Building a Post-Apocalyptic world
 

So a while ago I took inspiration of chick-in-a-super-technological-suit-raised-by-a-strange-race from Metroid and wanted to make a new character with that kind of utility, and I thought it would be lots of fun to write about her. I made my tweaks here and there, and I came up with a handful of characters that I was happy with and I tried to deviate as much as I could from Samus Aran herself.

Then I started to kick around a setting because I liked the idea that the suit gave her boosts in close-combat fights and speed, not strapping a huge blaster/missile silo onto her arm. Besides, it fit my character more. That's when I realized - Post apocalyptic would be perfect.

Problem is, I kind of hit a brick wall.

The world isn't as bleak or depressing as, say, Fallout, Mad Max, or Six-Stringed Samurai. Civilization went through a nuclear fallout and humans almost didn't make it, but they did, and this is after all the radiation goes away and there's some semblance of peace.

So, after the bomb, but very after the bomb, thus leading to a relatively normal everyday life, except that there's no electricity or water piping. It means that we go back to washing your clothes in the river nearby and burning candles for light.

I also want to get in some other races too, but I'm not sure how to go about that other than 'radiation = mutation but not deadly'.

I don't want to give away too much because I will eventually make this a book. But, anyone got any tips to kick around? I could use the help.

Sounds kind of like "The City of Ember" in terms of the environment and relative level of technology, but minus electricity and plumbing. It's almost medieval, in a way. Might I suggest numerous small settlements and towns and maybe even a city or two that are warring with one another over land and such?

In terms of different races, I'd say mutation from radiation is really the only viable way you can go without it sounding hokey. Aliens might fly, but I have a hard time trying to figure how that could fit in. Either that or a race of underground people (probably mutants, or creatures that have always lived under the Earth's surface and no one ever knew) with advanced-enough technology to provide the heroine with such a suit.

Any group that was somehow isolated from the rest of humanity for a sufficient amount of time could've mutated, if you wanna try that.

Sounds not entirely unlike the world of The Dark Tower as well, in that technological civilisation has collapsed and the world's reverted to simpler times. Depending on how long this is after the initial cataclysm then it's quite likely that a lot of machines will remain but nobody knows how to use them anymore. I imagine pretty much all industry would have ground to a halt, so things we take for granted now will suddenly have incredible value in the future (for instance, in The Dark Tower, paper was incredibly rare and valuable), but pretty much anything that can no longer be made easily would be highly sought after.

The lack of easy communication between distance locations would also isolate and fracture entire nations, reverting the world back to a collection of city states and there may even be roving bands of marauders all fighting amongst themselves for whatever they can take, so larger cities are apt to become either abandoned entirely, or highly fortified, xenophobic communities (which is basically what Tophat said). I know you said this world was largely at peace, but I duno if I'd buy that entirely. Lack of easy communication leads to a breakdown in society and order, which would lead to lots of civil unrest, in-fighting and all out wars, especially on a world wide scale such as this.

At least that's how I would picture the world you described initially.

For the other races you could go with genetically engineered. Like, a group of people who had altered themselves a lot over time.

Also can you clarify a little what brick wall you hit? Just the new species?

I just had another thought regarding other species; when did the world initially go to hell? What year? Because if the world was already pretty advanced you could have machines that survived the holocaust and prospered in the radiation filled areas where no humans could go. Or if not a race of androids, maybe humans managed to find a way to survive the aftermath with cybernetics, to give them an advantage over other survivers.

So you could have some technology left (and if there's powered suits to be found lying around, then I'd bet that someone else would have some tech somewhere) but just keep it highly exclusive to that particular "race".

As far as new races, It might be cool if maybe it wasn't set in a post-apocolyptic future of our world, but rather just a made up world. That way you can throw in all kinds of sci-fi fun stuff without having to necessarily be like "Well... it makes sense because...."

Maybe... if it is set on Earth, it could be the Earth of the semi-far-flung future, wherein other races and tech like powered suits would be (so we dream) the norm. Of course it may also then follow that people have colonized space (at the very least having some form of space station orbiting the planet to deal with overpopulation). Then not only could the whole nuclear devastation be contained to the planet, but also reach out into space! Think, lifeless husks of entire space stations floating around out there, blown to pieces by tons of heavy weapons. EPIC!

That was kind of what I was thinking, and while reading it I came up with the fact that this race of mutants would probably want to stay the fuck away from the rest of the humans, since they'd be all "Witch Hunter" on the technologically advanced non-humans.

I'm also going to spread a bit of "Technology = EVIL!!!!111!" philosophy in the common man, since that'll create a good reason for everyone to fear my protagonist's freakishly powerful techno-suit (and therefore keep her presence hidden).

The "Firefly" approach of creating a sci-fi universe? Neat.

I think I might do that since the premise of this world is that it's too far in the future after the apocalypse for any sort of territory or city or faction or anything to even matter since everyone's far beyond the point where drawn boundary lines are important to anyone but historians.
Well the inherent problem with making a post-apocalyptic world is that it's inherently bleak; every man for himself, cities are desperate to stay alive, you know, Fallout. What I'm going for is a world (or rather, a relatively large area) that's become stable enough that the controlling government can issue bounties on problem-causers and, much more importantly, you can still have a rich scientist antagonist trying to resume the world like it used to be before the cataclysm thus creating all sorts of awesome perspective-based struggle of technology vs nature.

You guys are helping me immensely just as idea bouncers.

Continuing the last train of thought; I'm going for kind of a Superman/Lex Luthor parallel here, with totally powerful protagonist vs super intelligent antagonist whom manages to outsmart the former just by plotting and being prepared. It's going to be great because while she will have the suit, she won't understand it completely since her mind is still in the "Technology is electricity that does...stuff." Meanwhile he's smart enough to figure out how it works just based on seeing it in action.

The important thing about the antagonist is that he's A) Rich and powerful, B) Super intelligent (or at least knows enough about pre-crisis technology to get by), and C) wants to steal the technology my protagonist has for his own uses, namely to bring back the era we're living in now, plus fifty years or so.

From the description of your setting, it seems a lot like Ralph Bakshi's "Wizards." I have no idea if that's a good or a bad thing.