The Accursed Earth

The rad winds howl and America's cities stand empty. Once filled with tall, proud, gleeming edifices that reflected the ambition of the men and women who built them, they are now but husks, skeletal remnants, vacant and mournful.   Legends say once the Earth was green and abundant and could provide for all. Yet because of humanity's insatiable hunger our ancestors consumed all the Earth had to give. It is said the streets of the ruined cities were once populated by endless masses of people, streets clogged with vehicles of all sorts, great centers of industry taking in the Earth's resources, with factories belching fire and smoke day and night, vomiting forth a panoply of cheap wonders to clog people’s lives with things to fill the emptiness of their souls.   The days of peace were unremarkable, with billions living out their ordinary lives in seeming comfort and happiness. American's lurched from one fad to another, ever grasping for a new novelty, the next shiny thing to distract them from the nagging feeling that something was out of balance, that something was not quite right. The signs were there, but the leaders; captains of industry, bankers, lawyers and politicians all tut-tutted and made promises about the technical miracles the scientists of a brighter tomorrow would bring. Yet the brighter future was always tantalizingly out of reach and human nature's insatiable hunger for more reduced Earth's larder of plenty to scraps, scraps which humanity began to fight over. Time had run out...   It started as bits of disturbing news intruding on everyday peoples lives; vast forest fires, wild weather fluctuations, melting ice caps, failing crops, pandemics, sick farm animals, mass extintinctions, smog and acid rain, dwindling resources, then rumors of wars, and finally...war!   The Resources Wars lasted many years, bringing every nation and people into the conflict, growing ever more desperate until lab made plagues were released, choking stockpiles of chemicals used, and finally madmen were given free rein to think the unthinkable, to attempt to win the unwinnable and released nuclear fire on their enemies. The bombs fell and nuclear fire cursed the good Earth, turning Eden into Hell.   Now in the aftermath, those few who survived cling to life on this Accursed Earth and eek out a living in its irradiated landscape. A world whose peoples have been twisted by the dangers of a hopeless wilderness, nothing like that civilized race that came before. Those that remain are all survivors, born outside a time of when hope, mercy, and cooperation had any meaning. For the survivors each day is a struggle. Desperate they will gnaw on scraps of meat caste of from more vicious predators, the rot of decaying flesh unable to thwart their gnawing hunger. For the survivor the Earth is no longer a giving mother, instead it is an endless desert of despair. Where the desperate will scrabble in ditches just to find a drop irradiated water to slake their fever born thirst.   Welcome to the Accursed Earth, the inheritance of the meek, home to the hopeless survivor.   _{Report from pworld KTHX1139}