Lorsh
Varlot
Inspirations: The Last of Us, World War Z (novel)
NATIONAL PROVISIONAL AUTHORITY
The flag of the Central Republic
HISTORY
The government isn't what it used to be. Yes, it still exists, but just like the undead, it's been reduced to a violent husk, with most vestiges of its former self stripped away forever. The courts, congress, senate, postal service, national parks, it's all been done away with. Practically all organs of state have been shut down; the only apparatus that remains is the military, which no longer recognizes most of its own citizens.
How did this happen? Not all at once.
The Reanimatory Necrosis virus swept through the nation faster than anyone could have imagined. It brought the dead back to life with one goal; kill, devour, and infect the living. Just after the first month of the outbreak, the Capital was under siege by the undead. The Capital had held out longer than other major cities, as it was specifically turned into a fortified safe zone in order to protect the seat of government and thus preserve public morale. The President of the Central Republic refused to go into hiding, and continued making decisions with his staff from the guarded Presidential Offices. Though some of his stratagems were questionable, he was nonetheless extremely dedicated to preserving the lives of civilians. The military had been carpet-bombing infested cities during the first weeks of the outbreak, but the President forbade this when it became known that there were still significant pockets of survivors remaining in them.
Against the advice of the more cold, practical 'Securocrats' in his cabinet (the Superintendent of National Defence, the Superintendent of Home Affairs), the President also began to accept large numbers of civilian refugees into the Capital's safe zone. Screenings were hasty, and it ultimately lead to a large outbreak from within the Capital's walls. Refugee housing was extremely cramped and high-density, which caused the infection to reignite like wildfire. The Capital's streets soon ran with gore, and a horde of zombies closed in on the Presidential Offices, forcing the President and his Cabinet to start evacuating. A helicopter from the Presidential Protective Service arrived, using a clearing in the Presidential Park as a landing zone. However, before the President and the other cabinet members could board the aircraft, a mortar strike killed the President, his accompanying political staff, and the helicopter crew. Apparently, it was a mistake due to faulty intel; the mortar unit was told that the President had already evacuated, and that the horde had already swarmed the Presidential Park.
The President, Deputy President, and the entire federal cabinet (aside from 3 individuals) was now dead. This only left the Superintendent of National Defence, and the Superintendent of Home Affairs alive. By some fluke, the Superintendent of Fisheries also survived due to being trapped in the restroom by a zombified intern and being left behind during the evacuation. The circumstances of why the two 'Securocrats' survived is somewhat more suspicious, as the Army High Command provided them with a different helicopter that left at an earlier time, sparing them from death.
The logo of the 'Securocrats' NPA
The Capital was lost, and there was now a power vacuum. The Securocrats established the National Provisional Authority (NPA), which reorganized what remained of their government and consolidated their power in the form of a dictatorship. The Superintendent of Home Affairs became acting president, and the Superintendent of National Defence became acting deputy president. The void in the rest of the cabinet was filled with advisors from the Army High Command. The Superintendent of Fisheries was shoved aside, retaining his position but being placed under "protection" (house arrest) for unexplained reasons.
Soon, the Securocrats gave the Army High Command many more powers to fight the infection, and waived most restrictions on using lethal force on civilians. Still, the military would fail to maintain control over the vast majority of the country, with over half of the armed forces being infected or killed during the first year of the epidemic. Deciding to cut their losses, the military was pulled back to the few safe zones that remained. A distinction was made between the country's 'Clean Zones' and the zombie-infested 'Dirty Zone'. The former was kept isolated by natural boundaries, concrete walls, razorwire fences, and supplemented by minefields, sniper towers, hidden machine gun nests, and roving patrols. Nobody getting in, or out. Passports were exchanged for Clean Zone residency papers, and any civilian that wasn't registered in a CZ was declared dead, and their citizenship voided.
The largest Clean Zones were labelled 'Clean Districts', and consisted of clusters of towns and cities, as well as their nearby rural areas. By the second year of the outbreak, three such districts were in existence, Clean District Central, Clean District South, and Clean District East. There were also several smaller Clean Zones, sometimes called 'Amp Zones', which existed apart from the larger districts. These areas (sometimes just lone cities) were completely surrounded by the DZ, and were often resupplied by air.
The citizens within the CZs were now safe from the zombies, but anyone else attempting to approach the borders, infected or not, was shot on sight. Leaving the rest of the country for dead, the military was now completely focused on protecting the small population of the CZs, as well as enforcing order. Thousands died during riots in the CZs over food, fuel, and protests that many civilians' relatives were being denied entry. Clean District South was the first district to fall, a little less than a year after the outbreak.
The NPA under the Securocrats was still technically a civilian-led organization, with a presidency, constitution, etc. The spirit of the old Central Republic still existed, merely placed on hold for the duration of the crisis. However, when the old Securocrats eventually died of natural causes around Year 5 and Year 6 of the apocalypse, the NPA transformed into its current state.
The logo of the 'Martial' NPA
With the Securocrats gone, they had no civilian successors. It was revealed that they had designated the NPA to be taken over by the Army High Command and placed under full military control. The top-ranking generals in the Army High Command formed the new government, led by a supreme commander known as the Marshal. The Marshal is rumored to have originally been a captain that saved one of the Securocrats' families during the early outbreak, demonstrating exceptional capabilities as a leader and quickly rising through the ranks.
Under the new military-controlled NPA, the previous federal government was completely done away with, and rather than being placed on hold, the civilian constitution and legislature was abolished entirely. Long-standing interservice rivalry between the branches of the military, intensified by the outbreak, eventually culminated in a schism between the army and the air force/navy, the latter branches falling by the wayside as the new nature of fighting the undead rendered their services mostly useless. A coup plot was exposed, and most of the Naval High Command and Air High Command were executed on orders of the Marshal, with their branches then being absorbed by the army.
The Marshal began the complete militarization of society in order to preserve order in this post-apocalyptic world. The bureaucratic institutions of the state were reorganized into 'Commissions' that were managed by military staff officers, though they mostly employed civilians that were involved in the maintenance of the Clean Zones. Civilians were evaluated to determine useful traits, such as occupational skills and physical strength. Many people were assigned roles this way, some more prestigious than others. Doctors, tradesmen, and farmers were prized, but many folks like secretaries, managers and lawyers were unable to secure a job in a military Commission, and were thus deemed 'less viable' and reassigned to more demeaning tasks as part of general labor and corpse cleanup crews. Those with physical and mental disabilities were deemed burdens to the survival of humanity, and were outright euthanized. People with records of dissident political activity or communist sympathies before the outbreak also tended to 'disappear'.
Law and order took on a new face, with punishments like public hangings, floggings, and the stocks returning. Prisons were replaced with brutal work camps, where you would land if you were "marked" by the NPA. The police departments of some CZ towns and cities still continued to nominally exist as reserves, but most of the law enforcement was now carried out by soldiers. Criticizing the NPA could land you in some serious hot water, and military intelligence now spied on civilians whenever possible.
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