Hi me! If you’re reading this I’m guessing you need a pick me up. Which is understandable, life’s been kind of shit since the nuclear annihilation of America in 2023. You may be living in a cave, scavenging ruins for basic necessities while dodging and hiding from hyper aggressive mutants, but at least it’s not 2020. Here’s a couple of reminders on how your overall quality of life has improved.
Minimal Covid-19 Risk – So, the virus isn’t actually gone, but with most of the human population gone and nearly all of the infrastructure destroyed, social distancing is easy! And you need to wear a respirator everywhere anyway to minimize exposure to the radioactive ash that’s constantly falling from the sky. As a bonus: there’s no Karens or Kevins around to bitch about how wearing a respirator infringes on their freedoms. Because they’re all dead, because they refused to wear respirators.
Overall Safer – I know most cis, white people would disagree, but as a non-binary asian, I actually feel safer wandering around the ruins of Portland. Yeah, the mutants are dangerous, but so were the Proud Boys and the KKK, and it’s way easier to deal with mutants. For one thing, mutants don’t have a police force that will beat the shit out of you for fighting back against them, and the mutants are more polite. They just wanna eat you and whatever food you’re carrying. There’s no moral judgement about how you shouldn’t exist in the eyes of their god.
More Functional Economy – Okay, so we haven’t quite gotten to the point where money is a thing again, and there are still people trying to hoard resources (usually food). But the mutants take care of that; nothing like a mutant hoard descending on you trying to get all the tasty food you’ve stockpiled to make you think twice about stockpiling. So resources are cycled back into our economy one way or another, instead of being stockpiled in an offshore Cayman Island account, doing nothing. Oh! But make sure you cook the mutants thoroughly, radioactive fire shits are not fun.
More Comprehensive Healthcare – Right now, if you have a health problem, you head over to whoever’s collected and read the right books, get them to figure out what might be wrong, and then handle the problem as best you can. In return you give them whatever you can offer, food, building materials, ammo, a favor, whatever. It sucks. But that’s what you were doing pre-2023. Only now you don’t have to pay a bunch of people to “negotiate” with the doctor. And pay them to agree to help you pay for the doctor, only to have them come up with a list of reasons on why they don’t have to help you. Or pay for them to demand the doctor do things they don’t actually think is a good idea. Or pay for them to tell you when you can and can’t see the doctor. Or pay them to tell you which doctor you can and can’t see. Or a million other things I can’t think of right now, but the point is you can just go see the damn doctor and pay them to care for your health.
No Twitter/Facebook/Instagram/Tiktok/Whatever – Man, you want to talk about a blasted hellscape? The radioactive, mutant infested ruins have nothing on 2020 social media. I, for one, do not miss the constant conspiracy theories, the raging ultra-conservatives, the rampant lies and misinformation, the dangerous shallowness of “influencers,” the constant need to know the next piece of information, regardless of quality, content, or accuracy. That whole mess is better off buried under radioactive rubble. It’s true, we had to give up the Internet as a whole, but can we just admit we mostly used it to watch reruns of Bob’s Burgers and move on?
So there you have it. Sure you’re creature comforts have gone to shit, but the accessibility of supplies to satisfy basic needs are through the roof. Overall, I’d say it’s a quality of life improvement. Having all the video games in the world doesn’t change how stressful it is to live paycheck to paycheck. Quality of life post-nuclear annihilation: Improved. But seriously, make sure the mutant is cooked all the way through, last night was the worst carnage I’d seen since the Portland Police opened fire on protestors in the Portland Massacre of 2021.