Disclaimer: I created a lot of the lore below for my personal Fallout rp, but feel free to use any ideas here for your own nonprofit discord, fanart and fanfictions (no commissions of any kind). Keep fandom free.
The day the bombs fell, most every Texan was at home, glued to their television screens to watch the Rangers play the Red Sox in the first World Series on Texas soil in over two decades. The rest of them were in their offices, trying to decide how to save their beloved state from the imminent economic crash that would follow the news that the oil fields have finally run dry.
Within just a few minutes, the decision was made for them.
Immediately following the fallout, a lot of Texans in the rural areas were left mostly unaffected, albeit severely isolated and short on supplies. For the four major metropolises: Dallas, Houston, Austin, and El Paso, they were all but scorched earth.
As a result of having so little nuclear infrastructure outside these four areas, what followed continues to amaze the anthropologists who study the years immediately following the first bombs. With no intercommunications, and no outside forces, called the “Great Grocery Run”, was a mass temporary exodus of Texans to the surrounding state borders to acquire nuclear technology and return to their non-irradiated homesteads. A lot would not return, although it picked clean the borders of nearly all salvage and tech in less than a decade.
Where the evidence of humanity was slowly dwindled and erased, nature reclaimed the (in some places nearly 100 miles) wide dead zone around the landlocked parts of the state, called “Chiron’s Hoof Print”, as a running joke that Chiron leapt off the earth not to escape Heracles but to escape nuclear war.
With such a wide wilderness to cross that has no places to salvage or buy supplies, crossing the dead zone with vehicles runs the risk of being stranded, especially when visitors don’t know to expect sudden wilderness. Meanwhile, travelers on foot are at the mercy of the irradiated rivers and animals.
Nearly 200 years later, the Hoof is more clearly marked, well-mapped but not so well understood as by the Farriers: a high-turnover group of mercenaries who take payment (caps or trade) to escort both caravans and individuals across the dead zone. They understand where the thinnest zones of the Hoof are, as well as carrying knowledge of safe water sources and how best to defend themselves from every type of creature. The average trip across is four days with plenty of rest breaks, but some excellently navigated Farriers, or ones with hearty clients that only stop to nap, can make the journey in 3 days, averaging one to two trips a week per Farrier.
(Put your fallout headcanons and extra lore in the notes so I can read them please, the hyperfixation is hyperfixating)
