ITT: We make a comfy post-apocalyptic setting

> The population is less than a hundredth of what it once was, a township of five thousand would be considered a major population center

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Gundam X?

>Currency is usually anything particularly shiny, though specific tribes, cities, and townships have begun adopting specific items as their respective standards. The settlement of Marshton has had particular success with polished spoons.

I couldn't resist OP.

how did the appocalypse happen?

Not quite, but I like your way of thinking.

Nice, there's a lot of items that'd make good post-apocalyptic currency, keys, trading cards, mechanical parts, etc.

I think it might be comfiest to keep it vague, how is this in terms of comfy?

> Mutually-exclusive rumors abound about what could've caused the endtimes in their great-grandpa's day, and it's one of the few things people still get worked up about

>About 30% of the remaining population is infected by an old nanomachine """"Cure"""" that went berzerk. Instead of patching up their wounds, as it was originally intended to do, it literally makes them a human bomb if they ever injure themselves. And anybody hit by the blood spatter is infected too. Some manage to keep this a secret. Some live in all infected societies. All are feared and hunted.

Post apoc jungle, everything is lush green and overgrown. Remnants of the old world dot the landscape like great skeletal Cairns covered in vegetation. The air is sweet, the water clean and the beasts are numerous but lazy.

"Nuclear war, zombies, robot uprising, pandemic, alien invasion, or just the march of time, it's been a couple centuries since it happened, and we're a bit fuzzy on the details. We've only recently started pickin' up the pieces and remaking civilization. Point is, son. I don't know, but maybe it's better we don't know how. Now go to bed, kiddo. You've got school tomorrow, and I've got work tomorrow too."

Keys makes a lot of sense, because possibility of opening something valuable, meaning they are backed, very sturdy, and finite quantity to prevent inflation like fallout bottlecaps. I really like that idea.

Trading cards, no. Way too fragile for a post apocalyptic currency.

>The few predators of these lush stretches of jungle are often well fed from the sedate nature of their common prey. This results in rather fat apex predators, like six-limed tigers that bat lazily at passing human scavengers.

How about you check top post, roll and if you do not get 01 commit suicide?

Cozy apocalypses are sociopathic. Lots of people died but it doesn't affect me, LOL!

If I found myself in that genre and I did survive? My new name would be Murder.

John Fucking Murder. And I would come after every tea-drinking, cat-owning, smug, self-satisfied son-of-a-bitch I can kill.

>society has rebuilt itself to be far greater than it ever was with fully automated luxury communism but a small fraction of the population, so every person can have ideal real estate and enjoy exploring the ruins of old humanity

what kind of tech level are the locals of this community working with?

k

Lots of people die every day user. Lots of people died in the past for all kinds of different horrible reasons. Time, and people, grind ever onward. So it goes, as they say. Considering the fact that one could die is pointless, so one should always assume they live at the very least for the sake of planning.

I figure a combination of low medieval tech they've rebuilt from, and the occasional scavenged piece of modern day/futuristic technology, which probably could be touted around by people with minor powers of showmanship calling themselves "wizards"

It's so sociopathic to be stoic and optimistic enough to survive apocalypse and remain civilized!

No, the correct human response would be to put on some spiky pauldrons, grab the biggest truck and go murder random strangers!

Fair.

Cozy apocalypse isn't about people dying. It's about THOSE people dying without even the courage to name them.

That doesn't sound very comfy, unless it forces everyone to not physically attack each other for fear of infection.

>every bit of knowledge that has been salvaged from the ruins of the old world, as well as all the knowledge made in the new one, are kept in book form in the massive "archives" in the major population centers
>one day, a bright eyed, bookworm kid is combing through the archives, looking for something new to read, when he finds an old, dusty set of books in the very back
>these books aren't stories, or tomes of knowledge, but a set of rules for a game the people of the old world played.
>with curious mirth, the kid spends all of his free time studying them, and piecing together the rules, characters and setting
>one day, after mastering it the kid invites all of his friends over to play, instructing them on how to play it
>everyone has, after a bit of confusion, a great deal of fun, and everyone agrees they should make playing the game a regular activity in that circle of friends
>after the game session is over, one of the kids asks the bookworm: "say, what's this game called?"
>and the bookworm replied: "it's called Dungeons and Dragons"

Maybe instead of just killing you, you just get bad scabs that never clear? Heal quicker than normal people, but its still leaves you looking rough. Like a low-key version of Fallout's Ghouls. Call them Scabbers!

But that would just mean that literally everyone would be covered in scabs. You are going to suffer minor injuries, scratches, cuts and bruises just from everyday life.

Maybe these things only appear when you are in contact with others' blood, and only on surface of contact?

Global warming hit, went the full +8C, sent us back to the early Eocene, everything is rainforest and tiny mammals.
Ungulates, bats, miniature elephants, primates, rodents and marsupials, beginning of modern birds, with exceptionally large turtles and pythons.

What if it's a genetic trait?

Nanomachines created in the end wars buzz in swarms through the land, searching for complex machinery to animate and make deadly. Like a virus for machines, literally anything can be infected, though machines with multiple moving parts are prioritized. Simple machines, like adjustable wrenches are not so useful, but more complex objects with the ability to move themselves or do damage can be much more effective, such as guns or cars. These swarms are literally sentient, and extremely intelligent in the most malevolent ways imaginable. Luckily once a swarm connects to something, it cannot move from that object. If only someone could find the damn factory producing these things...

Quasi-organic metal growths are a commonly scrounged for resource. Literally grown by harmless but directionless cytoconstructors, it's used to make high quality tools or jewelry. The material can be found anywhere a container has been breached, usually in former industrial or service areas. Smart scavengers have even figured out how to farm the stuff, growing small orchards of metallic plants.

>Miniature elephants

Man has a new best friend now.

Nice Gone with the Blastwave OP

It would take something absolutely massive to take us below age of enlightenment.
Like, it has to be so sudden and so total that we lose all traces of everything not learned through immediate observation. All books removed or rendered useless through removal of literacy, all common knowledge severed.

Otherwise, at worst we drop to scientific method and electricity as expensive novelty, reaching first industrial revolution literally as soon as we have the appropriate infrastructure, second industrial revolution upon achieving it's prerequisites as well. Which leaves us at right before WW1 in less than 200 years after disaster, barring political issues preventing necessary trade or a total lack of resources.

Idea: in the aftermath of a nuclear war, most people agree that rebuilding what was before wouldn't be desirable, and probably would result in the same outcome. Technology plateuas at the level of the Amish.

and then their neighbor that didn't handicap themselves assaults them with WW1-technology tanks and takes over their territory and resources.

Evolution.

>hurrdurr what if one guy goes ahead and privately builds and operates a tank took over the world.

Gamma Burst strips away the Ozone layer, leaving most of the earth's surface irradiated and dead. Humans either go underground or live near the poles during the winter months.

Luddite apocalypse. It's a possibility.

But it requires completely new goals for man, since progress and expansion don't really fit that model.

...

One man angrily trying to get his "super weapon" through ravines, out of mud, across rivers and when he finally shows up to a village Johnny Fucking Murder tries to fire his cannon, but the round is a dud. The people thank him for the show, give him some food and he grumbles his way to the next village saying "This time they'll fear me. This time they shall know murder."

Well for starters, it all started when two top tier generals got in an argument over whether vodka or whiskey was better.

Right, but 'progress ' is a fairly recent goal for man. And presumably an apocalypse might cause us to rethink our priorities.

I'd probably throw in that low fertility rates due to genetic damage keeps the population and violent low, so there's not as much threat of scarcity of resources.

THAT'S how we handle for a comfy setting.

That one goof trying and failing to become a supervillain by recovering old, faulty tech while everyone else stays contented agrarians.

The Heinz Doofenschmirtz/Team Rocket. Career comedy relief villain.

Maybe go full tribal? Groups of nomads travel scavenging for their villages, bringing back useful supplies from cracked open bunkers and old warehouses. Most weapons from before The End havent been maintained or were ruined by the environment. Each tribe is run by the descendant of a Thinker, a person with a specific skill set that tribe became proficient in (doctor, hunter, farmer, scoentist, etc.) And most tribes are too busy trading valuable knowledge and services to focus on war

>progress is a fairly recent goal for man
If by recent you mean fertile crescent 5000BC.

Admittedly that is the final 5% of homosapien's existence. But 50% of the time we've had rudimentary cultures, and 100% of the time we stopped being primarily migratory.

Because by that point we had libraries, meaning a concerted effort to create/discover new information and save it, so that future generations will grow further than the previous.

And the only way to prevent progress is to either refuse to try new things (see Amish) or to never record them in any form, so all discoveries are lost immediately (why oral records were important, developing writing acted like turning on the nitro, and why the printing press (the first mass telecommunication) made us go exponential.)

One is a function of man's curiosity, the other for our compulsion to spread memes, a drive so strong it often rivals our compulsion to spread genes. Our propensity for the latter is what made us rise above our nearest ancestors. Archeology shows us that while Neanderthal spread ideas like intelligent apes, a single tribe adopting a basic idea within a few generations, Sapiens would spread it across a countryside in a matter of years if not months, with every added mind now puzzling at its solution or uses. We overtook them because we as a species parallel process.

Fighting either takes a concerted, almost religious effort. Stopping both would be to reject our fundamental identity.

People did not think about things in terms of progress 5,000 years ago. Libraries did not exist to form a foundation for greater things, but to preserve recieved wisdom against the periodic wars, famines and natural catastrophes that could wipe it out. The universe was assumed to be fairly static, and the fundamental question was not on improving what we had, which was assumed to be the natural order, but protecting it against societal collapse.

For progress as a goal, you're looking even lower, a few hundred years, give or take.

>Cozy apocalypses are sociopathic. Lots of people died but it doesn't affect me, LOL!
Not if the apocalypse happened a hundred years ago or even one fucking generation past it. Once the apocalypse generation's edgy teens roll around, you have a society moving away from giving a shit out what happened in favor of starting something for themselves.

Everywhere is humid and misty, you cant escape being wet and hot so you have cultures that adapt with bright but skimpy clothing, cooling mudbased high pigment bodypaint is common. The warriors of the cultures enjoy finding old world relics like guns and high grade steel but armor is generally not favored because it's just fucking uncomfortable in the jungle.

Progress and expansion are a part of our evolution. It's what natural selection selects for. It the goal of all life.

It may be only the last hundred years that we've been self-aware enough to acknowledge it and intentionally aim for it (Individually sentient for a while, but sentient as a group very recently), but the wolf does not need to be aware that it's goal is to become quicker and more alert to catch more prey for that to still be it's goal. For certain choices to be better for survival is enough.

I adore comfy water world settings. Where you have islander adapted peoples setting up on large flotillas and being fisher folk, divers or scavengers with small salvaged subs combing sunken cities for old world tech

Monster Hunter
Phantesy Star IV
Lunar 1&2

All comfy and post apocalyptic, the cute art style also helps.

Look up catastrophe, it's pretty damn comfy

>Monster Hunter
Yeah that's basically what we've been describing, only with giant monsters and heroes who reliably hunt them for either safety or resource needs.

If we decide grand adventures involving big monsters and big heroes that usually have happy endings isn't too uncomfy then we're basically just done here.

Made this a while ago, might be shit
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Old plastic cards like credit cards etc could also be good money alternative.

Chances are the lack of electronic infastructure and magnetic decay would make them worthless as anything but recyclable plastic

Oh fuck yes
>miniature elephants as farm animals
>miniature elephants as mules/pack animals
>miniature elephants as livestock
>miniature elephants as cavalry featuring built-in minispears

That's the best kind of apocalypse.

I'm cooking up a post-apoc setting for a CYOA I'm making

The idea is that instead of a single event apocalypse (nuclear war, meteor crashing on earth, etc.) the "apocalypse" happened over a long span of time because of pollution, global warming, vast conventional warfare, etc., so we end up with a desolate, depopulated world that's mostly covered in polluted/dead areas with a few isolated human settlements left

Think of the Death Stranding trailers if you want a visual / audio feel of what I'm aiming for

If you want I can post a few of the characters for the CYOA I have in mind, I'd be glad if you could give me some ideas for other characters as well

>pic related, soldiers from the old world who became biologically immortal thanks to cybernetics and occult ritual and now operate as a mixture between mercenaries and Death-cult templar knights

Friendly reminder that genocide/*insert conflict with many thousands killed* happened *insert date decades+ ago* and therefore you're not allowed to be happy even for single day.

kys and follow them

Exactly. They're good currency if they're easily portable, not intrinsically useful, and extremely hard/impossible to mass-produce.

Well, then a post-apocalyptic setting is by definition impossible, because 'progress' couldn't possibly result in a threat to the survival of the human species.

Also, you don't understand evolution our fitness.

The fuck is that garbage

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

...

>Dungeons and Dragons
Truly a be dark age