Post-Apocalypse/Post-Collapse general?

Im currently in the midst of working on a novella set in a post-collapse New York State can we get a thread going of post-apocalyptic stuff?

How post collapse are we talking? anything less than a decade you are going to be running into neo-cannibal tribes in most of the state, but given enough time most of them will burn themselves out through fighting and disease, any that survive eventually become a long term problem for anyone looking to rebuild. Long island alone would make McCarthys The Road look like it was written about a girl scout excursion.

Northern NY State you might find a few groups that banded together and rode out the worst of it, eventually moving south and west to retake the areas.

What caused the Collapse?
How long ago was it?
who is it about?

Told this story before but I'll give you a bump cause I like this thread OP

> playing savage worlds
> post apocalyptic campaign
> have a character who severs a female NPC's spine after capturing her
> not for rape urges, but as revenge, plans to give her a "new life" in their village
> they cart her around in a wheelchair, she slowly starts to die from infection
> she is also a major plot point being the River Tam psychic-girl trope that a nearby cult is searching for to force her to help them summon their elder god
> end up in combat with the cult
> one of the guards they find during their mission shoots and wounds the character
> she is just trying to protect her family to be honest
> the character has two wounds and is pissed as fuck for some reason
> finally outflanks her sneaking through some concerete
> catches her unaware
> shoots her twice, crippling her legs (we were using Gritty Damage)
> proceeds to take out his Saiga 12 shotgun and fire it five times into her chest.
> I remind him this isn't GURPS and once she's down it doesn't really matter rules-wise
> he proceeds to literally unload the entire mag into her body as she tries to crawl away
> I track out the wounds (even though she only has one as an Extra) and roll a Vigor to see if she somehow survives
> she does, despite being horribly torn apart and bleeding to death
> character picks up piece of rubble and chases her down, starts beating her head in with it
> finally I give in and say she's fucking dead already
> he gets his knife and cuts her body apart, saying how he cuts out her organs and stomps on them and shit
> i finally tell him to stop
> he says he's just RPing his character
> shows the gory remains to the girl he crippled as a warning of what will happen if she pisses him off

What the fuck is wrong with the people I play with.

its all bout two hundred years so I guess its more post-post apocalypse. At least one civil war and more or less every major city is so broken down they're basically iron mines in the form of scrap.

What about during an apocalypse? At the rate of play my group manages, we could stretch a nuclear exchange out for a few sessions.

I mean the actual exchange would be like ten fifteen minutes really. The immediate aftermath would be ripe with stuff I bet.

>Told this story before
Dude, you tell this story every month.

2 centuries post apocalypse you would see a resurgence of very early industrialization again, maybe stationary steam engines, like you said cities would essentially become mines for all kinds of resources with the occasional tribal band of savages that have survived. trade would start up again, you might see roaming nomad groups that survive on trade and scavenging.

unless someone with knowledge and resources or access too those resources set up a method to manufacture guns, its back to black powder, single shot weapons, maybe camp and ball, easily flintlock, but dont think that limits you as a DM as well, Look up the Puckle Gun, and extrapolate from there.

any form of preserved knowledge would be worth its weight in gold, think Highschool/college chemisty or anatomy texts. only problem with those is that the paper most books use these days decays incredibly fast.

various new religions would definatly pop up, so you have a fertile field for fiction right there, maybe even a form of Cargo Cultism has sprung up among scavengers.

cannibalism would still be seen as taboo, but if any of the cannibal tribes had survived, they may only reserve it for special ceremonies, rituals, defeating another tribe or something.

semi advanced metallurgy would be standard, folks would relearn to quite probably an 1900's level depending on the settlement size and disposition, some groups might see technology as Anathema, that it brought about the end of the world so it should stay that way. they'd have all sorts of whacked out stuff like "gear shall not turn gear, lest the will of man be to far removed. Though shalt not meddle with the energies of the sun or sky, for they are the makers tools that wrought destruction upon is in their wrath." some shit like that.

tribes and poor nomad groups might even use knapped glass arrowheads, while archery as a whole would be fairly widespread.

Well I wasn't far off on the tech at least, I will say its focused more around the great lakes than anything else with the start of small nations that rose up in various old ruins and the like. The Mohawk valley for example is a major focus at it's the one reletively easy to travel corridor east and have become a point of contention for a further inland polity and one that rose up in the Hudson valley thats finally getting its feet under it with a middle man in the form of folks that live in the valley taking neither side.

I've told it like maximum 6 times in the 18 months since it happened. Unless someone is reposting it.