Reaper Initiative

The Initiative was commissioned by General William Somerset as a replacement to and deterrent against General Zebulon McCandless's Number of the Beast Program - which had kept imprisoned super beings since [[World

### Aliases

Reapers, Reaper Ballistic Missile Arsenal

## Affiliations

### Creators

Scott Beatty · Christos N. Gage

The Reaper Initiative was an American program designed to creating a series of weaponized, superhuman clones based on The High known as Reapers.

## History

The Initiative was commissioned by General William Somerset as a replacement to and deterrent against General Zebulon McCandless's Number of the Beast Program - which had kept imprisoned super beings since World War II to be trained for McCandless's belief of Armageddon - in fear of the possibilities that its prisoners wouldn't trust their government and turned against it if released.

The Initiative's origins dates back after the superhero John Cumberland, The High, gruesomely died from colliding into StormWatch's force-field - the Storm Door - although he survived albeit as a liquefied mass of his former self; his remains were collected by the American government and were used for cloning super-soldiers based on invaluable notes from Dr. Jacob Krigstein under the Krigstein Initiative. However, the initial experiments were fatally unsuccessful. Nevertheless, the United States Army Corps of Engineers created a whole partheno-genetic division devoted entirely on Cumberland under the Reaper Initiative. Clones of Cumberland were subject to having independent thought-inhibitor implants jammed into their brainstems to ensure that they were kept in line and under control, given the fact that the clones demonstrated a gestalt complex as children; tending to think and act in collusion like a hive-mind. Also, the clones were purposely designed to explode similar to the potential of a nuclear missile to ensure mutual assured destruction, in which they came with a fail-safe clock and literally being encased and delivered by missiles. These clones were stored in multiple missile silos throughout parts of the United States.

The Reapers were activated after the Number of the Beast Program was compromised when Cumberland was interfaced into the program. Upon arriving at the NOTB bunker in Nevada, the prisoners were teleported away by The Authority into the Bleed, forcing the clones to travel into the sub-reality where their minds were compromised. Because of this, the Reapers became out of control and were intent on eliminating all of Earth's post-humans and causing worldwide catastrophe as a result. Ultimately, the majority of the surviving Reapers encircled Earth's orbit and detonated - as their expiration had ended - causing a combined massive explosion which knocked Earth from its orbit, creating environmental disasters and nuclear fallout which nearly wiped out all of Earth's human population, and turned the planet into a post-Armageddon wasteland.

## Paraphernalia

**Transportation:** The Reapers were delivered by intercontinental range missiles.

## See Also

* 2 Appearances of Reaper Initiative
* Images that include Reaper Initiative
* Organization Gallery: Reaper Initiative

### Footnotes

1. ↑ *Number of the Beast* #7
2. ↑ *Number of the Beast* #8