenhouses doing? We had them placed in the shelter area farthest away from the radiation bleed. Is that correct?"
"Yes, sir." LT Miller replied as he consulted his note-pad. "We have those who have had experience in gardening in the past, taking care of the greenhouses. And the growing cycle is being attenuated to the cyclical LED lighting to simulate the sun. That way it grows the same way that it would in natural soil and under optimal lighting conditions."
"How are the potatoes doing?" Mic asked, acknowledging the report. "We've heard that Cheyenne Mountain had some trouble growing potatoes, they tended to turn green and "
"Our potatoes seem to be doing well under LED light." Plus we tend to use extra soil to simulate the depth of soil required to cultivate the tubers." Lieutenant Miller replied as he pointed out the report. "They seem to be growing without too much problem. The problem with too much light in potatoes is that there may be an increase in the presence of glycoalkaloids, especially the substance solanine but that is only if the potato tuber is planted in too shallow of depth of soil. Hence the reason why we are utilizing at least a foot of soil cover on potato tubers to allow them enough nutrients from the soil and cover from light to allow them to grow naturally without the detrimental exposure to light."
"So we should be able to grow potato plants without them becoming poisonous. Am I correct in assuming so, Mr. Miller?" Mic asked.
"Yes, sir." LT Miller responded. "All plants are doing well."
Mic nodded; silently relieved that the prognosis on the gardens that he had implemented with foresight were doing well. It meant that the occupants of their shelter wouldn't starve or experience situations where food was in short supply. And that he wouldn't have to institute autocratic measures where the food supply would be rationed. Life would continue as it had done for the past six months and with careful cultivation and restocking of seeds from the plants that they grew, they would have plenty of food to fill their stomachs for years to come.
He had come a far way from the selfish attorney that he used to be, Mic thought to himself. Prior to the bombs falling, he'd not thought of much else beyond than his own immediate gratification. Now with at least a hundred lives at stake in the bunker that was to be their home for the long-foreseeable future, he had to focus on their survival.
Surface of Planet Earth, 28 weeks Post-Apocalypse
It wasn't the picturesque green of pre-Apocalypse earth that the survivors would greet, if they were ever brave enough to venture from the supposed security of their vaults, but a barren ash-gray and white panorama of devastation.
When viewed from space, the earth was not the long-remembered blue and green sphere teeming with life that orbited Sol, but a barren planet streaked with red and yellow and brown; the color of ruin; of death. It was unlikely that the world would ever regain life on its surface unless it was a life-form that was resistant to the extreme radiation that covered the planet; the radiation that resulted from the almost simultaneous explosions of over ten thousand nuclear warheads with varying yields.
Humanity had been driven back to numbers that were even lower than prior to 70,000 years ago when the world population was between three thousand to ten-thousand people. Whether humanity could rebound from this latest near-extinction event would remain to be seen. Human nature would play a big role in what would come to pass.
Author's Note: To the Guest Reviewer: Appreciate feedback even if it isn't positive, however, I am going to state the simple fact that psychologically, people in a traumatic situation devolve to the lowest common denominator. As much as people would like to think the "best of people's character" people will generally resort to "survival mindset" meaning that they will ostracize those who in their mindset are incapable of holding up their end. We have seen in canon after Chaco Boreal that Mac disintegrated mentally, though she tried to put up a good façade of competency. In a case such as an all-out nuclear war she will completely fragment and it will be a toss-up to which will come first, the psychosis or the blame-game. And no, Harm is not on an even psychological keel though he tries to prop everyone up. Everyone is surviving day to day in the bunker and everyone is in "me-first" survival mode. As I've stated before in the story, this is not a story of heroes and villains, it's a story of people trying to survive day to day after a holocaust that they could never have imagined happening in their life-time. In a survival situation, there is no time for entertainment, nor any time for "breaking the ice." You have tasks that you are to do each single day to ensure the security and functioning of the shelter and you do them; there is no time for fun activities and icebreaking. If you do not do your chores, you end up ostracized as Mac and her fellow Malcontents and could potentially be cast out.
And no, I don't particularly like the way that Mac was written in canon. If we're talking about how Mac was treated by Harm, then how about we discuss how Harm was constantly asked to measure up to Mac's expectations of him, that no matter what he did wasn't good enough for her. The Measure of Men episode's quote: "He gave up his career and country for me! Are you willing to give up your GIRLFRIEND?" and when he did in "A Tangled Webb", it wasn't even good enough for her. You know what a man does when faced with that kind of expectation? The smart man usually runs the opposite direction which he should have.
Mac's difficult childhood cemented her adult reactions – she ends up psychologically running and blaming others and frankly, in this type of situation, Mac will not have the intestinal fortitude to remain psychologically intact. In that respect, Meg and many of the other characters are psychologically stronger than Mac and would more than likely withstand the trauma of seeing the entire world end a lot more. But NONE and I repeat none will come out intact.
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