[OOC] "The Patriarchists: A Post Apocalyptic Tale of Love, Lust, and Loss"

[KingTony]

Contents page yet to be written.

[KingTony]

The Story

Prior to our role play's beginning:

The Apocalypse began in the year 2020 with a biological weapon that would come to be called the Man Killer:

• The virus was designed to affect only those humans with a high testosterone to estrogen ratio, aka males.
• It could not survive outside the human body for more than just a few minutes; and those infected were not later contagious to those who hadn't been directly infected by the virus.
• It would be dispersed by unmanned aerial drones passing over either enemy forces on the battle field or cities occupied by enemy, rebel, or insurgent forces.
• As such -- because the overwhelming percentage of combat troops were still male -- it could depopulated an area of enemy force in under 72 hours without spreading far from the combat zone.
• Of course, other male non-combatants in the combat zone would be affected, but that was determined to be acceptable collateral damage when compared to the death rates of all genders, ages, and combat involvement of normal forms of warfare.

However, shit happens: the virus which had been designed without an ability to mutate did ... twice!:

• The first mutation was communicability: the virus could now be passed from person to the next.
• The second was external longevity: the virus could now live outside a human host for weeks.
• Before anyone realized what had happened, the virus had spread across the globe; and the male population of the world was plummeting.

It was during this spread of the Man Killer that the Third World War -- the Last World War -- began:

• No one today knows who launched the first missile, but the reason for its release had been accusations of responsibility for the Man Killer Virus.
• Blame didn't really much when the shooting was over: hundreds of ICBMs struck cities across the northern hemisphere and even in a few countries in the southern hemisphere.
• The result was devastating:
  
  
  
  • Nuclear Winter:
    
    
    
    • Tens of millions of tons of soot and dust rose to the mesosphere obscuring the sun.
    • Global temperatures plunged, killing most plant life (and many animals incapable of surviving the cold temperatures), thus disrupting food chains across the globe.
    • More than 95% of Earth's plants and animals were wiped out.
  • Nuclear Summer:
    
    
    
    • After the skies began to clear, excessive CO2 levels led to a significant greenhouse effect.
    • The planet warmed, and many of the species who had survived the Nuclear Winter now perished.
  • Ozone Depletion:
    
    
    
    • While this cooling and heating was occurring, a near-global Ozone hole came to be.
    • The high radiation levels caused long term changes to the physiologies of what animals -- including Humans -- managed to survive the 20 years following the war.
• The final result was:
  
  
  
  • Most of the life on Earth was wiped out;
  • And that which survived was altered forever.
  • Humans like all mammals saw physiological changes:
    
    
    
    • Males: sperm counts dropped significantly in most men, causing some to be sterile from birth and others to have difficulty successfully impregnating a woman.
    • Females: many were born infertile.
    • Both genders: the median life span dropped to 28, with very few people living to the old age of 40.