The Black Tuesday Virus, 2003

2003, Secret Agent Sarah Banks Fails to prevent the release of the Black Tuesday Virus. (As told in several Chyoo Stories, including "A College Girl To Be")

The Virus is lethal in Ninety Nine Percent of the human race. (EVERYONE gets it) Of the survivors, it affects men and women much differently. It drives nearly all men who survive it crazy, as well as about half of the women. The worst part of all is that many fewer women survived than men. However, Small samples, sampling errors, and numerous other erroneous assumptions by **** scientists working under **** conditions have caused the estimations of fertility effects to be inconsistent, and in fact may have resulted in different strains of the virus affecting people differently.

Known strains include strains that literally burned their victims alive, strains that simply left a body intact after a fever, and nearly invisible strains that induced greatly increased fertility, to the point of quite rapid pregnancy in females and greatly increased virility in males. (The Player and a many of the other characters have this strain. The good news is that it acts as a vaccine to other strains of the virus, so you don't have to worry about going crazy... The bad news you've already figured out.)

The big overwhelming effect however, is an increase in sex drive. The vast majority of survivors will not give a second thought to taking their urges out on the nearest person, even if that person isn't willing.

Of course, when things got really bad, several scientists decided that they'd live out their darkest fantasies, and released secret bio weapons projects. So far the things are only in isolated areas, but their overwhelming urge to breed as a result of them too being infected by the virus may soon cause a population explosion.

Year of the PS2, and the Game Cube. Lord of the Rings had just finished, and the US had just invaded Iraq. As a result, much of the US military is overseas, with only a skeleton **** left. Even less now, but that will be discussed further in the "Location" chapter.

Cell Phones are still in the clamshell phase and are fairly uncommon. In addition, many cars still fly American Flag. Video stores are still profitable, DVD is still the dominant format.