The Coming Winter

Dawn broke a very steely grey on August 9th, which matched the coolness of the air. Patches of frost could be seen in the open fields, it was obvious that it was getting colder as each day passed. The frost would be gone before noontime but it stuck in the mind, winter was coming and it would be worse than the winter before. The growing seasons had been bad in the local communities; ever since the war they had almost always been bad. There had been stories that in the olden times there were marvels beyond belief in this world but now it was a desolate place where winters killed almost as many people as the spring and summer brought into existence.

People used any means possible to survive now, at first it was roving bands of roughians but that had stopped almost 20 years ago, after the first winter. Sure there were still bands of thugs here and there but they were sparse and much more organized than before. The first winter taught them a very valuable lesson; at least for those that survived, there is strength in numbers and preparation.

Many people didn’t survive the first winter after the war, when it came it came with such a fury that none had seen in the past. It was as if Mother Nature had decided to repay humanity for the damage that had been done to her. The war itself crippled most countries, killing billions; leaving the rest to fend for them selves and to protect them selves. Where there had been strong nations now there were tatters and bands of mini states. Within the first couple years it became clear that the easiest way to survive initially was within communities. These cities weren’t large, they housed a few thousand each at most, and they were extremely efficient in how they worked. Everyone did their part to survive but still the winters got people. Some regions were harder hit than others, the northern areas were hardest hit, countries like Canada survived intact but it really didn’t matter because the winters came and nature took over. In the more northern countries of the world the first few winters killed all but a small group of the survivors and those that did survive very quickly started moving south.

All told the worlds population went from close to 9 billion before the war to about 250 million across the planet after the first war. Most of the technology that had been attained was lost, damaged or set aside in order to survive. After 20 years people had learnt to survive and now they were ready to start putting the pieces back together, it was the young generation those born in the first year or two after the war that wanted to reestablish some of what was in the past, to better survive the winters, to see what happened to the rest of humanity.