A Brief History of The Boomlands

The Big Boom

November 24, 1972, being the day after Thanksgiving, was a day off work for those with a benevolent boss or a decent union job, but otherwise it didn’t seem like anything special. People spent their day catching up on household chores, relaxing with family and friends, and eating leftover turkey. Everything was completely normal until the familiar Emergency Broadcast System beep interrupted Sanford & Son. Unlike every time before, the announcer--far less calm and reassuring than usual--informed Americans that this was not “only a test.” In a panicked voice, he informed a shocked America that Russian nuclear warheads were incoming. Citizens were advised to seek shelter--or at least duck and cover--immediately.
Today, people call the day the bombs fell “The Big Boom.” Nobody really knows why it happened; there’d been no recent tensions with the Russians, and in fact Nixon and Brezhnev had met just a few days earlier to begin the second phase of the SALT (Strategic Arms Limitations Treaty) negotiations. Some people have theories about why the Russians bombed us, but most people are more worried about basic survival than they are about the international politics of a world that doesn’t exist anymore.
After a while, the food stocks in the fallout shelters ran out and people started scavenging, then banding together for mutual protection. Those lucky enough to find a defensible spot with easy access to unlooted pre-Boom food and equipment settled down, allowing them to build up supply stores that weren’t limited by the amount of space in their trunk or truck bed. When scavengable supplies started getting scarce, most people decided that they’d rather face cancer in a few years than starvation in a few days. They started growing crops and re-domesticating surviving livestock, radiation be damned.
Over the next few years, these camps began to return to some semblance of civilization, with varying degrees of success. Those with the right know-how and equipment were able to approach something resembling life before the Boom, complete with limited electricity, running water, and other comforts. Others lived more like their ancestors from a century earlier. Most were somewhere in between. The one thing they all had in common was isolation. Outside of some limited trade between neighboring camps, the only contact most people had with the outside world involved fighting off roving bands of raiders. Everyone agreed that any potential benefits of venturing more than a few miles from home were far outweighed by the likely dangers.
Despite the general consensus that the rest of the world might as well be Mars, most people still scanned through the stations for news from beyond whenever they got a chance to power up any kind of radio. Mostly they got static that was only interrupted by the occasional Presidential address from an increasingly mad Richard Nixon (see The Nixon Show). Then one day the music came back to life.

Radiation Radio

He called himself Captain Fallout, and he started every broadcast with “American Pie” and ended each one with Jimi Hendrix’s rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” The show, broadcast “on the Radiation Radio Network live from the bottom of Lake Meade,” aired at irregular intervals, but the Captain somewhat reliably announced when the next show would be shortly before signing off. Each show lasted however long it lasted and featured music from all over the spectrum interspersed by rants and monologues by Fallout, most of which centered around doing vile things to Richard Nixon and/or his still-warm corpse.
Captain Fallout’s show was a welcome diversion from the rigors of survival, but nobody expected it to play a prominent role in reshaping post-nuke America. It didn’t seem all that important at the time, just a brief announcement that the Captain repeated a few times a show for several nights in a row:

“You all know by now that the Radiation Radio Network doesn’t accept money from sponsors, but this message seems like it might fulfil the age-old broadcast obligation of airing public service messages to show that we are responsible custodians of our little slice of the airwaves. A humble fisherman asked one of the Lake Mead Mermaids to swim down and give me this message in hopes that I would pass it along, so here goes: The Ground Zero Diner, just west of Junction City Kansas on Interstate 70, would like to inform all of you in that section of the Boomlands that it is now open for business. Furthermore, the proprietors have secured the grounds surrounding the diner to host a perpetual swap meet and flea market. Bring your goods but leave your guns in your vehicle, because the grounds are patrolled and protected by a posse with more bullets and better aim than you.”

The idea caught on, and it wasn’t long until Captain Fallout was announcing the opening of a new “dinertown” every few weeks. In addition to serving as trading posts, the Diners at the heart of these trading posts became a place to leave messages to be relayed to Captain Fallout. It wasn’t the most efficient means of communication, but it gave the people of the Boomlands a way to share ideas (like the now-common practice of marking signs with colored ribbon to indicate road conditions), issue warnings about natural hazards and the movements of large and dangerous bands of raiders, and of course to announce new diner openings.
As Radiation Radio evolved into the central clearinghouse for Boomlands news and information, Captain Fallout brought in additional jocks so the station could broadcast more frequently. First was the sultry Neptuna, Queen of the Mermaids. Then came Dr. Gonzo, who coined the phrase “Drifters and Diner Punks” to refer to the people who travelled the Boomlands to secure supplies for their camps. These were followed by Super Soul, “The Mouth of the South” Jimmy Hart, Cousin Deke, The Prophet, Johnny Midnight, and others until the station could support a round-the-clock broadcast.

The Refinery’s Red Glare

With a better idea of what they’d be facing beyond their borders and concrete destinations, camps started sending small groups out to trade for supplies at the nearest dinertown. As these convoys became more common, gasoline--always in short supply--became an even more precious commodity. At first, a resourceful convoy could break even on or even gain a little fuel by siphoning from abandoned cars, raiding barns, or lucking into an out-of-the-way station that hadn’t been sucked dry. As traffic on the roads increased, wasting time (and gas) looking for untapped sources became a losing proposition. As fuel supplies dwindled, it looked like the Diner Age was doomed to end before it really got started. Once again, Radiation Radio sent a ray of hope across the Boomlands:

“Alright night shifters, we’re going to take a short break from the music because one of those sexy Lake Meade mermaids just swam by with some good news for all you road warriors who are out there living on fumes. We’ve all heard the stories from southwest Oklahoma and North Texas: electric lights and structures surrounded by that reddish glow that you only get from industrial pollution by night; plumes of thick black smoke rising up through the air by day; and of course the accompanying helicopters and armored vehicles that show up to shoo away anyone who gets too close.
Well, it looks like that intriguing little slice of the West has a name: The Red River Valley Federal Protectorate Zone. I’ll leave a full reading of this document to the daytime jocks who’ve got better light and less bathtub gin in their systems, but the gist is that our boys in uniform at Fort Sill came out of the Boom smelling like roses, and they’ve spent the last however-many-years-it’s-been building up a beachhead of civilization in the sweet spot between the Dallas and OK City fallout zones. They managed to get a refinery and some oil rigs up and running with enough of a surplus to offer some of their motion lotion up for trade.
They’re going to distribute their want list--complete with offer price and estimated supply convoy arrival dates--at as many diners as possible over the next few weeks. There’s a lot of really technical-sounding stuff on this list, so if there’s a factory in your neighborhood you might want to start stripping it down first thing in the morning. But right now it’s still the nighttime and you know that’s the right time for a little Ray Charles!”

The RRV

Despite venturing out to trade with the diner punks of the Boomlands, the RRV, as it is commonly known, remains distinct from the common rabble. Its borders are tightly controlled, and the only outsiders it even considered for immigration were those with advanced degrees in science, engineering, and other highly specialized fields. The RRV convoys, made up almost exclusively of military personnel, are personable enough but tight-lipped about what life is like within the zone. The only information you can get out of them is the name of the RRV’s ranking officer (Major General Roderick Decker), their mission statement (to ensure the continuity of the United States Government), and their own names, ranks, and serial numbers.
This secrecy has predictably led to wild speculation about what’s really going on in the Red River Valley. Whether “the Zone” is an enlightened utopia, a grim police state, or America’s last best hope depends on who you ask. Conspiracy theories and campfire stories speculating about the RRV’s real agenda run the gamut from grimly plausible to laughably ridiculous. Still, most people see the RRV as a net asset to the Boomlands. They honor their price lists, keep a surprisingly tight convoy schedule considering the hazards of Boomlands travel, repair and maintain the roads they use most frequently, and occasionally rain down hellfire on marauder bands who are dangerous or stupid enough to step into their crosshairs. Most importantly, they make the go juice.

Nineteen Eighty Something

Diner Punks takes place sometime in the mid-1980s. The oldest diners have been open for just under a decade, the first post-Boom babies are teenagers, and the RRV convoys have been making the rounds for a few years now. Leaving the safety of your camp is no longer a suicide mission, but that doesn’t mean that anybody with a vehicle and a few cans of gas can drive down to Witchita to check on Aunt Clara. The Badlands are still a very dangerous place and anyone who leaves home without the proper skills, experience, and equipment is likely to meet a bad end. Whether they like it or not, the new class of road-savvy adventurers who’ve risen to brave the badlands on behalf of their camps have come to be called “Diner Punks” thanks to Radiation Radio’s Dr. Gonzo.