Exploration: The search

Prologue

In the mid-22nd century, around the year 2150, World War Three started.

The war started when the United Nations increased the economic sanctions on North Korea. This included blocking all imports, due to North Korea's continued refusal to disarm their nuclear weapons and discontinue their biological weapon research. North Korea, with Chinese and Russian reinforcements, attacked the blockade as well as South Korea. The South Korean president reached out to their North American and NATO allies for assistance. While the North American and NATO armies were working to repel the North Korean invasion of South Korea, more Chinese and Russian troops attacked Japan, Mongolia, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Alaska. In one year, the North Korean Alliance (NKA) managed to conquer countries in Asia from South Korea to Iran. Upon reaching the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean, the NKA began their assault on Saudi Arabia and Turkey. The United States and NATO used military bases in Guam and Australia to launch attacks on the NKA.

After 5 years of conflict, the war claimed the lives of over 575 million people. Towards the end of the war, North Korea deployed biological weapons from a submarine in the Pacific Ocean, the weapons hit their target of nuclear power plants in California and Washington. The resulting destruction contaminated the Pacific coast with radiation fallout. The United States retaliated with a nuclear intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) strike on Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea.

Nuclear strikes created electromagnetic pulses that destroyed all the modern technology around the world. The fallout from the bombs and destroyed nuclear reactors triggered a nuclear winter, which affected the world for about 20 years. Over two billion people died of starvation. Biological changes from the radiation started to appear around four years after the attacks. Predatory animals increased in size. Most of the genetic changes were fatal for humans, only fifty percent (about four billion people) survived the nuclear winter, a quarter of which died from animal attacks. Another ten percent of the population died of cancer caused by the elevated levels of ionizing radiation in the atmosphere, leaving a world population of only four billion people.

Of those four billion left, about 30% of the population genetically mutated into what became known as Villagers; and the rest of the humans, who withstood most of the radiation, with only slight visual and tactile changes, became Raiders.

Our story takes place sometime in the 24th century.