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Originally Posted by bobcat
honestly i don't see this darkness that everyone keeps painting. yes the project failed(for any of a dozen plausible reasons listed) but even with that failure there are still survivors who the teams can help. as for the teams only spending a few weeks in an area that would be silly hen you think about it. each of the teams is given an AOR and generally put in a bolthole fairly central to their area of responsibility. this is done so that even if completely cut off they can still accomplish their small piece of the mission. one should also consider that the project wouldn't really be recruiting many "well adjusted" people. those who would be well adjusted to civilization would die rather quickly with civilization taken away. they would recruit and select people who could operate individually or in small teams with little external guidance because in a nuclear war and the aftermath thereof anything could happen. teams would carry out their initial orders, react to their unique situations, make reasonable attempts to contact their next higher headquarters, and mostly stay in their AOR. if each team spends a few weeks in each village or settlement, helps where they can, and keeps running a circuit within their AOR, it won't be that long until they can establish a more permanent patrol base and just send out help as it is needed.
it's no darker really than life as a colonist back in the old days, brighter in fact because at least the teams know that even in extreme contingencies they have a chance. compare that to the donner party.
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The darkness comes from the lack of support from even villages close to each other.
Survivors are a selfish, uncooperative bunch. They are the descendants of those that took what they needed. Often this was at the expense of others or the greater good. They are clannish and have a well learned distrust of outsiders due to raids, robbery, and disease. Villages cooperate on a barter system and often operate as feudal society with a chief or warlord that is the sole authority.
Trade still happens but, trade with outsiders happens infrequently and outside the village. Two armed groups meet somewhere in the middle of two villages and barter. Mistrust at best.
Ignorance..... Knowledge died. Sure, there are some C and B level groups and those would probably be the ones built around a preWar school or University. Most of the rest are focused solely on skills that make food, shelter, and warmth. People don't have time for nice things, some story telling and music for a few hours in the evening before rising at dawn to begin again. Most cannot read, and those that can mostly can read only at a grammar school level. People can't build more than simple machines because math has degenerated to simple arithmetic. Health is a terrifying mix of superstition, misunderstood lore, and fiction. The average person won't live to see 40. Most children will grow to be adults if they can just survive past their fifth birthday.
Technology is lost.... The plagues and the destruction were pitiless and did not care if the victim was a high school drop out or held a PHd. People that knew how to build things or repair things may have lasted longer if they were valuable to a collective whole, such as a mechanic who could fix cars. People were only able to pass on some of their knowledge and without formal education, some was lost in context. Some skills had to be learned and often without someone possessing the skills to begin with such as blacksmith or log cabin builder. Other things are consumed and cannot be replaced, like some tools. There is no hardware store when your last file is dull or the chainsaw chain has broken for the 34th time. Making a replacement may not even occur to them because no one in their collective tribe ever knew how to build any of it.