centuries ago at the command of a pope who's been erased from the history books, as the bridgehead of a crusade against Hell.
2
as the subterranean acoustic healing sanitarium of a wealthy cult.
3
as an experimental geothermal power plant.
4
as a deep underground neutrino observatory.
5
by a billionaire survivalist who was torn apart by a mob before they could make it to the shelter.
6
as part of a Keynesian make-work program during a recession - it was never expected to be used.
D6
The disaster which drove people into this fallout shelter
1
was entirely imaginary, though no less disastrous - a perfect storm of mass psychological manipulation and hysteria.
2
was a bioweapon unleashed by transhuman elites who'd made themselves too alien to be affected by it.
3
was the lifting of the holographic veil which created
the illusion of the universe beyond our solar system, and the terror of
the true night sky which followed.
4
was the truly unfortunate combination of a meteor impact setting off the eruption of a super-volcano.
5
was microbes being released which were meant to break
microplastics down into harmless sub-particles - unfortunately due to a
mutation when the microbes reached a critical mass they merged into a
globe-spanning plasmodium which converted microplastics into a lethal
gas that filled the atmosphere.
6
was a network of orbital weapon satellites going rogue and bombarding population centers around the globe.
D6
This fallout shelter is sustained
1
by a highly-efficient recycling system that transmutes
its inhabitants' waste back into edible nutrient-paste. Even with its
efficiency the system requires the occasional human sacrifice to lessen
the load on it & replenish its stocks.
2
by an enormous stock of non-perishables - by now reduced to a worryingly-low level.
3
by a hydroponic farm - recent yields have been of such poor quality that many are becoming paranoid of sabotage.
4
by a cloning bank meant to help repopulate the Earth - now used only for making meat.
5
by a drill-well dug way deep down into an underground sea - its life slurped up and mashed into slop for the shelter.
6
by eating the contents of a Noah's Ark-esque zoo & seed bank annexed to the shelter.
D6
This fallout shelter is controlled
1
by an AI wired into all its systems - and by anyone who
has learned to construct arguments in its arcane logic, and learned it
well enough to out-argue everyone else who also has.
2
by an unassuming old lady who holds no official
position but is able to play the other inhabitants of the shelter off
each other masterfully to achieve her aims and amusement.
3
by an epileptic child-prophet who suffers genuinely-precognizant dreams.
4
by a squad of mixed martial artists who melted all the weapons into slag, so they could rule by the strength of their fists.
5
by a celebrity whose fandom has spread throughout the population.
6
by a mechanical system of buttons and levers and dials
and so on, all contained within an extra-fortified command room - an
agoraphobic NEET has barricaded himself inside, and demands to be
provided with food and new comic books in exchange for not destroying
the shelter.
D6
The people in this fallout shelter
1
go about topless and tattooed with fragments of sunsets
and sunrises, so that in their mingling and passing they might create
true-enough glimpses of the world they lost.
2
speak in a strange accent which developed organically
among them, and prevents the sound of speech from propagating through
tight spaces.
3
carry a few taxidermied dogs and cats, and dote over them like babies.
4
carry chemically-scented nosegays to give respite from the shelter's stale air.
5
invent new names and backstories for themselves and each other as a delicate and competitive art-form.
6
have, in the absence of intoxicating substances,
discovered highly-complex math problems that get you high when you try
to solve them.
D6
This fallout shelter is threatened by
1
people knocking on its doors every night, promising the situation on the outside isn't as bad as they think.
2
a serial killer anonymous and active among them.
3
its own inhabitants' reckless expansion into the surrounding stone.
4
an increasingly-militant movement among its
politically-dissatisfied, pushing for the implementation of formal
democracy and laws.
5
a rash of ghost sightings - ghosts of those related to those within the shelter, those left behind.
6
tectonic activity cracking open a barely-wriggleable rift to the surface.
Definitely a lot of gameable ideas in this one. It would be fun to create several of these and see if you could fit them together in the same world. Might be tricky with multiple disaster origins, but even that could be interesting.
Definitely a lot of gameable ideas in this one. It would be fun to create several of these and see if you could fit them together in the same world. Might be tricky with multiple disaster origins, but even that could be interesting.
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