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Nuclear normads, Bénin (2026)

22/02/2026

Episode 5

“Echoes of 1984”

I left the safe haven at dawn.

For the first time since the bombs fell… I felt prepared.

My tools were upgraded to Level 3.
Strong enough to craft a bicycle.

Mobility meant survival.

The road ahead was unknown, and I needed speed.

I gathered everything I could — food, water, weapons, trade valuables. Still, I had more than I could carry. The weight of survival is heavier than any backpack.

I told myself I would return.

If there was still something left to return to.

---

The towns beyond Murmansk didn’t deserve names anymore.

Just hollow shells.
Burned frames.
Silent streets.

I searched them anyway.

In what used to be a pharmacy, buried beneath broken glass and ash, I found something unexpected.

A diary.

---

**“November 11, 1984.
Planes were sighted again. They bombed Murmansk and they’ll get to us soon. More injured were brought in, mostly with radiation burns. I’m the only medic left standing. But it doesn’t matter… we’re all going to die anyway.”**

---

So that was it.

The craters.
The radiation.
The silence.

Not just war.

An epidemic.

A collapse.

Humanity didn’t just fall — it rotted from the inside.

I folded the diary and kept moving.

If there was still a signal out there… I needed answers.

The radio transmission mentioned Kandalaksha.

So I pushed south.

---

In Olenegorsk, the destruction was worse.

Not a single intact house.
Not a single survivor.

No footsteps in the dust but mine.

---

Further along the road I encountered:

• An abandoned village — only one house left standing, like it refused to surrender.
• A lone armored truck — its metal glowing faintly under my Geiger counter’s frantic clicking. Radiation heavy. Too dangerous to approach.

Whatever happened here… it was deliberate.

---

And then…

The coastline.

The wind.

The water.

And him.

A man standing beside a weathered boat.

Watching me.

Waiting.

I stepped closer.

“Are you Vasily?” I asked.

“I heard your radio signal.”

He didn’t answer immediately.

And in the wasteland…

Silence is never a good sign.

**Conversation to be continued…**

19/02/2026

Chapter 4: *The Frequency of the Fallen*

The Frozen Gateway
Murmansk did not welcome Sergei; it merely tolerated his intrusion.
Coming off the tracks from Zapolyarny, he didn't dare take the direct route. The railroad was a trap for the careless, so he circled the great crater like a scavenger avoiding a predator. He was a man of dwindling math: plenty of water, but his stomach was a hollow ache, and his ammo pouch felt dangerously light.
He gave himself four days. Four days to strip the city of its secrets, or let the frost claim his bones.
The Grave in the Concrete
The military base was a tomb of rebar and rusted ambition. Sergei descended into the ventilation chambers, his torchlight cutting through air that had been stagnant for decades.
He found the Officer first.
The skeleton sat against the wall in a rotting uniform, posture unnervingly calm. No weapon lay nearby—no sign of a struggle. Just a man who had sat down to wait for an end that finally came. Sergei felt like a grave robber as he pried a common wristwatch from the bony wrist and pocketed a single box of matches. In the apocalypse, sentiment is a luxury; utility is life.
The Chitin and the Control Room
Deep in the bowels of the bunker, he found the CONTROL ROOM. The massive radio array stood like a dead god—silent, cold, and powerless. He scavenged a damaged pistol and five lone rounds from a nearby shelf.
Then, the silence broke.
A wet, rhythmic skittering echoed from above. Sergei raised the torch, and the flame reflected off a thousand segments of armored shell. A massive centipede, mutated by the world's sickness, clung to the ceiling. Its many legs rippled in the light, disturbed from a long, dark slumber.
Sergei didn't waste his precious bullets on a fair fight. He backed out, the heavy steel door groaning as he slammed it shut, sealing the nightmare inside.
The Incinerator
He found his equalizer in the next room: barrels of gasoline.
Survival is often just a matter of physics and fire. Sergei rolled the heavy drums toward the control room door, his breath coming in ragged hitches. He cracked the door, fired a single shot to draw the beast's ire, and then dropped a match into the fuel.
The explosion was a roar of orange defiance against the bunker’s eternal grey. The centipede shrieked—a sound of scraping metal—as the inferno swallowed it whole. Sergei watched until the thrashing stopped and the smell of burnt chitin filled the air.
A Voice in the Dark
With the monster dead, he turned to the generator. He siphoned what remained of the fuel, his hands shaking as he pulled the ignition cord.
The machine coughed, spitting black smoke, before settling into a rhythmic, mechanical growl. In the control room, the lights flickered with a ghostly pale glow. Dials spun. Frequencies hissed.
Then, through the wall of static, a human voice cracked:
> “…p-sh-sh… Vasily… I am near Kandalaksha… p-sh-sh… these mad men have overrun the place… p-sh-sh… va—”
>
The generator gave one final, violent shudder and died. The darkness returned, heavier than before. But Sergei remained still, the name echoing in his mind. Kandalaksha. # # The Road South
Before leaving the city, Sergei found a sanctuary—a defensible nook in the ruins to sort his loot. For four days, he moved through Murmansk like a ghost, filling his pack with scrap, mechanical parts, and canned hope.
In the quiet hours, he pored over a diary he’d recovered near the radio room. The ink was faded, but the message was clear. The voice on the radio wasn't a ghost; it was a lead.
Kandalaksha was real. The "mad men" were real.
Sergei stepped out of his safe haven on the morning of the fifth day. His pack was heavy, his boots were worn, but his eyes were fixed on the southern horizon. Murmansk had been a trial, but it gave him the one thing the wasteland usually kills: Purpose.

16/02/2026

📓 SURVIVOR’S LOG: THE IRON GRAVEYARD
The walk from Zapolyarny was supposed to be a straight shot. Follow the steel, find the city, find some answers. But the wasteland doesn't do "simple."
🌫️ The White Void
Halfway to Murmansk, the sky didn't just turn gray—it vanished. A fog so thick and heavy rolled off the tundra that I couldn't see my own outstretched hand. In this world, if you can’t see, you’re already dead. I hunkered down between the rails, shivering in the silence, listening for the crunch of snow that would mean something had found me. I didn't sleep. I just waited for the ghost-white world to let me go.
🚂 The Ghost of Train 004
When the mist finally lifted, it revealed a nightmare of twisted iron. Train 004—the evacuation line—lay derailed like a broken spine across the tracks. I climbed into a shattered passenger car, desperate for anything to keep me moving.
The rusted door groaned and suddenly gave way, the entire frame shifting under my weight. I threw myself back just as a jagged sheet of steel sliced through the air. It slammed into my shoulder—a sickening thud that left me gasping. A few inches to the left and that train would have been my tomb. I crawled inside, nursing the bruise, only to find a silent passenger slumped against a crate. He’d been waiting for a rescue that never came for forty years. I took his meager supplies with a shaky hand and a heavy heart.
🐺 The Stalker
The smell of my own sweat and the faint scent of blood from my shoulder must have carried. Out of the treeline, a lone wolf emerged. Ribs showing, eyes like amber glass, it didn't growl—it just watched. We stood there, two starving ghosts in a dead world. I wasn't going to waste a bullet I might need for a bandit later. I gripped my crowbar and let out a primal, desperate roar that tore through the silence. It worked. The beast vanished into the pines, but I knew it was still out there, waiting for me to stumble.
🕳️ The End of the Line
I pushed that handcar until my muscles burned and my lungs felt like they were filled with crushed glass. Murmansk finally appeared on the horizon—a jagged skyline of broken concrete. I thought I’d made it.
Then, the tracks just... stopped.
A massive, blackened crater had swallowed the earth, cutting the line clean off just outside the city gates. It’s a jagged hole that looks like it leads straight to the center of the world. No way around, and the sun is dipping below the horizon.
I’m at the edge of the abyss, and I can hear the wind howling from inside the crater. Do I turn back, or do I climb down?

15/02/2026

Episode 2: THE GHOST OF ZAPOLYARNY

The Hollow Welcome
The forest didn't end so much as it died into the pavement. I reached the outskirts of Zapolyarny just as the fog began to settle, thick and tasting of wet ash. The city greeted me with a dead silence—no birds, no wind, not even the hum of a distant engine. Just the rhythmic crunch-crunch of my own boots.
I stopped at the edge of a massive, blackened crater. The asphalt had melted and refrozen into jagged glass teeth. Was there a war? Or did the world just give up and explode? Looking into that hole felt like looking into the future of every city left on the map.
The Pharmacy’s Secrets
Hunger is a loud passenger. My stomach growled, echoing off the hollow husks of apartment buildings. I needed everything: meds, calories, warmth.
I kicked through the shattered glass of the local pharmacy. The air inside was stale, smelling of rubbing alcohol and rot. My hands shook as I swept the shelves.
The Haul: Three vials of Energy Drugs (enough to keep my heart beating through the night) and a few rolls of Clean Bandages.
Then, I saw it. A yellowed piece of paper pinned to the counter, fluttering in the draft.
ATTENTION, RESIDENTS OF ZAPOLYARNY!
By order of the mayor's office, all shipments of medicine have been rerouted to the field hospital at the school. Medication will be provided in exchange for ration stamps. To get these ration stamps, please see the pharmacy manager.
I didn't have stamps. I didn't have a manager. All I had was a direction.
The School of Broken Hopes
The school was worse. Desks were piled in the hallways to make barricades that failed. I reached the "hospital" wing, but there were no doctors left—only the Evacuation Schedule taped to a door.
The ink was faded, but the message was clear: The residents fled a long time ago. They took the trains to Murmansk, chasing whispers of civilization and hospitals that still had power. They chased a ghost I was now forced to follow.
The Iron Path
I spent the rest of the day stripping the nearby apartments. I found a heavy wool coat—smelling of mothballs but warm—and a few tins of meat that didn't look too bloated.
As the sun dipped below the jagged skyline, I made my way to the railroad tracks. My feet were blistering, but then I saw it: A handcar. It was rusted, the grease had turned to wax, and the lever was heavy as lead. But as I stepped onto the wooden platform and gripped the iron handle, I felt a spark of something I hadn't felt since I woke up in the frost.
Purpose.
I looked north, toward the rails that vanished into the dark. Murmansk was a thousand miles of radiation and wolves away. I took a breath, pushed the lever down, and the metal wheels let out a long, mourning shriek against the track.
The Current Status: Sergei Vale.

Resource. Status. Notes

Health. Fair. Bandages secured.
Energy. High. Drugs found; ready for the
tracks.
Goal. Murmansk. Follow the rail line north.
Transport.Handcar. Requires manual labor,
saves feet.

The walk was over. The journey had truly begun.

13/02/2026

The Long Walk Begins: Night Zero
The first thing I felt wasn’t a memory. It was the sting.
A cruel, crystalline frost had settled on my cheeks while I was out cold, trying to claim me before I even knew my own name. I woke up on the frozen earth of the USSR, my breath coming in ragged, white plumes that vanished into a sky the color of a bruised lung.
I didn’t know who I was. I didn't know how I got here. All I knew was the silence—and the silence was terrifying.
I stood up, my joints popping like dry kindling. Around me, the forest was a graveyard of skeletal pines. Then, I heard it. Skitter-skitter.
Pale, starved shapes darted across the rot—rats. In the old world, they were pests. Here, in the ruins, they were competitors. They looked at me with black, bead-like eyes and saw the same thing I saw in them: Survival. I grabbed a jagged branch, my knuckles white and trembling. I didn't swing like a hero; I swung like a man who was terrified of being eaten by something smaller than his boot. When the branch finally connected, the squeals stopped, and the silence returned—heavier, colder, and hungrier than before.
As the sun began to dip, bleeding a sickly orange across the horizon, I found a small hollow beneath a fallen tree. I didn't have a bedroll. I didn't have a tent. I just had the dirt and the crushing weight of the dark.
Every snapping twig sounded like a footstep. Every gust of wind sounded like a groan from the ghosts of the cities nearby. I stayed awake for hours, staring into the blackness, wondering if the "Searching for Truth" quest everyone whispers about is just a fancy name for a long walk to a lonely grave.
But then, dawn came.
It was pale and sharp, offering no warmth, only the sight of the broken road leading toward the ruins of Zarpolyarny. My stomach is a void, and my shoes are thin, but I’m standing.
The journey has begun. One step at a time. Toward answers. Toward myself.
Survivor’s Check-In:
We’ve all been there—that first night in Day R where you realize just how fragile you are. I barely survived the rats and the cold, and I’m already down to my last scraps of energy.
Tell me your "Day 1" horror story in the comments. Did the radiation get you, or did you starve before you even reached the first town? 👇

Nuclear normads

22/02/2026

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