Lluvia Eterna

**Current Year: 1923**

Classification: Hell World

*“In many ways, it is hard for modern people living in First World countries to conceive of a pandemic sweeping around the world and killing millions of people, and it is even harder to believe that something as common as influenza could cause such widespread illness and death.”*

-Charles River Editors, *The 1918 Spanish Flu Pandemic: The History and Legacy of the World's Deadliest Influenza Outbreak*

Just after the conclusion of WWI, from January of 1918 to December of 1920, our world suffered one of the deadliest biological disasters in the history of the human race. The Spanish Flu Pandemic was a global outbreak of a strain of the H1N1 Influenza Virus that infected a total of nearly 500 million people worldwide
over the course of three years. The contagion was so virulent that locations of
infection included places like remote Pacific islands that receive little
interaction with the global community, and even residents of the Arctic Poles. By the beginning of 1921, nearly 100 million people in total had been killed by the pandemic (roughly 5% of the global population at the time), more than the total
of casualties that occurred over the entirety of WWI, making it one of the
deadliest natural disasters in human history.

Humanity was, however, able to ultimately contain and survive the outbreak and recuperate over the following decades. The parallel Earth known as Lluvia Eterna, however, did not have the same fate. Lluvia Eterna is a world where 99.5% of the total population of the Earth has been killed by a strain of virus that started during the Spanish Flu Pandemic.

## Origins of an Outbreak

   A differential strain of the H1N1 Influenza Virus, which is still being studied by Homeline Parachronic epidemiologists, came into existence in the world of Lluvia Eterna and caused vastly higher rates of death. Originating at some point in 1917 at a hospital camp in Étaples, France, during the final stages of WWI, the virus was rapidly disseminated outward with the unpredictable troop deployments that followed the conclusion of the war. Aided by the efficiency of 20th century transportation, infected individuals were able to accidentally expose themselves to countless victims over incredible distances in

an incredibly short amount of time. Just like in our universe, the virus propagates all over Europe, and arrives in America as an outbreak at Fort Riley in Kansas in early 1918, which spreads to New York within a month. Simultaneous outbreaks strike places as far away from the initial origin as Russia, East Africa and Japan.

## A Biological Killing-Machine

The virus’ origins in troop movement aided its mutation, as the lower immune-response of soldiers due to malnourishment, injury and exposure to trace amounts of chemical weapons created a much higher rate of infection, allowing multiple deadly strains of the virus to develop, severely complicating attempts at fighting it with medication.

This version of the H1N1 Influenza Virus seemed to feature a longer expanse of time between infection and the first registering of symptoms in an individual, allowing for a longer period for the contagion to spread before a carrier could be isolated, treated and quarantined. With a single cough or sneeze disseminating upwards of 500,000 virus particles, Influenza is one of the most easily communicable infectious diseases.

While the Spanish Flu killed one out of every five people it infected in our universe’s version of the pandemic, a uniformly inevitable 1 to 1 rate of mortality followed this universe’s version of the virus. In addition, while our universe’s version of the virus had an unusually high mortality rate among young adults to the middle-aged, the Lluvia Eterna version of the virus is almost uniform in the death-rates of varying demographics. No one category of victims has any real advantage in survivability over the others.

## Plague Inherits the Earth

    As time progresses, the gravity of the situation becomes gravely apparent to the people of the world. By August of 1918, nearly 7 million people have died of the infection worldwide. Attempts at quarantines stem the tide, but are largely unsuccessful due to the virus’ incubation time before symptoms become apparent.

By January of 1919, more than 10 million are dead worldwide, and panic becomes almost as much of a threat as the virus itself. By May of 1919, all international train-lines around the world have been completely shut down, as well as intercontinental shipping-yards. Charnel houses and crematoriums across the world become government-controlled biohazard disposal sites, barely able to handle the shocking volume of corpses the pandemic produces.

France and Spain see the most devastating initial progressions of fatalities, each suffering more than 15,000 deaths from the virus in the single month of March, 1919. The relatively new Soviet Government of Russia is ill-prepared to deal with the exploding pandemic threat, with Vladimir Lenin himself being one of the casualties before 1920, igniting a power-struggle in the Soviet government that degenerates into a multi-faction civil war and eventually chaos, with more Soviet citizens starving to death than succumbing to the virus that year.

Public alarm causes a run on the banks, leading to a global artificial recession in June of 1919, further complicating the situation. With the shutdown of many trading routes, many communities around the world struggle
with food-shortages, which the world governments attempt to compensate for. Civilian ration-programs in places like Japan, Britain, Russia and America
produce disastrous results due to undiagnosed infected individuals in the government handling mass-produced food supplies that make their way to the public.

    By December of 1919, more than 20 million people are dead, more than 10% of the global population, and major societies begin to start breaking down. France, Spain, Britain, Poland, Greece and Italy have declared martial law in an attempt to remain in control of the degenerating situation by early 1920, with the United States soon following suit. As the death-toll reaches 40 million within months, desperation drives those brave enough to exit their homes (or those forced to due to dwindling food) to riot for more government supplies

to simply loot other locations, whether the occupants are living or dead. Large numbers of civilians are killed when the overstrained government forces begin a policy zero-tolerance for insurrections. Massive swaths of urban areas in various countries are declared quarantine zones with no entry or exit allowed, imposed with lethal military enforcement.

By November of 1920, 90 million people have been killed by either the virus or the chaos it’s caused, nearly 45% of the entire planet’s population. henW it is announced by the United States government on November 26th, 1920 that President Woodrow Wilson is the latest fatality of the pandemic, any semblance of order collapses. As civil wars and border disputes erupt between the weakened countries of both the European sphere and the Oriental sphere, the death-toll climbs exorbitantly higher. Thomas R. Marshall, formerly the Vice President, has no chance to restore any sort of order in America as even the United States government breaks down into desertion and infighting as half the global population is now dead.

Escape from the virus seems to become impossible, as even many of the earliest survivalists that sought isolation for themselves and their families turn out to have been infected before doing so. Death seems inevitable as nearly any organized community is vanquished. Desperate attempts are made by the scientists of
governments around the world to uncover a cure, or at least some form of inoculation, but medical institutions eventually fall to the societal chaos as well.

## The Long, Quiet Rain

In the Current Year of 1923, the world of Lluvia Eterna is an eerily silent graveyard from continent to continent. More than 99.5% of the global population is dead. The once populated cities stand abandoned and utterly quiet, with streets still home to long abandoned automobiles and the odd skeletal remains
of an unburied corpse.

Not a living soul can be found remaining in any urban
setting. There are currently less than 10 million living humans in total remaining on the planet. Survivors of most advanced societies exist in the form of underground or remote quarantine-shelters, government-created and organized or otherwise, living off of dwindling supplies. With the apparently inescapable fate of death once someone becomes infected, survivors are terrified to exit into the outside world, even with the full protection of primitive biological hazard suits.

There are survivors that haven’t resorted to quarantine, surprisingly enough. Several pre-industrial civilizations still exist solely due to their lack of contact with the global community, including Eskimo communities in Alaska and Canada, Sub-Saharan tribes in Africa and tribes of the more remote South Pacific Islands. Some of these communities are or border on being wholly Uncontacted Peoples, meaning that in addition to their way of life not changing, they are unaware of the events of the world at large.

Rumors thrive among people in quarantine-shelters of contact with mysterious
individuals roaming the desolate Earth unprotected that don’t fear infection due to some kind baffling natural immunity, but these are largely believed to be fanciful, paranoid legends due to traumatic stress among these communes.