The Collapse began in late September 2013 following the rapid spread of the cordyceps brain infection across the United States and much of the world. Within days, major cities such as @Seattle, @Boston, and @Salt Lake City experienced mass panic, riots, military lockdowns, and catastrophic infection outbreaks.
As hospitals overflowed and emergency services failed, @FEDRA and remaining military forces established quarantine zones, enforced martial law, and sealed infected areas in an attempt to preserve order. Some quarantine zones survived. Many others collapsed under infection, starvation, violence, or civil unrest.
Highways became clogged with abandoned vehicles, refugee convoys, and military checkpoints. Communication networks failed, supply chains collapsed, and survivors fled urban centers toward rural regions such as the @Wyoming Wilderness and @Idaho Wilderness.
By early 2014, the United States no longer functioned as a unified country. Civilization fragmented into isolated quarantine zones, survivor settlements, raider territories, and dangerous infected regions reclaimed by nature and cordyceps.