Ahh. Lithium isn't rare, as it's the 25th most abundant element. Industry (just) hadn't much serious use for it, before the lithium-ion battery tech started getting developed...
It seems to be a bit less abundant in the Earth's crust (~29th, depending on which source is referenced), but I meant within the context of the Central Wasteland; presumably, Lily isn't about to start her own massive mining operations. I was assuming a similar lack of industrial use for Lithium, plus Fallout not seeming to have much battery tech out there, plausibly due to prioritizing service lifespan and recyclability.
Hmm. 'Fallout' might be using lithium fission cells for power? Lithium-7 plus a proton gives you two helium-4, and lithium is pretty easy to isotopically separate... No radioactive waste, just (maybe) alpha particles to be concerned about. Maybe the issue is that this would be too clean for 'Fallout'?
OK this sounds super neat... and I'll try and read up on it when it's not 4.40am =^.^=
The production of α particles sounds like a feature TBH: they are likely to be a lot easier to shield than β or γ (at a given energy level) thanks to they higher cross-section, mass, and consequently lower speed.
NGL you got my hopes up there for a bit, though I enjoyed the chapter in its proper location regardless. I do hope this one eventually gets some love again, though. The MC is just such a cool character and eclipse phase doesn't see enough love.
It seems to be a bit less abundant in the Earth's crust (~29th, depending on which source is referenced), but I meant within the context of the Central Wasteland
Also, the Central Wasteland, if you dig down, enough, under any sedimentary material, granite is quite a good source for lithium (and loads of other stuff). Some sedimentary rocks might be, as well.
If you are digging-out 'secret bases', in bedrock, it seems a pity to not get best use out of your excavations... Also, if you can get at some spoil heaps from previous mining, those can be excellent sources of materials, if you have superior processing techniques to those who ran the mine... 'Eclipse Phase' mining tech returning to the 'home planet'...
Her current perception of time was running at about forty times the rate of what the small atomic clock in her brain said time should be going. Naturally, trusting the atomic decay of caesium over her own experience
IDK how I missed that before, but atomic clocks don't rely on radioactive decay (and typically do not use radioactive isotopes at all) but measure the difference between some frequency/wavelength they irradiate atoms with, and the one corresponding to the difference between energy states of the atom's electron shell.
Nuclear clocks (esp. using ²²⁹Th) are a hot topic in time metrology, but those don't use radioactive decay either, but a decay in the nucleus' energy level after exciting it with light.
In principle, a clock based on radioactive decay is possible but IDK of any possible advantage it could have, especially for cybernetics, which don't have a ton of space for shielding the user from radioactive material and isolating the clock from background radiation.
(Edit to remove the link since I don't know about the rule =.=!)
Hi author, when I read this fun power fantasy fic (at least decent enough for fun read rather than those badly written type). I noticed this guy comment here who give tons of idea for what happen on each of Fallout Country here (at least for idea), copy the comment from the link down:
+ A while back, during a multiplayer jumpchain experiment on Spacebattles I did a massive combined Fallout jump, with a few other things added to make it interesting.
While doing this I started thinking about how people haven't left the Wasteland despite how much it sucks, when I brought this up it was explained away as travel being extraordinarily dangerous and while that is true it never stopped people in the Stone Age.
Since Mexico and further south weren't targeted during the Resource Wars preceding the Great War why hasn't there been a mass migration?
My brain refused to leave it alone so I made the Resource Wars worse and did an area by area explanation of current status of each, along with a bare bones explanation of economy's, tech level and design, a few factions, some new mobs and special resources. After the Jump I mentioned a few things here and there since most of it didn't actually come up, and I even told myself that I really should type the thing up at some point.
Here is my work on expanded Fallout lore as of Fallout 3.
These guys reverted to a clock punk style civilization. There is a severe lack of resources but there were a large number of cities that aren't inhabited after the Resource Wars so were torn down and the metal repurposed.
Smaller towns and places in a good location get by through converting hydro and wind power to electricity but larger cities need more. The nicest use penal legions to turn their gears but some raid other cities for resources and slaves for the same purpose.
The people here are hardy and resistant to normal diseases and weaker poisons, however the various plagues that were unleashed during the Resource Wars occasionally pop back up and kill off large percentages of the populations of individual cities. Other cities are quick to mobilize and siege infected cities to prevent the spread. Highest technology in common use is the radio and warehouse sized clockwork computing devices but the Order of Knights Errant makes use of shock enhanced melee weapons in addition to advanced unpowered armor. Cities might have a massive laser cannons that they can use in the event of an unlawful massed attack against them, these are expensive to maintain and charge but with the rising amount of Etheric Oil Gel becoming available energy weapons may become viable on a personal scale within a decade.
Special resources available here are fairly normal animals, an advanced alloy that resists corrosion, is almost as light as aluminum and tougher than pre-war armor plates five times their thickness. There has also been a rise in the numbers of a giant river eel that can generate large amounts of electricity in the past few decades, the oil that can be rendered from them can serve as a battery component that approaches nuclear energy in power to weight in regards to long term storage. Other strange animals that have been sighted recently include what appears to be a unicorn the size of a rhino that produces a stimpac like substance that it can inject through the horn it sheds once a year and what some call a werewolf, which is actually some genetic abomination that appears to have origins in wolves and gorillas.
Before the Great War China had conquered most of it's neighboring Asian countries, with only South Korea and Japan surviving due to a combination of lack of remaining exploitable resources and American protection. After the war however the Chinese Communists lost all of their southern territories, with only a few mountainous refuges remaining as the beacon of what remained of Chinese culture. Many of these warred with each other for what remained of the precious Diesel that powered everything until the last drops ran dry and the cities grew quiet. The survivors turned to subsistence farming and ranching in the coming generations, those few who could manage an education between backbreaking labor learning from maintenance manuals of the glories of the bygone era, incidentally turning any learned man into a nascent engineering prodigy. Recently however there have been a few isolated stagnant pools discovered in which a strange stone appears to grow and bleed black blood. These pools have been captured by various warlords to control the trickle of this god given gift that can power the ancient machinery, and the drums of war have begun to sound once more.
What major cities China had were destroyed by nuclear hellfire, nobody lives in them at all as they are generally considered to be cursed by the spirits of their ancestors for the failure to defeat the West. The mountain valleys they make their home however have been spared most of the ravage of the Great War with the only downside being a shortage of arable land. There are vast stockpiles of mineral wealth plundered from their lands with an almost absurd amount of the various rare earths. The greatest resource available in the territory however is the is the algae that resulted from project Prometheus, capable of slowly producing waste crude oil from water and sunlight.
Japan and Korea have both been spared from the harshest results of both the Resource Wars and the Great War but have been hampered by a lack of industrial power, specifically the energy needed to run what they did have. The territories that were once owned by southern China have been settled by both as agricultural centers and a source of manpower, what few local survivors being forced from their land generations ago and resettled by a lower class of citizens for lives of toil. The Homelands have continued their grudges against each other in numerous wars against each other fought mostly by drafted colonials forced into battle by cruel officers from the homeland. About sixty years ago the colonies looked around and realized that they outnumbered the others by a minimum of eight to one and they didn't really hate the other guys as much as they did the tax collectors. After they slaughtered their official governors and declared independence they formed the Confederate City-States and formed an economic and military alliance with each other.
The animals here are from non mutated stock and so are fairly normal barring what seems to be the descendants of the Giant Panda Bear, which has grown to rival the Grizzlies of American fame as well as adapted to a heavily omnivorous diet capable of stomaching almost anything organic without trouble. The number of these beasts have been growing in recent years as they are not particularly aggressive unless extremely provoked and locals have been using them as mobile garbage disposal rather than attempting to chase them away and risk aggravating them.
The greatest natural resource available in the area besides crops and animals is in fact the leavings of the panda since this has through some unknown mutation become a potent and stable explosive when properly smoked dry. As it requires a kinetic impact and electric discharge there has been advancements in quartz piezo-electric percussion based rifles in the Confederacy, the greatest of which is the revolving rifle used by hunters throughout the Confederacy. Additionally, there is a rapidly growing forest of a new breed of bamboo that grows as tough as steel which the locals have recently encountered and begun working.
The land of Russia was heavily depleted due to the plagues of the Resource Wars, even now the population has barely broken a million. This isn't helped by the fact that odd crystalline growths have been appearing for nearly a century that have been drastically lowering the ambient temperature around them for miles. There are occasionally attempts to destroy these growths and expand the territories but these are fairly costly in lives. Most of the population of the country live in domes constructed from semi-clear bricks made out of the shed claw-teeth of tunnel beasts as these are fairly durable and extremely poor conductors of heat and electricity. The tech base has gone mostly steampunk but there is a great collection of the last gasp of Russia's bio-engineering technology in the form of various fungi that have been engineered to grow large and fast, as well as taste and feel like various animals or plants and last in storage for decades. Each of these towns are carved into stone and powered by geothermal taps by the tamed tunnel-beasts that are the backbone of any Russian outpost.
While Russian citizens often make a rousing trade in winter crystal fragment which can cool small areas for years and up to a decade the greatest national resource here is of course the Tunnel-Beasts which appeared shortly after the winter forests began to grow, these beasts appear similar to giant worms covered inside and out in nearly foot long whitish clear Claw-teeth that they shed periodically. The ones on their hides are used to pull them along and their interior ones are a series of clockwise and counter-clockwise rotating rings that help them sort and break down their intake for digestion. These creatures are living excavation equipment, capable of navigating by sonar pulses and can tune these pulses into infra and ultra sonic lances perfect for liquidation of specific materials. Despite their name these creatures are somewhat intelligent and have formed a mutualism based relationship with humans for the single ingredient their complex furnace like stomachs can't get from the dirt, stone and metal that they eat by the ton. The Russian's give them a few gallons of Vodka to get their metabolism started after their infrequent periods of rest and in return they dig where they are asked and defecate mostly pure ingots of various metals in designated collection areas. There are rumors that since these beasts are clearly artificial they also came from Russian bio-engineering laboratories but there has been no sign of which one they originated from despite dedicated searching in the early days when their sheer usefulness was discovered.
Africa was the place hit hardest by the plagues of the Resource Wars, even now there is less than a million people living in the entire continent. Tech here is about what you might expect of a sixteenth century country as is difficult to maintain higher levels due to the people's lifestyles. They live in nomadic tribes following the vast herds of beasts they hunt and living off of the vast bounty of the land that has occurred due to a mix of much milder climate from the southern ice age and Project Eden that was the result of a persistent terraforming project designed to reclaim the Sahara desert that has overgrown the entire continent into a lush and verdant paradise. The only reason that there hasn't been a population boom to end all booms is that almost anytime a village is formed that grows beyond a few hundred people plague breaks out. These days what villages do exist house only the elderly, pregnant women and mothers with their young children and craftsmen.
The animals are not obviously mutated but have become prehistoric versions of themselves over generations. There have been rumors however of Giant Gorillas forming small villages out of their nests and beginning to learn tool use.
The only real exploitable resource that is available is food, and there is a lot of it as the soil is almost impossibly fertile and the various weeds and poisonous plants have slowly dropped in population due to project Eden. As a result of this and mild summers and winters the animal population is quite high as well. The great Dragons of the Land that are the malfunctioning remnants of the terraforming bots continue their work to this day, building great rivers, tearing down mountains and seeding the land with mutated bacteria to enrich the soil and the life that grows there as they head across Egypt and towards the the bombed out ruins of the Middle East.
No more humans live in Madagascar but there is a thriving civilization regardless, mutant lemur descendants that are two and a half feet tall on average and have a truly eusocial lifestyle and biology, each individual have adaptive mutations suited for its purpose. So far observation has shown sentries that have horns to gore any bird or beast that attempts to attack, hunters with wing flaps that they use to glide from trees to catch unsuspecting prey, harvesters that have extra long curved scythe like claws to cut apart tough plants, fishers that have webbed paws and can extract oxygen from water like a frog, tunnelers with overdeveloped spade like claws well suited to digging, warriors that are larger and have venomous claws and there have been rare sightings of occasional groups of well guarded brood mothers being escorted to new colony sites.
Clearly this isn't natural, but what can it possibly mean?
India didn't fare well in the Resource Wars, it's population was devastated by plague and it was one of the few countries actually nuked during the tail end of the conflict, however it has recovered better than most. It has begun to receive the outer edges of the benefits of project Eden and the Techbase is similar to Europe in that there are a few large clockwork powered cities fed by large surrounding farmlands. Surprisingly for a caste based society there are none of the slave powered cities that dot Europe, instead all able city inhabitants are required to serve an hour a day turning gears and in return receive the room and board benefits that are allotted to them for such a thing. While there are allowances for the lame, young, elderly and ill there are those who would abuse this system, when discovered some few are allowed to become enforcers but many are cast out and turn bandit away from civilization. The farms are reliant on the cities for manufactured goods to keep thing running and send a tithe to the nearest city for that and protection from bandits in the form of well armed and armored enforcers.
The animals are not mutated as the ones who did were culled and replacements purchased from the disputed territories and later the Confederate cities. India serves as an important hub of trade and is considered the breadbasket of Europe. People travel there to trade for spices, grain, and rare items like the winter shards of the furthest east and in return they get raw materials and difficult to manufacture items like etheric gel cells for portable power storage. Unfortunately more and more of these are stolen each year by bandits, what could they possibly be planning with those?
In no universe would the population centers of Canada not have been targeted as the source of the last oil in the world but most of it's territory isn't in bad shape just due to the distance between the cities.
In the years after the annexation a number of groups had banded together in the wilderness away from American oppression, numerous survival groups joined together with re-enactors and the Renfaire to form seven 'model villages' where people learned the way their ancestors lived. As allowed technology within these areas was restricted by their 'kings' (Mayors in actuality, including elections.) the Americans left them alone as a less restive population and only spied on them. After the Great War these were the bastions of civilization in Canada and became Feudal Kingdoms in truth, eventually growing to encompass the remaining territory between themselves, helped along by the fact that there was massive tectonic activity along the fortieth Parallel raising a long and almost impassable mountain chain and combining the Great Lakes into an inland sea dotted with thousands of small islands. In combination with a climate shift that left the winters very mild in the Northern Hemisphere the population has exploded, offset somewhat by the almost constant skirmishes and outright warfare between the seven kingdoms.
The Grand Wall mountain range is to the south. The border patrol, bolstered by the crime-slaves of the Seven Kingdoms and commanded by those few nobles who volunteer have spent generations making as many of the few remaining entrance points as impassable as possible. The people who live beyond it are seen as lesser since they actually live among the ruins and rubbish of the fallen cities and refuse to be civilized by kneeling to their rightful kings.
There are also legends about the Great Enemy that lived somewhere out there. This is of course the United States Government that once oppressed and annexed Canada. They are depicted as massive steel giants, with arcane weapons that burn with the light of the sun and sear everything that stands before them. (Power armored soldiers with Gatling lasers.) Occasionally an incursion of walking dead that serves the burning masters breaches the wall and the kings have to stop fighting and band together to defeat the lapdogs of the ancient enemy. (Massive waves of feral ghouls from the Plains of Asphodel that is located in the more or less permanent rad storm in the center of the country head north and migrate in packs across the border.)
Tech here is equivalent to that found in A Song of Ice and Fire without the unrealistic architecture, and scavengers attempting to repair technology from the cities instead of melting it down for scrap are treated as cultists of the Burning Ones and killed. Recently however winters have grown colder and strange crystal forests have grown, the Guild of Alchemists have taken some of these shards and crafted various cryo weapons from them with approval as ice is clearly opposed to the Fire of the ancient enemy. Animals here are fairly normal for the livestock but there are a number of mutated descendant of the wildlife running around. It does help their legitimacy that the Ice damage is very effective against most animals, disregarding the inhabitants of the winter ant colonies.
South America eased through both the Resource Wars and the Great War due to a combination of expended resources and lack of good targets but they aren't able to tech up for the same reasons.
While they couldn't maintain a higher tech level they were able to stabilize at a nineteenth century tech base, with the sole exception of the medical industry which found bountiful resources in the form of medicinal plants, new ones of which are found often... odd that, one would think stuff perfectly suited to cure and heal humans would have been found and exploited ages ago.
Technology tends towards incredibly complex interlocking mechanism carved of alchemically treated wood bespoke for its given purpose and never replicated exactly the same elsewhere, along with a thriving alchemical industry that has mastered medicine and moved on in recent years to examining what can be down with the lightweight and durable clear plastic that a newly discovered plant yields. A somewhat common local mutation among the populous grants almost machine like precision and enhanced senses at the cost of muted emotions and almost inhuman patience is prized by the Carpenters, who are the local technological caste.
While much of Mexico and Central America was spared the excesses of both wars due to lack of resources and decaying infrastructure it did suffer shortly after the Great War. When many Americans attempted to flee to the relative safety of South America they found to their dismay that the same tectonic activity raising an almost impassable mountain range between America and Canada was also causing southern Mexico to northern Colombia to sink into the waves. This was a long slow process that took almost a decade and most locals either completed the journey regardless or took shelter on the few high mesas forming in the process. These eventually became the backbone of a chain of islands in the shallow sea between the northern and southern continents, stretching to include the islands of the Caribbean. The weather is fair, the sea is bountiful and the only complaint the inhabitants really have is that if they go beyond the horizon from the islands they may pass the shallows and fall prey to the massive predators that now swim the depths.
Technology here has dropped quite low as there was almost no infrastructure to cannibalize for materials, however what tech they do have is focused on fishing and harvesting of the bounty of the sea. Interestingly there has been a massive growth of a special coral recently that they have been able to trade to their northern neighbors for resources. The so called Venus coral has spread far and wide in the Archipelago, examination has shown that the coral can easily be induced to grow into desired shapes by filling a mold with seawater treated with the proper minerals and can rapidly form an off white stonecrete material that is resistant to temperature or stresses and can be easily repaired by filling the damaged portion with live fragments and another batch of treated water. Testing further proved that the structures formed this way are architecturally sound and as tough as prewar armor plating. As can be imagined the City-States of Texas can't get enough of the 'Stone Seeds' and are generous in their payment. Many Islands have gotten a degree of advanced technology in the past as payment but more and more of the younger generation are instead requesting amphibious mods from Project Echidna and taking to living most of the time in the sea.
Texas and Mexico had slowly fallen into poverty and disrepair in the decades before the Great War as there were no more resources to exploit, combined with the growing reliance on nuclear power, ironically this allowed them to get off lightly in the exchange itself.
The news that they were almost untouched combined with the atomic horrors and the unchecking earthquakes in the north did however cause a refugee crisis that taxed the cities nearly to the breaking point handling those who were passing through until the decision was passed and the cities called in the inhabitants of the nearby towns and built up walls. These days the Great Cities of Texas and Northern Mexico maintain and protect a great swath of farmland to feed themselves and remain isolationist politically, only keeping ties open between themselves with occasional diplomatic teams sent via (giant) armadillo drawn chariots (buses) as is tradition.
Tech levels vary here, the cities themselves have almost parity with prewar levels in many fields and have made some breakthroughs in others, meanwhile the farmlands are mostly ;ate nineteenth/early twentieth century with some higher exceptions like power generation and hunting weapons. In the last few decades the cities have made a push to tear down and repair their crumbling infrastructure with the new wonder material being shipped up from down south.
Notable items include data and materials recovered when the genetic alteration research Vault was discovered and shut down in Galveston, as that Vault was focused around cloning humans and mutating them to fit specific environments. It was only discovered when the Iron Wombs became inoperable and the decision was made to take people from the surface to continue the experiment. While the experiments were deemed horrific, it was decided that the refined products could be useful and so the City of Houston which raised the army that took the Vault began selling them under the code name 'Project Echidna'. Currently the most popular is the wasteland package which grants radiation resistant, enhanced durability, reduced sustenance needs and minor regeneration but the amphibious package is very popular in the south.
Also of note is the Dallas Vault which focused on awakening psychic powers and refining them into potent abilities. While Dallas itself is often covered completely in the southern edge of the great radstorms and occasional radtornado that persist over central North America to this day, generations of Geo-kinetics have carved an under city, making Dallas the last to join the great City-States. The refined process of awakening gives one main ability and several related powers to ensure that the recipient doesn't accidentally kill themselves, these secondary powers have been known to be trained up into potent abilities themselves. The serum and machinery are heavily controlled by the government and the only ways to be awakened are to be a second generation citizen of Dallas or to be named a great hero of the city itself.
While the region was devastated during the Great War like most of America and suffered the climate changes and tectonic activity that followed the most interesting thing about Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi occurred relatively recently. After his defeat and humbling on the West Coast the Master disbanded his Super Mutant army and headed east to an experimental Vault that he knew was part of the G.E.C.K project. Unlike most Vaults that just had a soil collection, seeds, animal embryo's, a power generator, copy of the library of Congress with instructions for dismantling the Vault as material for a community or the rare Vaults that also included the matter transmuting devices that could literally transform the area around them into whatever they were programmed for this vault took the latter device and made it more potent by transmitting it as a carrier wave hidden in the background radiation.
While this method was slower it also had as much greater range as the signal could be repeated and wouldn't burn out and destroy the device. The Master has given up on directly uplifting humanity and has entertained himself the last eighty years by transforming the area into a true Garden of Eden. The area is a massive old growth forest filled with custom species of mutated monsters and tailored plant life centered around Yggdrasil, a tree the size of a prewar skyscraper whose roots spread deep beneath the territory carrying the signal. While the land is fertile and the process dropped the radiation levels by default not many humans live within the forest due to the sheer ferocity of the beasts and deadliness of the plants which changes year by year along with the terrain. Most humans live in cities along the Mississippi where the forest refuses to grow and periodically send groups in to attempt to reap the glorious bounty that awaits the brave and lucky. Another sophont race lives deep within the forest however, a growing tribe of intelligent chameleonic deathclaws relies upon a special herb to ensure their children are born intelligent. They have slowly been mutated over the generations as a side project of the Master, they are more ape-like in structure and have picked up tool use in addition to language and civilization. rarely do these two groups interact and when they do tensions run high.
The resources and beasts here change from time to time but there are a few stable prizes to draw fools and threats to deal with them. Many of the trees have incredibly light and sturdy fire resistant wood that is prized for its properties by builders as much loggers curse them. There is a fruit capable of removing a decade of your age back to your prime which obviously fetches a fortune each time a few are found, and various cataloged plants that have medical properties rivaling or surpassing prewar medicine.
Most of the territory in the former states of Oklahoma, Kansas, Arkansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Iowa, and Missouri, as well as the panhandle of Texas have spent the centuries following the Great War covered off and on in massive Radstorms, preventing travel much less human resettlement. This however has made it into an ideal land for Ghouls as a combination of high radiation and the spores of a local plant have combined to cause their regeneration to outpace their degradation, allowing them to appear fully human along with other benefits, such as reducing their needs for sustenance to the point that they could go entirely without sleep, food or drink... if they were dumb enough as that is a sure fire recipe for going feral.
Interestingly Vaults 68 and 69 were located in Lincoln, Nebraska. These two Vaults were set up for gender studies, with 68 having 1000 men and 1 woman while 69 had 1000 women and 1 man. The local branch of Med-Tek developed the Iron Womb, a remarkable cloning device capable of growing a creature to maturity which was often using in conjunction with gene data to create livestock for other Vaults, in these two however they were set up to continue the experiment with the sum total of the human genome. After only a century however these Vaults were cracked by a combination of severe tectonic stress and extreme weather in the area, killing the inhabitants. Ghouls quickly found the sites and after examination, repurposed the Iron Wombs and Indoctrination pods set up for education, and inserted data to ensure that they turned out new ghouls to bolster their population. Many will wander off by themselves and go feral but enough join the community that the elders deem the operation a success.
Tech here is fairly standard for the Wasteland barring the cloning devices, however the hazards are not to be discounted. In addition to standard Radstorms there have been cases of Irradiated Lightning and Radtornados, worryingly these seem to occur more often and focus on any baseline humans that attempt to pass through the area. The only animal unique to the area is a firefly the size of a cazador from the Vegas area, these are intense radiological hazards as each time they light up they also release Rads, and when they are killed they explode in a cloud of plasma. Strangely enough, all feral ghouls in this territory gain glowing green eyes and appear to join a hive mind, heading north to form huge masses along the mountain chain that protects Canada. While the ghouls don't need food or drink they still need to breathe and seem to be incapable of difficult actions like swimming or mountain climbing so are only capable of crossing over during the true winters that occur every few decades, as only these can manage to partially freeze the surface of the Inland Sea. The Mississippi Vikings often thin the herds as they pass through and inform the officers of the Grand Wall before heading down to the Riverlands for the duration of the winter.
So, the Zetans. In this scenario there were originally a few more of the motherships since they are now fleeing their homeworld after having ruined it for inhabitation. They are still jerks that were behind increasing the tensions in the lead up to the Great War and were behind the Resource Wars in this scenario as well. They are currently more or less a failed civilization since they aren't even capable of standard reproduction anymore. They get around this somewhat by the use of iron wombs that take a set genetic sample and introduce minor mutations before gestation. There were four of these 'Castes' when they left the homeworld. The leader caste was in charge and are the ones that were responsible for wrecking earth. They were toppled by the warrior caste since that was an incredibly counterproductive way of killing the humans so that they could settle earth. The warrior caste isn't very creative and are literally incapable of understanding surrender or the enemy fighting back. The Leader caste genome was destroyed on their orders. The Science caste is your typical mad scientist if they were also absolute sycophants. So many of them die to their own experiments that their genome has been altered to develop in batches. They are good at refining technology though. It's only when they are 'innovative' that they die in droves. Finally the engineering caste is responsible for maintenance. Their genome is actually surprisingly the most rugged of the four since they get treated like slaves and work harder in worse conditions than the others. They are the backbone of the Zetan colony in Yellowstone after a third mothership accidently stopped a few dozen nukes that were aimed at the super volcano. Many of the warrior caste were incapacited by the crash the dropped the ship and fried many systems beyond repair, and others were 'accidently' purged by the Engineers during the 'frantic attempts to repair the ship and leave the surface' that followed.
Infrastructure here is entirely powered by a super 'zetathermal' tap on the Volcano that has played havoc on the continental plate but accidentally prevented a massive volcanic eruption that would have gone off a few years later, killing most of the wretched survivors of the Great War. The locals have massive Molecular Forges capable of rendering down matter into the atomically pure feedstock and using that to rapidly print out patterns stored in its databanks. In war, they have crew served mobile force field bubble projectors, as well as their champions equipped with a device that utilizes Tensor field reinforcement to grant them unnatural speed and strength on par with the locals.
Unusual local creatures include exploding chipmunks, carnivorous buffalo, massive swarms of pigeon sized bloodbugs that descend on prey in packs and giant spiders that the colonists have begun domesticating.
New York was heavily damaged with a number of surviving communities based solely in its extensive subways, as well as having a somewhat more intelligent and not openly antagonistic variant of the super mutants forming tribes on the surface.
These gentle grey skinned giants engage in trading materials scavenged from the surface to the sickly underground dwellers who are more technologically advanced and provide finished items back to them in return.
The area between the Great lakes has been submerged by the cataclysm, leaving thousands of small islands floating in a massive fresh water sea linked via canal to the newest course of the Mississippi river in the south and the largest passage into the seven Kingdoms in the north. the major faction here is the Vikings who are descendants of a group of engineers, renfaire enthusiasts and Larpers who had the technical skills and materials to ensure a high social position in the aftermath of the great war. They are what you get if techno raiders get comfortable in their control over an area, having become known as noble protector of any settlement in reach of their nuclear steamboats and atomic catapults salvaged from car engines... as long as they pay the Dane geld that is. Despite their brutality when crossed this area is peaceful as even most raider groups aren't dumb enough to catch the attention of over a thousand power armored Viking Thanes.
Notable technology incudes nuclear retrofitted cargo steamships from the 'great revival' of 'nostalgia' prior to the great war (in reality, it was a lot cheaper to buy a few cars and tear out their power plants to retrofit into a steam plant then continuously buying increasingly expensive fuel) fitted with computer guided catapults armed with stripped down powerplants from decaying cars loaded into barrels for splash and shrapnel damage on top of the radiation, high quality home made power armor, and a strange obsession with powered versions of medieval weapons made by adapting the kinetic energy storage and amplification devices originally used in super sledges to anything they can fit it in. This has lead to improvements to the design over time, miniaturizing it further and greatly improving the amount of kinetic amplification with an attached fusion cell, and recently some have begun making kinetic beams and fields as well reversing the input to create a crude dampening field which slows things around the device and creates electrical energy.
Mind you, this was just a fun thought experiment based mostly around having more tech trees than Atompunk. Feel free to use anything you want, or none of iy if it doesn't appeal to you.
If you didn't figure it out, Australia is the source of most of the extra weirdness as they were able to bootstrap themselves into the near post scarcity that Pre-War America showed the promise of, taming their land with the fruits of Project Eden and extensive genetic engineering of the wildlife and living it up while performing Science on the uncivilized barbarians. Unfortunately the one thing they can't reasonable produce even with their nuclear furnaces is the very lifeblood of their civilization in the form of radioactive materials. And so they have begun to turn their eyes to conquest of the wasteland that was once America, having already taken Hawaii by military might as a forward base...
Could have done that, but, it's 'on topic', and a significant contribution, so SV's rules allow this, and I found it an interesting read... So, sorry, I'm glad it was posted for general reading.
