I often wonder what the world of Cataclysm DDA will be like in the future. What will it be like 20 years down the line? 30? 40? 80? 210? Are we looking at something like Fallout, or are we looking at something like RIFTS?
There are a lot of factors to consider. The first is that The Blob continuously refines and evolves its creations over time. What was once a Zombie Brute is a Zombie Hulk by year 5, and by Year 10 or 20 it could be something capable of surviving 25 rounds of 8x40mm caseless emptied into its face. And this applies for many monster. Also remember that any mammal over 50 pounds that dies becomes a zombie, so the zombie wildlife grows more and more with each passing year.
Then there’s more immediate threats like the Mycus, who can turn large areas into inhospitable fungal nightmares in a few days. There’s also the still running robot network. All it takes to wipe out an entire camp of survivors is a Tank Drone thinking that those survivors are an “Illegal Homeless Encampment”.
It’s not all bad, however. There are quite a few organized factions in the remains of New England, including the Old Guard (Yay America!), the Free Merchants (Yay Capitalism!) and the Hell’s Raiders (uh, not sure what to say here), all of which could potentially lay a claim to wastes in the coming decades.
A lot of technology is either gonna be lost, or gonna stay buried for a long time. I could see the Old Guard getting the resources to build new weapons and power armor…while I could just as easily see people from the Hell’s Raiders finding a suit after a drunk party in a lab. Give it a few decades, and you’ll have the Cataclysm equivalent of Glitter Boys.
Mutants will shape a role in society, too. I’m not sure what, though. Mutation is likely to be something to be feared. Or possibly seen as a sign of power, because many mutations make you far better suited to surviving the endless hordes of dead.
What does everyone else think?
The zombies are a finite resource. While they are constantly evolving and have a strong capacity for self-repair, consider that XE037 is waging a war on multiple fronts, including the human survivors, the Mycus, and the Triffids, with the latter two generally being heavily dominant in direct conflict. The Mycus is even capable of essentially re-zombifying zombies, with even hulks being easily subsumed by fungal spores and placed under it’s control. Even some of Earth’s newly-mutated native wildlife, such as the giant wasps and bees, can massacre huge amounts of basic zombies. While the blob is likely going to persist on earth indefinitely due to it saturating the atmosphere and water table, it’s likely to become much less of a pervasive threat within a decade or so due to attrition, though places like the vaults and some dense population centers will likely remain extremely dangerous for the forseeable future.
There’s every indication that barring some unforseen development, the Mycus will quickly grow to become the dominant biosphere on earth, especially if it starts recruiting multiple “emmisaries” from within the human survivors. While the Mycus hive mind by itself doesn’t seem to be especially intelligent, having their forces being led by sentient, intelligent beings could make them completely unstoppable.
At least on land, that is. I haven’t seen any evidence of the Mycus being able to spread into the oceans, whereas XE037 clearly has that front covered, as demonstrated by the Zarks/Biting Horrors or whatever they are called now.
What’s up with zombie sharks and aligators and such, by the way? I thought the zombies were supposed to be mammals only?
I’d count robots on Team Human. Remote hacking will eventually restore them to human control wherever humans persist in significant numbers.
I’d view that as evidence of the blob adapting. Presumably, mammalian biology is simply the first that it learned how to interact with, due to mammals being the first form of terrestrial life it encountered. I doubt there’s anything intrinsic preventing zombies from revivifying reptiles, fish etc, other than specimens above the required minimum mass (roughly the size of a large dog) being relatively rare.
I wouldnt write off the blob just yet, each faction has its own tricks, and you haven’t seen everything they can do just yet. The jabberwock is a hint though, where did it get all that biomass?
They are not, though I like the way you think.
Aren’t Jabberworks Extra-dimensional creatures that absorb the creatures they kill, and assimilate the blob into itself?
Nope, they’re blob entities that learn to absorb dead biomass.