Excerpt: Red Fission

Even the Elders do not know what caused the Cataclysm, but they knew the basics. On November 1, 2109, there was an explosion at a factory that contained Werendium, the element that supplied the world their power. The resulting chain reaction spread across the world in a matter of hours, and changed the world just as quickly. Out of the seven billion people in the world, the Elders estimated only one billion survived.

Not all of the losses were counted in lives, however. The explosions, as they spread across land masses and seas alike, destroyed technology. Whether under the sea or orbiting the earth, no device was safe. Entire cities were leveled, and undersea laboratories imploded. An entire world was left without access to written history, music, and culture.

The disaster was hard to recover from. Survivors, however, found out that they were free of pre-Cataclysm diseases such as cancer and aids. In fact, their bodies were in perfect health. Burns from the radiation healed in minutes, and once those underage grew to adulthood, they simply stopped growing, and remained in the flush of their youth. Those who were older had bodies like they used to know.

As trees and other foliage grew, also at amazing rates, the Survivors started to recover from their losses, and life went on.

Until, that is, they watched their first children grow suddenly sick when they turned eighteen, and died at twenty one. The first case was thought to be an isolated incident, but it was repeated, no matter what precautions they took.

They named it the Prohibition Virus, because of the old age restrictions on buying cigarettes and alcohol. It was offensive, but the Elders met, and decided to throw away old moral objections and start encouraging those at sixteen to have children of their own. In this way, humanity continued on. As the population slowly grew, the Elders stopped having children of their own, for they did not want to outlive their children again and again. The young teens did not have such an option, as the Prohibition Virus took care of such things.