Story Idea!

Originally I had felt to title this Plagued, but upon reflection plagued doesn't seem like the right fit. It just doesn't convey the message of the overall idea the way I thought it would. I started with the title you see, under the usual cliche of zombie type apocalypse but as I wrote it just became something else.

-Insert new title here-

Heh. Let us see where this ride takes us maybe people want to hear more of this story a title could become more apparent with time. For now at least onwards with the idea.

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Premise

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2020 - 2025

The world began to end in 2020, Society slowly shutting down. The outbreak of a new disease caused people to be issued with stay-at-home orders. Jobs were lost. The economy struggled to find other ways of reaching equilibrium. Money and time were invested in combating the virus, technology, and ways of bringing people closer together. Upon reflection, they had wasted efforts. Of course, the changes weren't permanent and people eventually started going back to work. The world slowly started to wake up, and with it, so did something else.

Nature had begun a biological offensive with the lack of human social activity and maintenance to physical infrastructure new life had moved back into many areas, vibrant greens spread across once old roads, canopies intertwined with cityscapes, it was beautiful. Little did the world know what additional changes were in store. In awe, taken aback by the beauty of this new world that at the time had totally changed the environment we lived in but not made our old ways of living unfunctional, we could still travel by car, go to work, use the internet, we could live but with a new sense of fulfilment this new immersion into nature provided for a time enrichment and relief from the hardships of daily life. For some time we thrived!

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2025 - 2030

Nature started rapidly taking over civilizations, all ways of living in and maintaining society as we knew it became unmanageable. We dont know what happened, we dont know what caused it we just know one day nature chose to turn up the speed. The reason? Who could say, maybe it was human interference and study, maybe it's a natural mechanism of the world that no one ever knew about or predicted? something never once foretold in scriptures but almost bibliological in proportions. Whatever it was it wanted its planet back.

Society struggled to maintain equilibrium with this new volatile habitat, civilizations were forced into smaller communities relying on almost archaic means to survive, a wet dream for naturists, survivalists and people begging for a total reset, an inconvenience for many who understood the conveniences of the society they were part of. People made it work though, trying hard to persevere through newfound hardships, everybody had to work together in some way if they wanted to survive.

As nature raced to overtake humanity plant life developed some form of sentience, new parasites and forms of bacteria had evolved, or maybe they had always existed, watching, waiting for the perfect opportunity, the perfect hosts in which to thrive themselves! Humanity struggled under the onslaught of new and constantly changing hardships. Every day posed a new threat to each independent community. What were we to do? This new environment was beautiful yet so deadly! People had no hope. Or so we thought, maybe we just needed to lose it all before we could ever truly be free of the hardships of this new world.

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2030 Onwards

Post-Natural Apocalypse

The year 1PNA

All communities overgrown the total collapse of all of society is complete. We were finally back at basics. By this point all the things we had learned on the build-up to this moment seemed to prepare us for the new environment, almost like the world itself had conditioned us to be prepared yet still made every effort to try and totally eviscerate us. New horrors awaited us in this world some we were hardened and ready for yet still had little experience with others we had no idea lay waiting around the corner. Illnesses became a real threat, Parasites could control human hosts, and bacteria could rot the mind and turn people into deranged zombies whose pure blood lust would leave movie zombies in awe. This new world has finally overtaken us, and it used us to do so.

Now we take each day at a time there is no longer any thriving. There's no telling how many people are alive, or if there are even any safe havens or communities still functioning. We can hope, and we do hope. But for now, physically, All we can do for now is SURVIVE!

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Found Survivor Story.

"It was like something you would see in a Sci-Fi movie, ya know? It was like when you would see plants come alive and block paths or miraculously grab people, just without the grabbing people or some other crazy shit! Well, sometimes it grew around people although that's a story for another time or at least a little bit later on! You see it was like but not the same as. It moved in its own unique way, kinda like slugs, slow when you are watching but gone in the blink of an eye or when you turn your back.

Naturally, the leaves sought light beautiful canopies stretched out across the sky and through cityscapes, beautiful at first and liveable for a while but even that eventually changed. Rooting became more aggressive, branches and roots spread across the environment, out through the ground beneath towns, cities, homes, swallowing most of societies infrastructure. Almost as if in the blink of an eye nature stole the very infrastructure man had built and maintained.

It was almost as if plants could sense large amounts of energy and aggressively moved in to silence it, or maybe even feed off it, who knows any means of doing viable research to be shared with others as well and truly off the table at this point. Sure someone is probably out there trying to make heads or tails of all of this. Unfortunately, there are no longer any communities to benefit from knowing. For a while, when some forms of a community still existed we called the phenomenon Energy Synthesis Theory. When plant life aggressively started to move in and swallow areas high in energy such as communities or powerplants, we called them EST attacks. The louder the community, the more efficient the energy source, the quicker it was swallowed by its new and deadly adversary. Blind yet still so aware this new form of nature swept the world, swallowing everything in its path! So beautiful yet so unforgiving!

As nature did all it could to take over humanity many losses were totalled, hospitals were swallowed while patients were in their beds. Care homes and prisons suffered the same fate, millions of people all over the world falling victim to EST attacks a real threat that couldn't be thought back against. It couldn't be asked to stop. Weed killer doesn't work, to hydrated to be burnt a threat bullets won't work on! Humanities truest, most deadly adversary; Nature!

The military dissolved, Soldiers came home while they had a chance before runways were permanently inoperable. Bunkers were no longer operational, swallowed by overgrowth the military had no use but to stockpile its resources and share them between newly formed smaller communities. The only way to survive against the new elements was to split communities into smaller groups and revert to living as one with the environment, but to aid that process supplies were rationed out to and between communities to help them settle roots and adapt.  The harsh reality is we knew if we wanted to survive at all, we needed to ditch our reliance on how things used to be and fast!

For a bit we coped well, the current hardships of the time became daily normalities, life reached equilibrium. The life we had before slowly became a memory. The new challenges we faced helped us become better people. At what cost? Why? And why when things were finally turning around does another hardship rear its ugly head.

Then sickness started going around, people became plagued by chronic bouts of delirium. No one knew why or what was causing it. Not for a while at least, people again were dying looking for something they could never find until one day a villager attacked a community guard and got himself stabbed in the abdomen with a rather crude pike, he pulled something out with it, our community was infected with a parasite that feeds on the iron in the blood. when the host is low on iron fever and delirium set in, no one knew where this crazy new parasite came from, however, we speculate that it could be something to do with the influx of new fruits, there is this one it is kind of like an orange and it tastes like metal, it is possible this parasite lives on the fruit until an unsuspecting animal eats it. That wasn't the worst of it though, Zombies! Zombies were the worst of it, finally at the peak of its effort to eradicate humanity nature had another present u its sleeve for us. Those prisons, care homes and hospitals that had been swallowed by EST attacks they came back, but they weren't normal, the rot had set in and they had been decomposing in partially mummified states, they had been suffocated in foliage after all, but some new bacteria preserves protein cells in the brain and muscles keeping the host alive in some horrific tribute to zombie hood these vulgar life forms dragged their rotting bodies about looking for whatever the hell it is they need to survive, their infatuation with brains like a common zombie has to lead my over-imaginative imagination to think that maybe they are after the prions a protein we as humans can't break down and digest that is harmful to our brains and can cause disease. I say my overactive imagination like I'm not living in the middle of a crazy biological apocalypse where anything is possible."