W3 - Background Story

No one, but a small inner faction of an unknown government, knew who wrote and planted the "Black Eater" sleeper computer virus into the computer networks around the world. At first, it just lay dormant, spreading itself across the net and into storage backups, just notifying a particular web address that another node was affected.
                      When it finally reached critical mass and was activated, it crashed the global banks and that, in turn, crashed the economy of the world. Of course, each government blamed their most hated foe for the deed. Once the banks had been done away with, the riots began. Here and there at first. They just kept growing larger and larger, the destruction got more widespread.
                       The cities were not safe anymore. It soon spread to the outlying areas, as the law broke down under the pressure. The military were called out, but they were too little, too late, spread too thinly. Little pockets of stability here and there survived intact, if they were isolated enough and self sufficient, but it was just delaying the inevitable.
                        Luckily, the nuclear bombs did not fly, as many warmongers had predicted in the past. There was no one to aim at who were not suffering as you were suffering. The command structure fell apart as communications were disrupted and then failed altogether.
                        Some say that if that had been all of our troubles it would have been enough to end our civilization, but when Maxwell's Comet hit Siberia, it shifted the polar axis and released massive amounts of pollutants into the atmosphere.
                        The weather went crazy after that. When Mother Nature turned her back on us, then our civilization was doomed. The sea level rose and flooded low level areas, hurricanes ravaged the land, desert areas grew in size, in many cases finishing off what the rioters had started. The rotting bones of our civilization lay everywhere.
                           Gang battled gang, fighting over what was left of any use to them, The population of the planet plummeted, as the innocents were caught as targets or just in the crossfire of conflicts between opponents. Survivalist skills became valued, alas, too many did not have them when it mattered,

(To be continued).

Ivor

P.S. This is my made up background, not from the Wastelands 3 rules.