The Post-Apocalyptic Roadmap/Montana

Part of the Post-Apocalyptic Roadmap Project.

Huh. Well, kid. You want to know what happened to the "Glory of the West", do ya?

Well, then, here's how the chips fell.

My home is gone, burned in the hellfire of Great Falls AFB and the NORAD command spread throughout the state. The great ranch land and grazing that our state used to offer? Gone. The center of the state is one great smoking crater, filled with radiation to last to the tenth generation. Low-yield citybusters took out Billings, Missoula, Bozeman and Helena. Everyone fled to the edges of the state, though being Montanans (the folks who had the brass to heckle Teddy FRACKING Roosevelt), they are resolved to stay on the land that they've fought tooth and nail to keep from taxmen, EPA regulators, and the cold grip of a Montana winter. The folks what were in the western cities, Missoula and the rest are dead. Too damn many nukes too damn quick to warn anyone. And thanks to the summer before being the hottest since the 1989 fire season, the flames spread by the bombs just got bigger when they reached the mountains. The whole of the West was burning again, covering the skies in an umber haze that could cover the moon some nights. The upside is that the prevailing winds carried the radiation north, whilst letting the ash settle in the valleys, creating small pockets of virility in the Paradise Valley and other places.

Yellowstone? It burned away with the rest, chasing the animals out. That winter there were more wolves than had been seen since 1887. They're getting bigger, now too. The great "Grizzled Bear" as Meriwether Lewis called him, has remembered that it is still the top predator in the area.

A mountain man has a world of danger awaiting him, now...

Heh. I s'pose I should tell you folks about Butte, now. There's a funny story.

As Montana cities go, Butte was big ('course that ain't saying much). A center of mining since right after Lewis and Clark finished their report to President Jefferson.

As it was a mining town, it had one of the most multicultural communities north of Denver. Huge Irish population, big enough that a Boston Southie wouldn't feel too out of place, especially come St. Patty's Day. There was a Little Italy, even a Chinatown. (And thus, LOTS of Catholics, leading to friction with the eastern and Northern parts of the state.) This gave a rather homogenous state a wee dab of color. According to locals, their city was "BUTTE, AMERICA", not Butte, Montana. But what Butte was (in)famous for was her water.

Eastern and Northern Montanans, before the "Big Burn", used to mock Butte folk for either A) Being drunken, swearing, Catholic (the important part) BASTARDS who had had to drink all the alcohol because the water was so bad, or B) Being stuck-up, priggish, Oh-so-holier than-thou Protestant BASTARDS who drank the water (because drunkenness was a Catholic thing) and thus became insane mutants.

Nobody's laughing about that second joke anymore. Butte is now a war zone, a scene from the Seventh Circle of the Inferno. Out of the nuclear hellhole that is our new world, out of the black and green ...water... of the Berkeley Pit, come the Host of the Pit. Driven mad by the terror of the Burn, and delusional from the contamination of the air, water and soil, these terrifying...things came down from their mountain home. They have come to bring salvation, they say amongst themselves. They bring a "new baptism" in the "holy" waters of the Great Pit, to cleanse the new world.

But the West is not without hope... The Beasts of the Pit are withstood by the brave efforts of one man and his merry, drunken band of hooligans. One Father Brian Michael O'Halloran, a not-so-retired Marine chaplain, veteran of the Jungle, the Sandbox, and the Rockpile, who fears none but Almighty God and who is quoted saying, "Praise ye the Lord of Hosts, and then pass me the ammo, I GOT one of the sonsabitches".

He holds the pass out of Butte with a ragtag bunch of misfits. Irish pub brawlers, Italian and Greek boxers, Scots with bad tempers, and the rough-and-ready cowboys of the plains.

O'Halloran and the Hellions hold the Pass.

You gonna hold it with 'em?