Zombie Rampage: A Riot Quest

In Late Winter, 2023 the Russian military began utilizing what was officially the halucinogenic chemical, BZ on the battlefields of Ukraine. In reality the substance was SARNED-9, a weaponized virus discovered in the permafrost of Siberia over a decade ago. Russian generals under intense pressure by Vladimir Putin to turn the tide of the Ukrainian War searched for anything in the arsenal of their military that could make a difference. A general, hoping to gain the approval of the regime through achieving victories that seemed impossible, learned of the virus and without authorization, armed his special forces with it.

His special forces would use SARNED-9 on nine different occasions, shooting rockets into Ukrainian trenches, waiting for them to get sick and inevitably turn on one another, thus allowing his troops to destroy the fortification. The odorless, colorless gas which delivered the virus would sweep across the enemy without immediately effecting them. Believing the Russian equipment defective, soldiers and civilians alike ignored the clouds of harmless gas and continued on fighting and working. The Russian unit using the virus however were filled with poorly trained conscripts low on morale, they would fail to tie up loose ends when the gas passed through a nearby village.

The village served as a waystation for Ukrainian civilians, soldiers, and foreign doctors. Within 24 hours, the village would be completely overun with zombies and those zombies would begin wandering the countryside looking for people to cannibalize and infect. Meanwhile the same Russian unit was to be sent home for leave and celebrated the night before they boarded an airplane to Moscow by drunkenly firing off cannisters of SARNED-9 into a nearby field as entertainment. The wind caught the clouds of gas and sent it back through their encampment, infecting them all. A day later they would be in Moscow, exhibiting flu like symptoms.

Some of the doctors infected by SARNED left their field hospital for Kiev to return home to Paris, London, and Santiago before the infection took hold in the village. On August 18th, two days after the Russian soldiers arrived in Moscow, the doctors were sick in the hospital with flu like symptoms. Several of the doctors and soldiers did not report anything and decided to stay at home to wait out the illness. All of them would eventually fall to homicidal delirium and attack nearby people no matter if they were hospital staff or close friends and family. On August 18th, reports began coming out of Paris, London, Santiago, Moscow, as well as a few small towns of spontaneous rioting.

Initially government officials were able to persuade the media that these incidents were unrelated primarily because they genuinely thought they were. However every day the following week, the incidents continued accompanied by reports of viral outbreaks in the aforementioned places. The governments of those countries told the public that these were caused by a new strain of COVID and asked people to stay at home if they were sick unless symptoms became severe enough to warrant going to a hospital. The truth was that doctors who were treating these patients were convinced that the virus was not COVID due to the wildly different symptoms.

Virologists from the CDC arrived in South America and Europe to acquire samples of the virus and test it. What they discovered was something completely new and immensely dangerous. They reported their findings to the appropriate government institutions and news that the SARNED-9 virus had been released into the public reached US Strategic Command. This discovery made on August 26th coincided with large scale "rioting" in Kiev which would force the Ukrainian government to abandon the city. US intelligence had already been tracking the supposed rioting for several days and had already determined the violence to something not involving crime or political unrest.

2

A critical part of the US Strategic Command's plan to combat a possible outbreak of SARNED was a lightning fast, sustained campaign of disinformation and media blackout. The United States of American marshalled it's power over social and television media, secretly ordering the taking down of internet videos and suppression of footage that showed what was really happening. People say that suppressing and controlling the internet was impossible and it is in totality however the US government has managed so far to keep much of the truth from the general public though videos of extremely violence, gunfire breaking out in places like London and Paris, and other related footage is still leaking through for those willing and capable of searching it out. NATO countries have followed suit.

From Russia, reports began to stream out of waves of violence in the countryside and heightened criminal acitivity in several major cities. News from Russia was difficult to ascertain due to the ongoing Ukraine War but satelite images taken of large areas of Western Russian show large scale fires burning uncontrolled and long convoys of civilians moving away from these regions. As the US government suppresses information about the pandemic, only suggesting it being a new strain of COVID, the news coming out of Russia shocks the world. Meanwhile, the US President along with NATO leaders begin to execute Contingency Plan X-854 by recalling all military personnel and deploying them to pre-designated Green Zones, usually already existing military bases.

Plan X-854 however was never shared with any other government not even certain elements of the US military or the entirety of the civilian leadership. SARNED-9 had been a deep state secret since its discovery. This failure has meant that military deployments announced on August 31st instead of a week earlier has allowed the virus to spread like wildfire. The virus is already spreading like wildfire in South America, Russia, and Europe. On September 1st, cases of the "new COVID strain" is reported in New York City, Los Angeles, Atlanta, and Omaha. Still, despite what has occurred the past two weeks, the general public are more confused than frightened at the moment. For most people the violence in the cities and whatever COVID strain is breaking out are unrelated in their minds.

[] Has your character been following the news intently? [first 5 players that votes for this receives +1d6 Survival Die]

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In Valley City, Oregon, people continue about their lives, focused on paying their bills, too distracted by cheap entertainment. The first chill of Autumn has arrived, the city is preparing for this weekend's Umpqua Fall Festival where more than one thousand people from the city and surrounding counties to watch the parade. In Roseyln, one of the oldest Victorian era mansions burnt down and a police officer shot a mentally ill man wielding a knife at the homeless shelter downtown. A not too unusual day for an American city.

What IS unusual is something that has been kept secret from Valley City residents. Mayor Martin Miller was awakened early morning on September 2nd by a phone call from the governor's office. The voice on the other end, a middle aged man's that he didn't recognize was direct and straight to the point, he asked the mayor about his city's preparedness for natural disasters. The mayor still half asleep and taken aback by the question replied, "Well...the only disasters we get around here are floods and wildfires, in both cases the plan is to evacuate the population to nearby counties."

The middle aged voice said, "Listen Mr. Miller, isn't it? Maybe you've seen the news, there's a new strain of COVID wrecking havok in Europe and i'll tell you now, we already have cases here in the United States. I need you to gather every important official in your city and convene a meeting with one of our FEMA coordinators via Zoom at 1400 today. They will need a report from your team of all Valley City assets critical for handling a natural disaster or like emergencies. Together you will develop a plan for self-sufficiency and emergency response that can be implemented by Friday, September 8th."

With some difficulty, Mayor Martin Miller woke his secretary at home and told her to get into the office immediately. The Fire Chief was still awake as he was on overnight duty, so was the Director of Valley City General Hospital. Al Doyle, the Chief of Police was heading home after a heavy night of drinking when he received the phone call to meet the mayor at city hall. As they and the city council members stumbled into the mayor's meeting room at 5 AM, the mayor's secretary was brewing coffee and opening up boxes of doughnuts. Al Doyle still intoxicated with half his cowboy shirt handing out his pants shouted, "What the hell is going on that you gotta drag the whole city into a meeting at this hour?"

After explaining his early morning phone call, the assembled group haphazardly began making phone calls and pulling up emails of reports sent from their staff who had also eventually been awakened. By 10 AM, they had compiled the following report:


This is Valley City on the eve of the apocalypse except we need to vote on our plan for the coming disaster. At 2 PM, September 2nd, the FEMA coordinator informs the mayor's team that there is a new infectious disease spreading across the world and that every city larger than 50,000 have been designated Green Zones where refugees will be told to go for safety where federal and state resources will be allocated to help with disaster relief. [+1 Field Hospital, +1 Oregon NG Regiment]

The FEMA coordinator says that Valley City is an important part of our emergency plan in Oregon but that understandably resources are limited at the moment. Portland, Salem, and Eugene are getting most of what FEMA and the National Guard can provide. She however says that she might be able to help out with:

[] the fuel situation, most of the refineries are near the coast across the mountains, getting a steady supply of gasoline and diesel will prove tough if the highways are closed down [+5 Gas/Diesel Supply]

[] a large food convoy, the influx of refugees will put pressure on the city's existing food supply [+5 Food Supply]

[] a FEMA Special Operations Team, we musn't forget the infrastructure, a collapse of the electrical grid or water supply could prove devestating [+3 to any infrastructure modifier]

[] the 9th Oregon NG Mechanized Regiment, if we can't protect the city then what good is having more food or a special team of technicians [receives 9th Oregon NG Regiment, 300 soldiers, 3 M1 Abrams Battle Tanks]