Badass Dragons of the Wasteland - Round Nine Prologue

[daneel]

[quote=“Donald_Petersen, post:1, topic:42327”] Our homeworld is destroyed, and cannot recover under its own steam before we all perish at the jaws of the armor-plated cockroaches, the Robot Monsters, the zombies and vampires, the gilled surfers, the man-eating vegetables, the oddly heavy and eternally piss-warm water. The Gen V could, and should, be used to reverse many, if not all, of these trends. In the right hands, Marion could be made to fix our world, and perhaps one day even surpass its splendor of old! If kept safe and carefully husbanded, the Gen V could give its master powers of godhood, which could revive long-dormant power generators, freshen the tainted waters, sweep clean the polluted skies, elevate humanity to its natural mastery over the planet, and restore the majesty of Old Earth to levels unseen by prior generations!"
[/quote]

@Donald_Petersen

The week I was born there were seven billion people on Earth. That’s a lot, and it turned out to be what you call a “critical mass.” Disease and sectarian warfare and famine hadn’t done a good enough job in thinning out the herd, so I guess Death gave his fellow horsemen a swift, bony kick in the ass to motivate them to ramp up their efforts. That kick might have been too hard. The world’s diseases mutated beyond the capability of medicine to keep up, culminating in the Zombie Apocalypse of 2017, which wiped out a third of the world’s population. Climate Change resulted in the Long Drought of 2020, which resulted in starving another third and bringing about the Cannibal Holocaust. Finally, the sectarian strife escalated into Chelsea’s Little War, which leveled the cities of the world, turned most of the terrain into a rubble-strewn waterless wasteland that glowed with an emerald hue when the sun dipped over the indistinct horizon, and killed off nearly every mammal left. The blasted landscape stretched from sea to boiling sea, interrupted only by the giant mutated critters and the cannibal zombie raiders, along with the occasional crumbling edifice left over from once-proud cityscapes, now populated by armor-plated giant cockroaches, enormous and strangely intelligent scorpions, and the very occasional sane human, armed to the teeth and not inclined to share anything with anyone.

I signed on to go to Mars, and I mean to. I see no reason to change that plan, and frankly, I trust TC and Benny here about as far as I can throw them.

Plus, y’know, we’re living in flashback. The kid goes to Mars, so I do, or die trying. Thunderdome for me.

Anyone fancy a cup of tea?