Post Nuclear Mutants

I'm working on building a Nuclear Winter setting, set in a 22nd century environment about 5 years after the bomb fell, I'm looking at making some mutants for the setting (as they're a must) but keeping them generally more real than just making them "Because Radiation". Now this does mean making them prewar genetic experiments but part of this genre is the fun of mutant monsters in the snow.

I've generally avoided human shaped mutants, and I've already got a few made. This thread is for suggestions, criticisms, and general ideas about what monsters would be neat to see, while avoiding the way Fallout and Metro set up their nuclear nasties.

The Mutants so far are somewhat generic in description, but I've got to start somewhere after all. While many of them may be larger than the creatures they were made from, the sizing still obeys things such as the square cube law. So if it still flies then it's not super large.

The Mutant list so far:

• Dog mutant - Hellhound
• Rat mutant - Vermin
• Bat mutant - Vampire
• Bird mutant - Hitchcock

You could prolly make a subspecies of two for Multiple Head Case dog mutants like Cerberus and Orthros

5 years isn't long enough for serious genetic drift so anything fancy is going to be a sterile one-off. That being said, even minor mutations to hormonal levels can create a bigger, meaner, and dangerously aggressive beast.

It'd be interesting to hear how the genetic experiments lead into two heads developing.

Sterile is most likely the outcome, as these creatures are going to be big and tough, with a subtle horror of there being a lot of them. So experiments into hormonal balances which results in bigger more aggressive variants of certain animals, that's good, helps keep the relative grounding going.

So basically 'roid raging animals. Not sure how you're going to do that for Bats but for dogs and birds they'll definitely be intimidating and some people already have an irrational fear of rats.

How about biological weapons and lab made viruses for more human mutants, ala ghouls from Fallout or humanimals from Metro? Something akin to the Green Flu from Left 4 Dead, I'm feeling that it could probably work for more human enemies to help unsettle folks as they have to see if the human wandering the snow is actually still fully human or not.

It kind of depends on what kind of atmosphere you want. Is it supposed to be horror?

I would also argue that mutants are not necessarily a key part of post-apocalyptic fiction. The evaporation of human civilization and the subsequent return of nature are a theme on their own. Judging by your other posts, if this is also a wintry setting, then your core conflict is basically Man vs Nature (the cold and harsh post-apocalyptic world). Adding mutants, especially human-engineered ones, seem counter-productive.

Rabid dogs would be a threat onto themselves, and rats do carry disease. There's real risk in even the basic stuff. Rats carrying bioweapons from a research lab could also be an extremely big threat. Medicine would be harder to get and many basic diseases we treat trivially today might become major problems. Like dogs can carry rabies.

But also: small but impactful mutations. Animals with increased aggression, for example. radiation-induced mutations with various hormones could cause them to be bigger.

On the other hand, 5 years is not that long. Big genetic mutations that are not viable long-term (like multiple heads) might survive long enough to be a threat. even if species will rapidly select for less irradiated and mutated specimens, there will be a very unstable post-nuke period where that selection actually happens.

The setting is more a vehicle for short stories, so some could be more horror in tone depending on what kind of story I want to tell. I just wanted to see what options I could make for these stories to move onto horror.

I'll probably keep the idea of human mutants on the backburner for a short where the atmosphere takes a more horror driven tone. Say uncovering a military bunker where the subjects of a bioweapon are being contained.

The fact that 5 years is not long enough to wipe out the more unstable mutant designs does give me more leeway for experimentation. that'll be fun.

IMHO it's an underrated aspect of worldbuilding. There are frequent questions on how to essentially perpetually maintain a status quo. But really, if your story takes place after 5 years and lasts maybe 10 tops, there's a whole host of unstable things you could introduce. And if someone's like "wait won't this make them die out really fast" the answer is simply ... "yes, but you first have to survive that long".

I mean, it reminds me of a common scenario when i play online, where people insist we can win "lategame" and i dryly note that "yea, but our team's not gonna make lategame".

(the reverse is also fun: a largely harmless creature that is ideal to survive in the new scenario and so after a few years just outbreeds and outsurvives everything else).

Like imagine a radioactivity-eating lichen or something. Not very impressive, but if it can survive in radiation that nothing else can, it's got a perpetual safe harbor. From there, it could spread like wildfire. Or a breed of wolf with radiation-resistance mutations that rapidly start to multiply and expand.

As an addendum: if the nuclear reactor has been running for a while (say, your location has featured a nuclear reactor since the 1960's and multiple ones have been rebuilt), you might have a scenario where the local wildlife is much more nuclear-resistant and it starts to reclaim the new radioactive wastelands. Similarly, there might be a research lab that does research into radioactive resistance (secret or not. Or ideally, a non-secret lab with a super-secret sublab) as a source of mutated animals that may not be impressive today but are actually ideal for the new post-apocalypse.

I mean it's easy to depict this as evil or shady but researching radiation-induced mutations would be very useful for both space research and cancer research. It's absolutely something you could get people to fund in the open.

Those are some really fun ideas, and also handily avoid the old "nuclear radiation = mutant" thing. A super engineered lichen meant for research into radiation resistance would be a very fun hazard.

I think the most interesting variation are mutations in behavior, not form. I mean, a giant two headed dog with tentacles is just a really cool pet if it has the same disposition. A pack of dogs that are insanely driven to kill any humanoid they smell? That get really scary fast.

Perfect for hazards wastelanders need to deal with on that latter front.