The Post-Apocalyptic Roadmap/Minnesota

Part of the Post-Apocalyptic Roadmap Project.

Rochester

Before the bombs hit, we were known for two things: the prestigious Mayo Clinic, which had many of the finest doctors in the country; and IBM headquarters. It made for a strange juxtaposition: a haven of medical science and technology in the midst of the reddest county in a blue state. If anything could stand as an example of the difference between Old Conservatism/Neo-Conservative thought, it was Rochester.

Maybe it was for the best that by the time the nukes flew the Mayo Clinic was only the #3 medical facility in the United States. Who remembers a Bronze Medalist, let alone aims for them? IBM's decision to relocate production facilities to Mexico left Rochester in a precarious position: a one-company town with two companies worth of intelligentsia. The wi-fi hotspots became a haven for aging fatbeards trying to spin gold from straw, and the seeds of Rochester's undoing were sown in a myriad of local newspaper comment boards.

'Mother Mayo' must have seen the writing on the wall, since before the worst of things their Florida and Arizona facilities got fresh stocks of medical supplies. Not that it did them much good- no matter how many band-aids you put on a sucking chest wound, it's still going to kill you.

Chicago was close enough for radiation to be a worrisome, but the real problem, at least as perceived by the Fox News crowd was the anti-intellectual rioting by all the Somalians that Lutheran Social Services had been flying in over the past years. White fright, class resentment, xenophobia.. In a river valley cut off by EMP, flooded by the sick and the dying, it was only too easy for a heavily-armed populace, unwilling to step up and volunteer, to declare race war. The first, and worst, were the truck bombs. The Al-Siddiq mosque, the Peace Plaza.. the four fanatics who managed to drive directly into the Mayo building before setting off their charges.. We'd made access to the Mayo Clinic the hallmark of our infrastructure, and that is what killed us. Watching the burning demise of the Gonda and Plummer buildings with the smoke rising from Saint Marys as a backdrop marked the end of Rochester. The fighting was brutal; it was then that we lost the few priceless electronics that had escaped the EMPs--and the people who were willing to work 'low-class jobs' to make more. It was almost surreal, watching the creators slaughtered at the hands of the designers and users. Somali, Hmong, Indian, Norwegian.. if you weren't WASP enough, you didn't dare go outside. They left the few surviving doctors alone, as long as they treated the rioters... What they did to the women still gives me nightmares.

...Then the first militiamob came through. Packs of white supremacists from SE Minnesota, Stearns County and the Dakotas, their bloodlust unsated by the horrors committed in the Twin Cities and rez country, determined to unite the state as Cold Texas. The fatbeards and their allies met them with open arms, only to be shot at the hands of their 'white brothers'. The mobs forced the doctors into their gang, and blew away anyone who thought to suggest otherwise. Almost as an afterthought they blew up the water treatment plant and the power plant, leaving us the Waste-to-Energy facility as some sort of sick joke. I hear they didn't survive too long in Winona, but that may have just been a happy story to buy the teller some antibiotics.

There's nothing left for us here. The water's tainted, the food supplies burned with the riots, and it's clear we've been written off by the United States. I have some relatives in the Dakotas, and I've got some gas left in the truck. Should make it a decent distance before I have to start on foot. Hope the coyotes out there haven't mutated. Wish me luck- I hear they've got cannibals operating out of the SPAM Museum in Austin.

Minneapolis

It's been a few years since the split. I was stranded in Minneapolis for almost half a year, the buses were all commandeered for mass-evacuations down in the Chicago area. Eventually I got back home, and was grateful to see that not too much had changed. Downtown College avenue was swamped with refugees from Milwaukee and Madison, though those cities had not been hit, they suffered nonetheless from the panic riots and a general fear of possibly being hit later. The parks were similarly crowded. The Performance Arts Center had by then been claimed as a base of operations and management center of the CGUS, who were handling aid for the refugees. Appleton natives were asked to provide what they could to this end. The refugees have mostly cleared out now that it's clear there won't be another strike anytime soon. Some stayed and have become a part of the community, while others along with some native Appleton residents moved further north to join the dispersed farming communities that have become popular since the split. CGUS still holds the PAC, and has been working along with the staff of Lawrence University to provide "post-crisis education seminars" frequently, as most local schools have been abandoned, though some people still aren't too happy about CGUS presence, they seem to think that the midwestern states can take care of themselves, and I've heard some talk of seceding to Canada. I've noticed folk like that tend to take walks down Olde Oneida street towards the river locks late at night...

CGUS has also been trying to place the Appleton Paper mills under military control, but they've had little luck there as martial law is no longer under effect. Fox River Mall and Northland Mall have generally been abandoned, there were some small looting riots from what I hear, and businesses have consolidated towards the more populated areas, people don't drive anymore unless they going somewhere far, so there's not much reason to go out there.

Farmington

Post-nuke journal #2

March 4th

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

Scavenger. Trespasser. Adventurer. Loner. Killer. Explorer. Robber.

It's been two years since the nukes fell. We've received no word from Rosemount in a week. Probably the fault of the ghosts.. lost souls in the one-time Japanese internment camp. They tend to fuck with electronics. Since the hell unleashed, it seems as though the supernatural has gotten a power boost. I hear rumors of more haunted locations around here than I ever heard of before.

Before the nukes, I played S.T.A.L.K.E.R., Metro 2033 and Battlefield. For some of us it was games and books that taught us how to survive. I was an Airsofter as well. This is part of what helped me survive. I had been working on my physical conditioning just before the nukes fell. I had the combat gear. My mind knew how to get around a firefight. And this being Minnesota, we know how to deal with winter, nuclear or not.

My friends and I took over northern Farmington. We started our own survival clan, named Freedom, like in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. We banded together as brothers and sisters. It was people like us who had the gasmasks. We have weapons. We have the know-how. Those who didn't know, we taught.

We scavenged what we could. We bartered with the Donnelly farmers for meat and milk. We survived.

Then it all fell apart. Some had just had enough. People started offing themselves in the middle of night. Others simply left.

March 15th

The coyotes are getting worse. They're starting to lose their fear of humans. Must be the mutations. There used to be a few handfuls of them around here, now the damn things are everywhere.

Apple Valley

April 2nd

Apple Valley, scourge of my life, is now the scourge of Dakota County; full of gangs constantly fighting over nothing. All that remains besides idiots is a couple square miles of ruins. We try to not go there, but between what's left of Best Buy, Home Depot and Radio Shack, it's hard to not. We do need new parts now and then.

June 4th

We had to make a supply run in Apple Valley today. Talk about a fucking disaster. We were going to try and raid what's left of the Home Depot and the Menards across the road. We managed to get our drifter truck there to haul whatever shit we found.

Home Depot had hardly anything useable left. Lots of sheet metal and chains, though, and we stole some of the product racking to brace our roofs.

Menards was worse. We made out of there with a handful of lightbulbs and some plumbing supplies. When we were loading up our ride, snipers opened fire on us from the IHOP. Assholes were way too far out of our reach. I suppressed a couple of them with fire from my Nagant, but I couldn't get any hits. They dropped three of our group before we got out of there.

.. Like I said. Scourge of Dakota County.

Lakeville

April 2nd

Lakeville seems to have fared the best so far, but that's to be expected. They have the Airlake industrial district; concrete warehouses, those buildings will stand for quite a while yet.

September 22nd

I took shelter in the Imperial Plastics building, one of a couple warehouses that is functioning as a town for survivors, and the only one we Freedomers kept good relations with.

They offered some food, but I turned it down. I had packed enough for myself. They have a shitload of booze here though. Unknown to the rest of us, people in the Con Agra Foods building started building stills and such from the processors. I bartered for four bottles of whiskey and two of vodka. Pretty good shit, actually. Someone over there knows that the fuck is up.

Elko

September 23rd

We had to become S.T.A.L.K.E.R.s to survive. We had to. But it's the nature of a true S.T.A.L.K.E.R. to wander. Eventually our dear Freedom simply fell apart. That's fine by me, I couldn't stand living with my former friends anymore. Their world views and philosophies were just too fucked up and unrealistic for me to cope with.

I spent a whole night cleaning my Mosin-Nagant rifle, and left, heading south to Elko. Five and a half day trip on foot moving from house to house to avoid freezing to death. Thank god for my snowshoes. The drifts are up to ten feet in most places. I have to be careful in the neighborhoods. You never know just what the hell is under the snow. You could fall into an old shed or through a skylight if you don't pay attention. Then you're shit-out-of-luck stuck.

September 24th

I stayed the night at the old Elko Speedway. I had the fortune to find a stash here. I don't think it will be missed, because a man I can only guess is the owner died not five feet away with a bottle of vodka in his hands.

I apologize to the corpse for my theft, but I doubt he cares anymore.

I don't know what this guy was thinking. I found only a Remington 12-gauge on his person with seven shells remaining. In his stash I found a gorgeous civilian AK-74 5.45x39mm, with six full magazines.

I left three bottles of whiskey, and I took the AK and the remaining 12-gauge shells.

Webster

November 27th

I am at my family's hobby farm, now a refuge for all of us. Fortunately my father had been a US Army engineer, and the farm is now a stronghold. My uncle and his friends sure as hell have the firepower to defend it. We're no Cheyenne Mountain or whatever, but we are capable of defending what's ours. I hate to admit we've had to cut down many of the trees around here but we need the firewood for winter, we need the palisades and fields of view for our defense.

Every week we seem to find a new radioactive hotspot. It's imperative we map these, so as to try and ward off animals from entering them.

I was the roamer. The loner. The S.T.A.L.K.E.R. I was the first of our scouts. Even now, three years later, we were finding scattered people. We do what we can to help but it's a hard fact that to survive a nightmare, you have to have a bit of greed in you or you get milked dry.

We have power.. a very conservative amount. A couple light bulbs inside and two floodlights outside.. and of course, our radio. My family was awfully smart early on. My uncle had half a dozen car engines sitting around that were built into generators. It's easy as shit if you know what you are doing. Find a good car alternator that fits on the engine you have, and you can power up for a couple hours a day until the alternator goes bad. Takes a few years for that. Only problem is the noise. You have to kill the noise somehow, and the car battery that fires the spark plugs will need to be replaced in two more years.

Fuel is easy to make, surprisingly. Burn up some wood in a fire that is hot enough, get it good and black, then you mash it up real fine in a solution of kerosene or alcohol. Not the cleanest stuff, and engines don't always like it but it works.

Post-Nuke Journal #3

March 20th

We hear radio reports from the north. Some garbage about Canada. America's hat is now a refuge for the desperate. And those assholes from Rochester, The "Militiamobs" or some shit. Our ground was too well fortified and too well defended for them to deal with. Minnesota was lucky to not be hit directly, but the fallout from the south and west is a bitch to deal with. It also meant we had more assholes who thought they were in charge.

Rice county is S.T.A.L.K.E.R. territory now. No gangs will threaten us. We are free to live as we want. Those government idiots keep trying to tell us "We'll help you" and all that shit. We can take care of ourselves a hell of a lot better than they can.

On top of the daily human struggle in our white lands, we see strange lights in the sky. Our airspace here was rife with air traffic three years ago, but these lights are different. There is no jet or propeller noise to go with them. It's said they are angels searching for the remains of humanity.

I think they are extraterrestrial.

New Prague

Post-Nuke journal #3

March 27th

Roamers tell us that New Prague is a ghost town. It's perfectly habitable, they say, if not for the inexorable supernatural presences. The wanderers tell of groups of ghosts in the city, moving about their daily business. They say that unfortunate people who "touched" a ghost, or simply got too close, drop dead in an instant.

No one goes to New Prague now. Not without an undeniably good reason. Life is a bitch, but unlife can be far worse.

Two Harbors

Being so far north and so far from anything important spared Two Harbors both direct hits and any fallout damage, and while the Great Lakes are now a toxic, radioactive stew, the lack of serious fallout in the area means that there's plenty of available land for farming. A decent portion of the populace has left the area, but the remainder are heavily armed and not in the least willing to tolerate looters and raiders.