When The World Ended

Chapter 1/ blurb

Five years. Seven months. Eighteen days. That is how long it has been since the world ended. That is how long I have survived. It started with a long range nuclear weapon test by North Korea that went off course, hitting off the coast of Guam, a United States military island. The already fragile relationship between North Korea and the United States was destroyed when President Donald Trump fired back at North Korea, thus starting World War Three, the nuclear war.

New Zealand was safe for a while, sitting out of the main zone of conflict, until the Chinese decided to fire some of their nuclear missiles into the South Pacific, hitting Samoa, Fiji, Australia, and New Zealand. The first wave hit Wellington, Queenstown, Hamilton, and just north of Auckland, leaving complete destruction in their wake. Nobody really knew what to do; New Zealand had always been quite a safe place. This was the first real attack that had happened here. People panicked. They didn't understand what was going on, where to go, what they were supposed to do.

The second wave of missiles were fired, and the rest of the country went up in flames. There was fire and destruction everywhere. The people that survived the attack spent days, weeks, even months looking for their loved ones, only to turn up empty handed, or with a broken heart. There were some people who were lucky, like myself, who found loved ones alive, but just because they were alive, didn't mean they were well. A lot of people were affected by radiation poisoning, and either suffered from physical or mental effects, some even died later on.

Those who did survive through everything, tried to pick up the pieces, rebuild the houses and towns, tried to recreate civilization. But it was hard. There were few people who knew what they were doing, which made everything more difficult, especially since there were no real authoritative figures. Riots started to break out, gangs were formed, and anyone who tried to oppose them suffered a terrible fate. Some people tried to escape, not wanting to become slaves to the gangs. They fled into the woods, ran into the desolate landscapes that were once the cities that we had resided in, really just went anywhere that wasn't gang controlled. My brother and I fled too, escaping into the forest near where we once lived during the night, trying to avoid the gazes of the gunmen guarding the village. 

When we knew we were a safe distance into the forest, we realise that we had no real means of survival. We managed to build a small shelter amongst the trees, just large enough for the two of us. There were not many animals, and the animals that were still around were radioactive, and we presumed most likely unsafe to eat. There were not many fresh water sources in the area that we were hiding, so we had to venture far and wide to find them.  We had to scavenge to find food in the forest, and after a while we came to the realization that we would have no choice but to hunt the animals. I think because we had already been exposed to so much radioactive matter when the initial explosions happened, the radioactivity of the animals didn't have much of an effect on us.

Our bodies soon began to change, adapting to the new environment around us. The constant exposure to the radiation was acting as a sort of vaccine, like how the doctors would inject a form of the virus, for your body to learn how to become immune to it. We became immune to the radiation. The trees grew larger and thicker, the animals formed new limbs, and tougher coats, everything changed, everything adapted, and what didn't, eventually died off. 

That was then. This is now. This is the story of my life.