The following was dropped off to a wasteland traveller by a strange man in a blue box:
According to the great history that mankind has laid out for itself over the past millennia, there have been two truly "Dark Ages" in human history. The first came with the fall of the first great empire, the one of the Roman Caesars, heralding the fall of civilization as man knew it into a period of organized anarchy which later became known as the Middle Ages. The second one came with the fall of the second great empire, the First United States of America, bringing the world into ashes around it in a manner that the Romans could only dream of. The story of the Third World War and the so-called "end of the world" which accompanied it is well told elsewhere. Radioactive clouds swept the globe, claiming many who survive the original nuclear fire, twisting once commonplace people and animals into great monstrosities. Like in the time of the Romans before them, it seemed like the last days were finally upon humanity.
Nothing could be further from the truth, the first Dark Ages ended with the dawn of the Renaissance, as old learning was recovered and people advanced into Enlightenment, perhaps the golden age of our history. Likewise, the scorched Earth left behind by the second Dark Ages and the Resource Wars eventually disappeared into the past. Today, most sites are no longer even slightly contaminated, and even the average citizen can enjoy a luxury cruise into the depths of space, but we should never forget how close we as a race came towards self-extermination. This tome is a story of how humanity rebuilt itself in the days following the war, and what has been termed by historians as the Reclamation, rather than a new Renaissance.
Though historians are in constant debate about where civilization first truly began to resurface in the aftermath of the war, some pointing at the massive Timbuk Empire in Africa, while others suggest the river kingdoms which emerged along the Yangtze before the Enclave debacle of 2290 in what was known as China left them in ruins. Archeological remnants and historical archives recovered by North American colleagues have suggested that the most likely region for the reboot of civilization was what was known as the Imperial Wasteland in the former United States' east coast megapolis. This perceived restart of human society has been more or less definitively proved by this point, as the first place where people started reorganizing themselves into proper towns and cities.
The first of these embryo civilizations emerged a mere sixty or so years after the nuclear missiles were launched and the old world was destroyed. The period from 2140 AD to 2150 AD, one of the comparatively peaceful periods before the buildup to the legendary Master's War, was considered to be decisive for the development of new American civilization. Archeological studies report a fairly even scattering across the former United States of this small communities, but well over half of these failed within five years of being formed. The obvious cause was a lack of suitable efforts to combine farming and scavenging to survive through troublesome periods. Fertile land was hard to come across for most of these people, and starvation was common in those early days. Despite this, in the American province of New York, by 2150, there were nearly 10,000 people, connected by trade and the ruins of pre-war highways.
What American historians have been asking themselves as of late, is "Why New York?" A region near some of the most heavily targeted places by Chinese nuclear weapons, it seemed unlikely that any form of habitation would be possible there, much less the prosperity that existed by 2150. Other towns and communities had been formed at this point across the former United States, scattered fairly evenly across the wastelands. The answer is obvious. The high concentration of population prior to the war in New York increased the chances of a higher number of survivors in the aftermath of the war. Also, there were considerably more vaults and bunkers in the region than in the rest of the country. These vault dwellers provided substantially more education and literate base than most tribes in the South and Plains had to work with, allowing for quicker advancement.
Despite this, a high population count does not fully explain how the Imperial Wasteland turned into an early center of civilization, much like the city-states of Italy in the fifteenth and fourteenth centuries had. Indeed, some arguments suggest that a high population count should have led to the region being even more destroyed and uninhabitable than the rest of the country. I hereby suggest that the true reason that civilization began was through the force of will of the leaders and factions which emerged in the areas. Though the names of the leaders have been lost to history, their factions have not, being joyously, but painstakingly recorded in most modern Amerikan historical texts. Had other regions been more forceful in their mission like those in the Imperial Wasteland, than perhaps the Reclamation would have been very different.
In 2150, the Imperial Wasteland was effectively controlled by three primary factions, and an assortment of smaller groups. These powerful factions were the Appalachian Commonwealth, the Liberty Commonwealth, and the Narwhal Imperial Republic. They possessed the firepower and, most importantly, the education needed to control the wasteland. They mastered the arts of farming and water exploitation, and managed to provide for the people where many others had failed. It should be noted however, that these were still comparatively hunter-gatherer societies with limiting agricultural efforts. In 2150, with the completion of Project Purity, this was beginning to change, but they still all mostly relied upon salvaged goods and supplies from the ruins of pre-war cities. Project Purity, created by the Narwhales, would be the key to the rapid growth and extreme development the region would see over the next decade.
The communities in a radius around the region would grow, feeling the trickle-down prosperity from the larger factions, as trade grew properly, and the first trade laws would be passed. Of course, the whole effort would face its greatest challenge in a couple years, which insidiously threatened to destroy everything the people who lived there had worked for...
. Unless they try to kill us all. Then they die.
