Wounded Soul (Original Story)

Chapter 1: The World So Far, and The Settlement

**WARNING: THIS STORY CONTAINS CONTENT THAT VIEWERS MAY FIND DISTURBING OR TOO SENSITIVE, SUCH AS VULGAR LANGUAGE AND DESCRIPTIONS OF VIOLENCE. VIEWER DISCRETION IS HIGHLY ADVISED BY THE AUTHOR HIMSELF.**

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Book Information:

"Text" = someone speaking

Text = someone (usually the protagonist) thinking to themselves

Text = the setting of the story (date, time, and location), which is bound to change

Text = Story transition

TEXT = important information (posters, the emergency alert system text, etc.)

Video/music links = my custom soundtrack, or sounds for the story

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May 14th, 2021 (The world was devastated from the nuclear bombings of Nov. 2, 2020. As such, almost every single major event that has occurred afterward doesn't happen).

It's been at least six months since the global nuclear bombings, which shocked everyone. Occurring on the evening of the Day of the Dead holiday, what started as a civil danger for the United States turned for the worse, as everyone, including the Bernstein family, discovered that this was happening all over the world. An unknown threat wiped out billions of lives off the Earth, using hacked nuclear missiles.

What was so unexpected about this event was that all of the nuclear arsenals in every single country were used to wipe each of them out. It didn't matter if they came from a country that was friends or enemies with another, it just happened. Just like that.

According to the radio news station that the Bernstein household listened to, the bombs not only targeted major cities, but also locations of cultural and industrial significance. For example, the first targeted location in the U.S. was Bakersfield, California; a major city located in the agricultural hotbed in California's Central Valley. Specifically, it detonated at least six miles southeast of the city- which not only destroyed half of the metropolis but also ended up releasing significant amounts of radiation across the lower central valley. In the United States, the majority of the targeted locations were major cities and their suburban neighbors, but there were also reported bombings of Native-American reserves across the western states, along with a few national parks, and major industrial districts consisting of factories, farmland, power stations, water reserves, etc.

The west coast states fared for the worst. All-out assaults blossomed in the major cities, and most of the conflict was about protestors seizing the chance to overthrow the government, with a third party going against both as well (they would shut down the protestors while trying to change the state government through violent, radical means). In most of these states, protestors who went against racial injustice over the summer of 2020 wanted to push their territories and force their way into law, while the military and police pushed them back. The "third party" are either radicalized folk who seek to end the issue through violence or are another secret organization of terrorists or political members who saw the opportunity to come into power. The result was a great bloodbath that lasted at least two and a half months, during which almost 1/3 of the population in Washington were slaughtered. Even though the protests have vanished, the cities and towns that were not bombarded became abandoned, filled with rotting corpses. Small but violent gangs are all that's left of them now.

California had the least violence compared to her northern neighbors but still lost their government once they lost their chain of supply intake. Los Angeles ended up getting nuked twice, one 10 kiloton bomb produced in North Korea dropped over Disneyland, and the second bomb with the same force as the atomic detonation over Hiroshima, bombed a small neighborhood 3 miles southwest of Beverly Hills. Both of their intensifying heat radius' ended up spawning a major 6-alarm fire in Los Angeles. Combine that with the fallout and you got yourself pure chaos.