Facing the End

Overall, people haven’t done so well coping with the prospect of extinction. In many places in the world, the strain of it caused a complete breakdown of social order, an infectious nihilism that made people impossible to govern or control. Large swaths of Africa, South America and Central Asia are completely lawless, or governed only at the most local of levels. Everyone looks out for their own and only their own. Even in the ‘surviving’ nations that have more or less intact societies and governments, areas outside the big cities are often dangerous places where the law doesn’t matter. Policing the mostly deserted countryside is simply too much effort and expense to be worth it most of the time.

Even in places where society survived the initial shock of the impending end, all is not well. The massive population of the urban sprawls surrounding the world’s major cities is split between those desperately hoping the governments and corporations will find a cure for the phage in the next couple of decades and those who have already given up hope. Even those in the cities proper, with access to decent jobs, technology that takes the drudgework out of most daily activities and all the creature comforts the modern age can provide aren’t immune to the sense of despair and desperation. Many of the ways people chose to cope are destructive either to themselves or to others. Escapism through substance abuse or immersive VR technologies is common. Crime is rampant in the Sprawls of most cities. Tensions between humanity and the growing population of mutants who it seems will soon replace them sometimes flares into violence and extreme ideologies feed on the uncertainty and unease of the times.