Life's a funny thing isn't it? It's not something that we ask to be given, and it's not something that we know we want until we are given it. But from the moment we have it we do everything in our power to keep it. The preservation of one's life can be one of the greatest motivating forces. It can drive the placid to fury, the honest to deception and even the most passive to murder.

So it is with this in mind that I begin a tale of lies, deceit and murder. For if the preservation of life can warp the minds of even the most gentle soul, imagine what it could do to the soulless.

The longer you spend in the desolate wasteland the harder it becomes to remember what once was. To think that what was once a great civilization could disappear so suddenly is a thought that, were you unaware of the current circumstances, be ridiculed. However, considering the ineptitude of those in charge makes it understandable as to how the greatest fuck up in history could have happened.

It seemed like a great idea on paper. With tensions rising in the middle east following the latest outbreak of terror it was decided by the powers at be that we need to end our dependency on oil once and for all. The natural (figure of speech) alternative to that was nuclear power. So with a sort of gusto that could only be achieved by politicians trying to maintain face, nuclear plants began cropping up. There weren't many to start off with, but as society began to finally get over the taboo associated with nuclear power we began to become more and more dependent on it. Before long we depended entirely on nuclear power. And then, as we can always expect it to do, the Government did what they do best... They fucked up.

As is always the case, the bigger something becomes the more it costs. As certain as you can be about that, you can be equally as certain about the fact that the Government hates spending money. So as the Unified Nuclear Program (UNP) started getting larger and larger concessions had to be made so that we would have enough money to support the elderly (kind of funny to think that they were the first to go). It was then discovered that costs could be drastically decreased by automating much of the power plants and this had the added benefit (ha) of ensuring that operation was unified amongst every UNP power plant. Let that sink in for a moment, every single power plant in the first world was being run by the same computer system. For anyone who has ever used a computer (don't have them anymore...) you probably know that they too can fuck up, so would you be surprised if I told you that every computer simultaneously fucked up and caused the entire first world to blackout? To be honest you probably wouldn't, but sadly that isn't what happened. What actually happened was that an error in the safety protocols meant that the core shutoff temperature could change under fringe conditions, which meant that the core could get way hotter than it should, which meant that the entire thing could meltdown, which meant that something happened which made Chernobyl look like child's play. 

So that's the boring bit about how it all started. What you really care about is what happens next. But before I get to that there is probably something I should answer. Who am I and why should you listen to what I say? The name's Alex and to be honest you probably shouldn't, I was never a very interesting person, but given that there isn't that much to do in this godforsaken place you might as well. Who are you? Probably no one. By the time I finish this I wouldn't be surprised if everyone was dead by the time I finished this, but due to the aforementioned lack of things to do (see above) writing is really the only thing left for me to enjoy.