T2000: Carrying the Fire

[M-Type]

In planning for the campaign I plan on starting in the next few weeks, I was thinking about various mediums that I could use to help channel the 'feel' of T2000. The Road, by Cormac McCarthy, is my favorite post-apocalypse novel, and one of my favorite novels in general, and I was thinking that it'd be perfect to cast as the 'theme' for the campaign.

I was thinking about starting the PCs with no vehicles (or one, randomly rolled), with only the gear that they can carry on their persons. Kalisz is burning, and the Polish/Soviets are combing the wreckage for survivors. They need to get the hell out of Dodge. Marauders stalk the countryside, and villages are dying out to disease, famine, and radiation. There are those that find other means of feeding themselves...

I was thinking about 'upping the ante' of the nuclear exchanges to get the 'pallid grey sky' and 'dying ecosystem' from the novel, tied in with a sort of nuclear winter. Getting things like game, foraged food, and ethanol would get harder and harder. Things like gasoline (like the cache in the Vistula module) would be points of interest, and possibly armed conflicts between marauders and military forces, if any are still following commands of governments that may no longer exist.

Anything to add, or other ideas?