All Things Must End

I was browsing the Official SLUGS Forums and found a post that hinted at the possible setting for this year's LARP,

"When the living dead triumph, the world degenerates into chaos.

All social order evaporates.

Those in power, along with their families and associates, hole up in bunkers and secure areas around the country. Secure in these shelters, originally built for the Cold War, they survive. Perhaps they continue the facade of a government command structure. Perhaps the technology is available to communicate with other agencies or even other protected world leaders. For all practical purposes, however, they are nothing more than a government-in-exile.

With the total collapse of law and order, small bands of individuals emerge to assert their authority. Looters, bandits, and common thugs prey on the survivors, taking what they want and indulging in whatever pleasure they can find. It is common at the end of any civilization to have one last massive party. As perverse as it sounds, orgies of people believing that this day is their last spring up all around the nation.

What police and military forces are left serve as protection for the government in hiding, desert in an attempt to save their families, or degenerate into bandits themselves. A total collapse in communication and transportation sweeps the globe. Isolated cities become open battlegrounds, with scattered groups of citizens fighting to defend barricaded areas from both undead and mortal renegdes.

Neglected machines eventually break down or, in some cases, blow up. Reactor meltdowns and other industrial accidents are common, polluting the landscape with toxic chemical by-products. With cities picked clean of humans, the undead fan out in search of prey. Country homes and suburban neighborhoods are torn to shreds as citizens flee, attempt to stand and fight, or wait helplessly for the monsters to devour them. The carnage is not limited to humans: The air is thick with the shrieks of farm animals trapped in pens, or even family pets trying bravely to defend their masters.

As time passes, the fires die, the explosions cease, the screams fade. Fortified areas begin to run low on supplies, forcing the occupants to face their undead attackers during foraging missions, evacuations, or battles driven by desperate insanity. Casualties will continue to mount as many well-protected and well-supplied but weak-willed humans take their own lives out of sheer despair.

The looters previously mentioned fare no better than any other human. These modern-day barbarians became such because of their disrespect for law, their hatred of organization, their choice of destruction over creation. Their nihilistic, parasitic existence feeds off the riches of others instead of producing their own. This mentality prevents them from settling down and building a new life. They are always on the run, fighting off the monsters no matter where they stop.

Even if they succeed in fending off this external threat, their need for anarchy eventually leads them to turn on each other. Many of these societies will be held together by the strong personality of a chieftain. Once he or she is gone, there will be nothing to hold the group together. A disbanded gang of thugs, wandering aimlessly through hostile ground, cannot survive forever. After several years, little will be left of these ruthless human predators.

This post-apocalyptic world will appear as a devasted landscape: burned-out cities, silent roads, crumbling homes, abandoned ships rusting offshore, gnawed and bleached bones scattered over a world now ruled by monsters. Fortunately, you will not see this, because before it happens, you will be nowhere near."

Well, that could be interesing, and bloody. Every group you meet could be out to eat, kill, maim, ect you.