The Purge

The Purge is a period during The Fall when the Mortal forces went to war against the supernatural races.

## Detail

What has become known in popular culture as the Fall will live as one most historical moments in human culture. It was a point that defined what it meant to be human and forced mankind which had long fought wars over nationality, religion and race to set those things aside an instead deal with the nature of what it truly meant to be human when facing enemies who in many ways embodied the most basic attributes of what humanity knew to be evil. No one that watched the news in those first days and saw the rampage of 10 foot tall monsters killing every man, woman and child in a Detroit street will ever doubt which side they should be on.

No one that saw monsters drink the blood of their victims then bath in it will forget or forgive them. But it was these very acts of savagery and wonton destruction that created the Fall itself. Government had not been set up to deal with individuals of such power as the one who according to reports called up an earthquake and leveled the city of Denver with a loss of life that has not been determined even today in 2039. This was just one of many such incidents. What is not brought up in many histories is that much of the fighting seemed between different factions of parahumans. It is conjectured that the destruction of the computer networks and other acts of massive destruction were not the result of aimed destruction at humanity but in many cases was collateral damage in what may have been a war between them for supremacy over humanity.

As the reports came streaming in basic infrastructure broke down. During those initial weeks, the first thing to go was the complex network of computers and satellite uplink stations that controlled modern communications. Few people realized the house of card nature of civilization and the interdependency of a multitude of basic services. Major cities did not grow food and most did not have more than a weeks worth of supplies on the shelves. Like smaller natural disasters the first thing many people did was run to the grocery store and stock up. Hoarding and food riots were almost immediate. Shipments of food stopped, as computer-controlled trains didn't run. Trucking stopped as many urban inhabitants fled into the countryside jamming highways and overwhelming the infrastructure of the suburbs while many drivers simply abandoned their jobs. Many police found themselves torn between protecting society or their families and choose their families. Military units cut off from command and controls of the central federal government begin operating as independent units.

A complex network of ham operators and couriers using older tech methods stepped into the breach and some semblance of control began to reassert itself. That control based on the east coast found that distances that once were measured in minutes became measured in weeks of travel. Old style ham radios were unreliable and the United States Government made what many consider the hardest decision it had ever made. It abandoned the west coast and Midwest, pulling back to a line along Appalachian Mountains. Pulling in the military forces it had. Those moving into the countryside quickly found that without law or military force both the parahumans and human criminals struck at will. Many tried to return to what was now seen as the relative safety of the major cities. The Fall had taken place during onset of winter, thus deaths from starvation, exposure and disease became rampant. The population of the United States and most urban areas plummeted and smaller cities as well as some major cities in the interior of the US became ghost towns in a matter of months. This created the areas between current cities that are now referred to as the Badlands or Wastelands.