The land was divided, torn apart by civil war. What was once “the land of the free because of the brave” became a fractured wasteland. The world pointed and laughed as our allies turned their backs, refusing to get involved in our self-inflicted destruction. The enemies, however, saw an opportunity. They smiled as they watched us weaken, then struck when the time was right. The bombings ended the war. There was no more fighting—just survival.

Foreign Invasions & Territorial Shifts

(Circa 2100–2150)

Russia and Canada were the first to move in, both setting their sights on Alaska. Canada believed it would be simple—walk in, offer aid, and claim the territory. After all, why would the Alaskan people resist when the rest of the U.S. was in ruins? But Russia had other plans. They swooped in with brute force, crushing Canadian efforts and forcing control over the region. American citizens were rounded up and placed into controlled camps. Those who refused to comply vanished into the icy wilderness, surviving however they could beneath the watchful eye of Russian drones and patrols.

Hawaii fell just as quickly. Cut off from the mainland, the islands fought fiercely but couldn’t hold out. Aerial bombardments destroyed key defenses. Then Japan arrived—not as saviors, but as conquerors. They offered a choice: become Japanese citizens or face extinction. The people chose to live. Today, Hawaii is a Japanese territory once again, rebuilt and repurposed as a Pacific military hub, its people living under strict martial law disguised as civil order.

Florida was obliterated—bombed into nothing. Targeted for its strategic military bases and shipyards, it became a waterlogged crater, nothing left but a thick, swampy mire too toxic to reclaim. What survives there isn’t human—mosquitoes, gators, and worse. To the north, the northeastern seaboard didn’t fare much better. Rising sea levels and coordinated strikes caused Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Jersey, and Delaware to collapse into the ocean. The marshy land that remains is shunned. Only hermits, criminals, and exiles dwell in the damp rot of what used to be cities.

Canada didn’t stop with Alaska. With the northeast states decimated, they moved down through Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, and into New York and Pennsylvania. Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and the northern plains followed. But unlike Russia, Canada used diplomacy, not guns. They offered food, medicine, and safety. Desperate survivors accepted the aid, and in return, Canada gained loyalty—and land.

Texas stood alone. Mexico reclaimed parts of southern Texas with the help of cartel-backed militias, but the rest of the state held fast. Civilians fought tooth and nail to keep their land. Entire towns became fortresses. Even without federal support, Texas rebounded faster than any other state, its people refusing to be broken. But the south—El Paso, Laredo, Brownsville—those cities became cartel kingdoms. Their influence stretches deep into the interior, their law backed by guns, money, and fear.

The Bombings & the Changing Landscape

(Circa 2150–2200)

The western U.S. is gone.

The San Andreas Fault was bombed, deliberately fractured, and California fell into the Pacific Ocean. Coastal cities crumbled into the sea, and inland ones were swallowed by quakes, landslides, and fire. Entire mountain ranges split open. Shockwaves radiated through Nevada, Oregon, and Washington, awakening dormant volcanoes. Though none erupted fully, fissures near Mount St. Helens, Yellowstone, and the Sierra Nevadas released toxic gases—sulfur, methane, even arsenic. The northwest became a death zone. Crops died. Animals mutated or vanished. Humans can’t breathe the air there without filters, and even then, not for long.

No one knows if the volcanoes will ever blow—or if the land is just bleeding out slowly.

But strange things happened in the aftermath.

The Reclamation Begins

Weather patterns collapsed and reformed. The jet stream rerouted. Ocean currents buckled. The Earth didn’t just break—it began remaking itself.

The East Coast

The Atlantic swallowed the eastern seaboard. Cities like Boston, Philadelphia, and New York now sit beneath brackish waves or cling to eroding shorelines. What remains of the Carolinas and Georgia is pockmarked by swamp and salt flats. The Chesapeake Bay expanded like a wound, cutting deep into the mainland.

The Appalachian Mountains held firm—but their forests thickened, darkened. Acidic rains stripped away some growth, but the underbrush flourished in strange, aggressive ways. Kudzu smothered whole towns. Insects thrived. Wolves returned. Fog clings to the ridges year-round now, and trails vanish overnight. Those who live in the hills speak of ghost towns reawakening—some with lights still flickering on at dusk.

The Midwest and Great Plains

Once called America’s breadbasket, the center of the country fractured in silence. The fissures from the San Andreas quake spiderwebbed eastward—some small, others vast enough to swallow roads and silos whole.

What wasn’t shattered dried up. Tornadoes became seasonal monsters. Dust storms roam like herds. Crops are grown underground now, or in clustered greenhouse farms protected by concrete and prayers.

Pockets of the old world remain—church steeples in Kansas, a functioning train line in Iowa—but they’re islands in a continent of cracked, forgotten land.

The Rocky Mountains

The Rockies broke, but they did not fall. They rose.

Mountains that were once majestic are now jagged and wild, split with glowing veins of mineral heat or webbed with sulfur vents. Travel through the range is nearly impossible outside of old mining tunnels or hidden rebel passes. Avalanches are frequent. The wind howls without reason.

But for those who make it through, valleys between the peaks have become sanctuaries—lush, isolated, high-altitude ecosystems full of medicinal plants and fresh water. Some say the air is thinner but cleaner there, untouched by the lowland poisons.

The Four Corners

This is where the world changed most.

The red deserts of New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, and Colorado turned green. Rain came like prophecy—hard, heavy, and endless. What were once dust flats became wetlands. Ancient riverbeds filled and spilled over. Flash floods reshaped the land overnight. Canyons became lakes. Salt flats gave way to moss-covered marsh.

Nature exploded in the absence of people. The remains of cities like Albuquerque, Moab, and Flagstaff are draped in ivy and strangled in blooming vines. Wolves, bears, cougars—creatures that had once vanished—walk freely through the ruins. Bugs have grown larger, more aggressive. Fungi glows along cave walls.

The air is heavy with moisture and alive with sound: birds, frogs, buzzing, croaking, chittering. Everything here grows too fast, too wide. Buildings buckle under the weight of new forests. Streets vanish beneath root systems. The land feels like it’s watching.

Travelers say the Four Corners have a pulse now—alive, wild, and hungry. Some say the Earth is reclaiming what was stolen. Others say it’s becoming something else entirely.

Colorado

Colorado bloomed like a secret garden.

Already fertile, it became a breadbasket of the new world. Wheat grows tall and golden in fields carved by hand. Rivers are clean, fast, and cold. Wildflowers spread like wildfire. Many survivors fled here and stayed. They carved out settlements in valleys, on ridges, near water sources and geothermal vents.

But the beauty hides danger. Strange diseases are born in the heat. Mold creeps into lungs. Insects swarm in clouds. Some crops grow too fast, their roots cracking greenhouses and warping soil.

Still—Colorado remains one of the few places where rebuilding feels possible. For now.

And through it all, the land watches. The bones of the old world shift beneath the feet of the new. Roads mean nothing. Maps lie. The Earth is not what it was—and it isn’t done changing.

The Factions

The Communities

Tightly controlled city-states rising from the ruins of the old world. Former government officials, scientists, and ex-military leaders fortified small urban zones with walls, drones, and biometric checkpoints. Inside, they offer stability—but only for the obedient. Technology, medicine, and education are hoarded behind those walls.

Citizens are sorted into classes. Soldiers, engineers, and bureaucrats live in comfort. Laborers are monitored, rationed, and often sterilized. Outside the gates, the world starves. Inside, compliance is survival.

Their goal is re-domination. They view the wasteland as lawless territory waiting to be reclaimed. They brand the Resistance as terrorists, Rogues as animals, and Cartels as parasites. Every Community has its own flavor—some are militaristic, others pseudo-utopian—but all demand obedience.

The Reservations

Scattered sanctuaries of defiance. Born from refugee camps and hidden outposts, the Reservations house the Resistance—a fractured, desperate movement of survivors, freedom fighters, and dreamers.

They build beneath the earth and inside mountains, using salvaged tech and guerrilla tactics. Some want to restore the old democracy. Others want to burn it all down. Conflict brews even within their ranks.

Despite hardship, they rebuild. Underground schools teach banned knowledge. Healers study old medicine. Farmers use pre-war manuals to grow crops. Children born in the Reservations are the future—if they survive.

The Rogues

Outlaws. Raiders. Kings of the lawless. These factions thrive in chaos. Some are bands of scavengers, others are organized into mafia-like syndicates or biker warlords. They control travel routes and black markets.

Not all Rogues are monsters. Some are ex-soldiers who protect the weak—for a price. Others are rebuilding their own versions of society, rough and raw but functional. They enforce their own laws, their own justice, and they answer to no one.

The Cartel

When the U.S. fell, the cartels rose. No longer constrained by borders, they expanded into abandoned towns and trade routes, turning them into strongholds. They traffic in everything—guns, meds, food, people. They run underground hospitals, transport networks, and schools that teach more loyalty than math.

Some Cartel leaders believe they are the new empire. In many ways, they are. Their influence spreads into every faction—Communities trade with them, Rogues fear them, and even the Resistance relies on their paths.

Other Shadows

The Moles

Moles are ghosts in the ruins—loners, hermits, and survivalists who disappeared during or after the collapse. Many are ex-military or ex-intelligence, men and women who saw the writing on the wall and prepared for the end.

They live underground, often literally. Bunkers, tunnel systems, old subway stations—anywhere they can fortify and vanish. Most are territorial, aggressive, and don’t take kindly to visitors. They communicate with each other through symbols, signs, and coded messages.

While most keep to themselves, some trade. They possess rare skills: mechanics, demolitions, encryption. Bartering with a Mole can mean the difference between life and death—if you can find one and survive the meeting.

No one knows how many Moles exist. Some say they’re myth. But the smart ones know—they’re real, and they’re watching.

The Hobbits

Smugglers. Runners. Whisperers in the dark. The Hobbits are a loose network of rebels who specialize in moving things—people, supplies, secrets—across the most dangerous parts of the Wasteland. They adopted the name from old stories. Small. Unseen. Essential.

Each Hobbit carries a tattoo or brand: a hidden sigil on their body, usually behind the ear or under the wrist. It’s how they recognize one another. Their network spans from the overgrown south to the cold borders of Canada, and even into cartel lands.

They build and use a system of hideouts, dubbed “burrows.” These safe houses exist in ruins, caves, mountains, and forests. Only Hobbits know the paths. Even the Resistance must earn their trust.

They don’t work for free. Some demand payment. Others work for the cause. All of them live in constant danger—from the Communities, from Rogues, from betrayal. But without them, the Resistance dies. They are the arteries of the underground.

This is the world now.

• 2100–2150: Collapse and invasion.
• 2150–2200: Bombings and environmental unraveling.
• Post-2200: Rebirth and survival.
• 2200 - 2250: Rise of the Factions

Our maps are useless. Borders mean nothing. Names change with the wind. The United States is gone. What remains is a wasteland—divided, dangerous, and waiting to be claimed.

Some bow to the Communities.

Some enjoy the simple life on Reservations.

Some fight with the Resistance.

Some raid with the Rogues.

Some deal with the Cartel.

Some hide in holes, like Moles.

And some… move silently between them all.

People like Jo?

They find their own path—and light the way for others.