The ruins of San Francisco were breathtaking, in a depressing, forlorn kind of way. The way everything is destroyed, that you know millions of people died here, but in a past so distant it almost seems unreal. Like the pictures you see in history books about the American Civil War, an even more distant tradgedy than the First Rising. But you look at pictures of Gettysburg, taken a century after that war, it is serene and beautiful and verdant. The memory of the blood shed on the field is what makes it a forlorn beauty. Looking at the Golden Gate Bridge, the south support pylon leaning precariously towards the water, that was my Gettysburg. That's what I'm headed south, trying to get home. It's also probably the reason I'm still alive. If the undead broke free all at once, if this was a sytematic failure, then I should be considering myself one of the lucky ones. A survivor, just like my ancestors... I'm trying not to think too much about home. Or even anywhere it a ton of people. A lot of tons of people, actually. Heh, I guess laughing at my own jokes isn't a bad thing at this point, is it? We went to San Francisco as a group. A few students, a few apprentices, small groups of others who just wanted to visit the ruins. Of course we all had some sort of weaponry, though in my infinte wisdom, I elected to bring my slingshot. It's more for usefull for killing a bird for dinner than the undead. In fact, I'm morally certain I could not kill one with the only weapon I have. I need to find a knife, or at least a metal pipe. Thank goodness they drilled the kill spot for the undead into our heads. Heh, drilled it into our heads, how to drill it into their heads. Oh boy, I think I'm losing it a little here. Ok, back to business. San Francisco was one of the first cities to fall during the First Rising. It was a deathtrap for those in the city after the virus broke out. It was also the first major city on the west coast to fall. Which is why we couldn't resettle it. The undead outnumbered survivors fleeing the city 100 to 1. Not exactly happy odds for those trying to stay alive. Well you can imagine what it was like. I guess you already know that, if civilization survives and you're reading this. I have to imagine it. Or maybe I don't have to anymore. I know how they felt, now. San Francisco was a great site to settle for early explorers centuries ago. A peninsula with mountains, forests for harvesting wood, fertile cropland to the north and south. It helped they had loads of guns and only minor resistance from the local native tribes, too. But what was a strategic boon for them to control the area around their settlement turned out to be a deathtrap for their descendants during the First Rising. It's not really practical to swim out of San Francisco and most people succumbed to the virus anyway. That's one thing no one really knows about the First Rising. Based on what our history books tell us since the foudning of Nova Marina, the virus immediately kill close to 80% of the population, who then rose up as the undead to attack the survivors. It might have been engineered that way or it may have just been simply luck that some people were immune to its effects. Thankfully we don't have problems with survivors rising up after they have died. I used to get nightmares about that as a kid. Not to mention the nightmares that felt an awful lot like what I'm feeling now. You're probably wondering, well, why didn't everyone just run north or east, across the bridges. Well, yeah, I guess people could have. But the eastbound bridges just went into Oakland and Hayward and Fremont. There were overlapping waves of panic as the residents each side of the bay looked for safety on the opposite shores. But northward, the only way out of the maze of death that was San Francisco, the Golden Gate, well, it got taken out. It was definitely a military plane that took out the bridge. They had tried to knock out the sout pylon and collaps the bridge on the city side, but the ordinance hadn't been strong enough to completely demolish the bridge. It did the job of interrupting the flow northward though, ripped the concreate apart. Fiteen feet of open air was all that separated survivors fleeing north from safety. A symbol of how tenuous our hold on life is. I think I understand it a bit more now. What really led to the fall of the city was the fire. Survivors started making it out on boats. One thing about a city built on a bay is that there are no shortage of boats. As people started leaving, someone apparently had a great idea. Why don't we just burn them out? So that's why there is a 50 mile stretch of burned out city along the San Francisco peninsula. It worked, sort of. It did clear out a few hundred thousand undead. A few hundred thousand, out of millions. That's more a margin of error than a margin of success than anything. Then again, most of those who left by boat had nowhere to go. The couldn't go south. San Jose was worse. A lot worse. The Eastbay was out of the question and even the northern parts of the bay were rimmed with cities. A few enterprising survivors made their way to Alcatraz, figuring a prison would be a safe place to hole up from the undead hordes. How original. Too bad for them, they forgot that tours ran nonstop to the island. Nova Marina's first expedition found a whole prison full of undead. So they just left them there. Anyone stupid enought to make the trip there deserves what they get. Dead on arrival. Man I kill myself sometimes. Then again I've actually thought about it. Maybe I'll give it a go. Maybe not. Maybe.