2015

• The Midwest United States suffers total soil toxification
• Leading to major food shortages throughout North and South America
• Which affects Africa due to US inability to send food shipments
• Off-grid communities begin to form throughout the western hemisphere
• US Soil Regulation efforts become militarized

2016

• US government starts Agricultural Internment School project (i.e., labor camps)
• The XL Pipeline bursts, oil spreads into the water table and rivers of the breadbasket
• Oil in the water begins to kill off the fish in major US rivers
• Clean water becomes scarse
• Toxic sludge spread by ocean currents begins to reach the Asian nations
• A failed "Ag Revolution" leads to hostilities which destroy most of the remaining arable land
• US Wheat Crop infested by pesticide-resistant microbes rendering the plant inedible
• The US government declares war on Canada and Mexico, in an attempt to take arable land
• Mass insanity spreads as cannibalism becomes commonplace
• Massive riots occur in all major US cities
• The Kruetzfeild-Jacobsonphagia Cult arises, declaring cannibalism is a religious right
• A counter-movement called "Cannonymous" organizes mass protest actions against the KJC
• "Greenification" efforts become murderous, eco-terrorists begin assassinating industrialists

2017

• An experiment using cordyceps as a foodsource goes awry, thousands of people are infected
• Toxic Rain begins to fall; it contains petrochemicals which burn the skin
• General unavailability of medical aid causes mass suffering and death
• A series of foodsource reforms lead to experiments in cloning meat from human tissue
• A government distribution program rations out cloned meat to citizens
• Urged by Canada and Mexico, the United Nations sends peacekeeping forces into the US

2018

• The highway system is siezed by cannibal militias, who establish tollgates at state lines
• Black market ranchers begin "farming" humans for food, breeding captives in patrolled compounds

2019

• Half of the US suffers a total power loss as the eastern powergrid collapses
• The atmosphere is filled with toxic chemicals; gasmasks become necessary to go outside
• Japanese fishermen are being attacked by carnivorous mutant horseshoe crabs
• Mass starvation throughout Europe as stockpiles decline and US imports cease
• British navy begins waylaying cargo vessels of other EU nations, leading to "WWIII" in Europe
• The cordyceps parasite mutates into a microbial form that spreads through the air
• Airborne infections put a crimp in the human farming industry as foodslaves begin to die off
• US telephone network is destroyed by Superstorm Kaleb
• Cannibal survivalists begin hoarding uninfected foodslaves in underground enclaves
• Society breaks down into a 3-class structure: Farmers, Slaves, and The Infected
• A Chinese doctor develops a cure for the cordyceps parasite
• A last-gasp libertarian militia movement is co-opted by newly-formed slave trade corporations
• The Great Dying begins

Genealogy of Apocalypse World Inhabitants

Your Grandparents (you probably never met them, but it's possible) - 2015
People who were of childbearing age when the Great Dying began - they lived through it directly; they saw their entire civilization, nearly everyone they'd ever known, wiped off the face of the Earth. They invented and mass-produced the medical gear used by Angels today; their desperate experiments and perverted ideas of technological progress led to developments like the Violation Glove and airborne biological weapons, in addition to Off-Grid Communities, Cryo Chambers and Survival Vaults. They experienced the cannibal militias, the toxic rain, the great famine, the freak weather, the constant struggle to obtain clean water... and some of them survived.

Your Parents - 2040
Their children, who came of childbearing age when the Great Dying had begun to level off. They remembered much of the above from their childhoods, but by the time they reached adulthood the population had been reduced by 90 percent, and Survival of the Fittest was the rule. These people lived in very different world from their parents. For one thing, they lacked any direct experiences of the previous civilization; they had no personal memories of Life Before the Fall. Their new ideas of "civilization" were nascent, random, and frequently brutal. Some of them began to develop new technologies, new social systems, new ways of living, scrounging, bartering, cobbling together little experiments that were sometimes workable, setting up the first "hardholds", adapting to the harsh realities of life... and some of them survived.

You - 2065
Their children, most of whom are of childbearing age now. That's you. You remember much of the above from your childhood, and things haven't changed that much. If anything the major concepts of the game world have now become crystalized: The psychic maelstrom exists, hardholds exist, and the various character classes (and all their accoutrements) exist. Welcome to Apocalypse World.