Darth Wiki / Dying Starrs

In the early years of The New '10s a flu like pandemic spread across the globe. It was scary but not necessarily, something to panic about. That was until it mutated and started sending people into comas en masse, and killing people with a terrifying 77% mortality rate. Once the infected died, they would rise again as the undead...en masse, creating undead pockets of zombies which could contain up to hundreds of thousands of zombies in major cities everywhere. But society never collapsed, instead The Virus started out as a slow burn pandemic before becoming a full blown undead pandemic. For some however they just die and stay dead, considering the alternative that's probably not so bad. Story takes place in the beginning stages, and the in-progress chaos stages of the Undead virus. The setting isn't quite the apocalypse being more so a case of Just Before the End, with world governments trying to keep it contained and stop Apocalypse Anarchy. In America they did this by initiating Directive 51. The POV is from the perspective of First responders, The National Guard, and other military services, radio DJ's, journalists, news anchors, social media and civilian volunteers.

The story is Fear the Walking Dead (at least the first half of season one) meets, The Division, meets Third Watch, meets Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City meets Zone One, meets Code Black, meets the "Warnings" and "The Great Panic" chapters of World War Z, meets Contagion (2011) meets The Dead Next Door.

Alternate verse of the The Starr Verse.

The undead tropes:

• Apocalypse Anarchy: The S.D.F.'s job is to curtail this, wherever they can
• Apocalypse How: Class 1
• Apocalyptic Log: A lot of the calls to the emergency services has shades of this. Some being very bleak and demoralizing.
  • There's other smaller civilian cases told through left behind notes, letters and graffiti not unlike Left 4 Dead, For example:
    • JOHN IS DEAD, SARAH IS MISSING, MEET US AT MOM'S
    • ALL DEAD ^note  a grim omen left outside of a emergency clinic
    • DOWNTOWN'S NOT SAFE, STAY AWAY/TURN BACK!!
    • THE NATIONAL GUARD IS SHOOTING CIVILIANS!, STAY OUT OF DALLAS.
  • Social Media was also filled with these.
• Beware the Living: Downplayed; but just barely.
• Big Blackout: Most major cities lost power for long stretches of time. Some never got their power grids back up at all.
• Celebrity Survivor: There's quite a few whom are still alive, some doing local humanitarian stuff. A few of the known survivors are;
  • All of ☯utlaw St★rr, Apparently getting their hands dirty providing resources in their individual hometowns/countries.
  • Kendrick Lamar
  • Ted Nugent
  • Mark Ruffalo
  • Mark Zuckerberg
  • Colin Kaepernick
  • The British royal family (save for the queen, and one of the greatgrand kids, who died from the virus but didn't reanimate^note Though the latter is disputed)
• Contamination Situation:
• Convulsive Seizures: Infected people eventually start to have these.
• Corpse Land: Everywhere; If they're not in corpse piles for the fire, or in mass graves/plague pits they're actually shambling down the street. Also people have noticed that some sanitation trucks have been seen stuffed cartoonishly to capacity with an overload of body bags.
• Cosy Catastrophe: The rural areas for the most part wasn't effected as much by the chaos of some of the urban areas. However, if close enough (e.g. suburbs, rural areas on the outskirts of a major city etc) they can still hear faint distant sounds of gunshot, and sirens, and see smoke plumes, and ambient lights from massive fires in the far distance.
• Crazy-Prepared/Crazy Survivalist: There's probably a ton of vindicated Doomsday Preppers out there
• Darkest Hour: It's slowly but surely heading into this direction.
• Deadline News: Disturbingly common in the beginning. Several well known reporters^note The most gruesome being Hallie Jackson, who took a stray bullet to the neck and was eventually partially consumed by a few straggling zombies have not only been taken down by the hoards, but stray bullets as well. Bringing forth painful memories of situations like Alison Parker and Adam Ward
• Death of a Child: So, so many. Little children usually dies rather fast from the diesease. Causing a nation wide Despair Event Horizon. Others became numb and use to it.
• Definitely Just a Cold: Except it's definitely not. In the early days of the pandemic, The Virus was mostly thought of as just a terrifying mutation of Influenza. But it has changed far from just influenza.
• Despair Event Horizon: All across the world, the situation has been pretty demoralizing. Especially with the VERY high mortality rate of young kids.
• Driven to Suicide: A lot of infected choose this rather than become undead. Others just cross the Despair Event Horizon and just give up. Especially after losing family members in various horrible ways.
• Due to the Dead: Subverted; A lot of loved ones are unceremoniously dumped into mass graves.
• Dying Like Animals: Yup, the whole farm and zoo.
• Emergency Broadcast: Of the "this is NOT a test" variety.
• Emergency Services: They have a big part of the POV, just as much as everyone else.
• Find the Cure!: A Starr Industries Research, Inc. medical subsidiary is hard at work on one with surprisingly hopeful results. Only issue is logistics, and the fact that the proto-vaccine doesn't work for everyone yet. And research is moving ahead, but slowly.
• For Inconvenience, Press "1": In some areas this is basically what happens to 911. They're so overburdened that the system has been replaced with an automated helpline which is primarily designed to aid people in dealing with the outbreak, rather than deal with common crime.
• From Bad to Worse: After the initial outbreak, panic set in once the shit hit the fan in terms of the Undead. People knew it was REALLY bad when the emergency alert system was on a constant loop in some cities...with no updates.
• Fun with Acronyms: All over the place here. The most prominent being the Special. Domestic. Division. Forces (or simply The S.D.F.)
• The Ghost: Most of the celebrity survivors, including most of Outlaw Starr. Even when Starr Industries is relevant to the story only midlevel, and low level colleagues are shown. You never actually see The Starr family, or Angelina, Talissa, Eryn, or even Dr Grant.
• Ghost City: Some cities are either partly abandoned, or completely abandoned. The Most known ones are Detroit, partially Manhattan, Cleveland. Other cities are varying degrees of war zones.
• Government Agency of Fiction: The S.D.F.
• Hell Is That Noise: The terrifying Emergency Alert System.
• Ignored Vital News Reports: At first, but once the the plague reached pandemic levels people were glued to their TVs with horror.
• The Immune: There's quite a few, for example the whole Starr family is immune, along with a few million more. But compared to the amount of people dying, dead, and undead, it's a measly drop in the bucket.
• Incurable Cough of Death: A symptom of the illness.
• Justified Criminal: Citizens looting for necessities like medicine, food, and other supplies.
• Jurisdiction Friction: Between S.D.F, 47 Ronin, and Law Enforcement, and other government groups.
• MegaCorp: Starr Industries is a rare benevolent example, that's working in the background to provide international aide, with one of it's Research, Inc. medical subsidiaries working on a cure/vaccine. They're also trying to keep the Internet, and cell services up and running.
• News Monopoly: The pandemic and related stories gradually dominated all of the news networks.
• Next Sunday A.D.:
• Nothing Is Scarier: The fact that in some towns and cities the emergency alert system repeated on a looop with no new, or updated information. This put fear into a lot of civilians.
• No FEMA Response: Averted (for the most part); They have set up shelters and safe places across the country. Though arguably the medical/disaster relief NGO Blue Starr (a subsidiary of Starr Industries) did just as much of the hefty lifting and cleaning up of FEMA mistakes.
• N.G.O. Superpower: The aforementioned Starr Industries.
• Patient Zero: So far nobody knows who that is. In fact their might not be one, but instead it might be Patient(s) Zero.
• The Plague: The Black Flu, which has an absurd 77% mortality rate.
• Police Are Useless: Downplayed, they're mostly overwhelmed, but also have been over taken in authority by the federal government in some cases. However played straight with all of the mass desertions that happened.
• Private Military Contractors: Starr Industries very own 47 Ronin; Usually tasked with protecting Starr Industries assets, employees, and operations during all of the chaos. Unfortunately in the U.S., clashes with the S.D.F. (usually over misunderstandings), Right-Wing Militia Fanatic groups , and local Law Enforcement is depressingly common.
• Properly Paranoid: The public is mostly paranoid of sick people, but also The Government.
• Quarantine with Extreme Prejudice: Especially in the early days, which ironically made the job harder for S.D.F. Agents in regards to earning the public's trust.
• Removing the Head or Destroying the Brain: The only way to kill zombies.
• Right-Wing Militia Fanatic: "Oathkeepers", A thorn in the side of The S.D.F., and 47 Ronin. Certain members of Law Enforcement don't seem to mind them, however.
• Room Full of Zombies: Because some infectees took a while to turn, hospitals would unwittingly overload morgues with bodies. When they reanimated they essentially turned morgues into a big case of this trope. In the beginning people who died from the virus stayed dead, so there was no reason to fear this trope.
  • This is also how some hospitals was overrun from the inside.
• Ruins of the Modern Age: Downplayed; Certain parts of cities are either partly abandoned or marginally infested with the undead, but only slightly run down.
• Safe Zone Hope Spot: Unfortunately a few of those aforementioned shelters and safe zones were completely overrun. Some emergency broadcasts say that it's just better to stay where you are if it's applicable.
• Screw the Rules, It's the Apocalypse!: The World's governments take this stance, for better or worse.
• Shout-Out:
  • The S.D.F. is basically Division agents, and a federal nationwide version of S.T.A.R.S./B.S.A.A.
  • 47 Ronin is Militaires Sans Frontières, and Task Force 141 except owned by an affluent celebrity, industrial-magnate who also owns a MegaCorp mixed with Umbrella Security Services, and Blackwater/Xe/Academi (but with a much better reputation).
  • BlueStarr is similar to TerraSave, Mercy Corps, and International Medical Corps
• Science Hero: Reconstruction; Thanks to the doctors/scientists of BlueStarr Medical Corps.
• Sit Rep: Given to S.D.F. agents at first responder outposts.
• Spreading Disaster Map Graphic: A global map splotched with red shows the infection's predicted spread to major cities all over the world.

• Voice with an Internet Connection: To the The S.D.F., first responders. The 47 Ronin has their own as well
• We Are Experiencing Technical Difficulties: The Government along with Starr Industries are trying to keep this from happening. But a lot of networks, and radio stations are just plain dead. Especially locals networks, that show nothing but the terrifying emergency broadcast alert on a loop 24/7. Sometimes giving out information that haven't been updated in months.
• We ARE Struggling Together: Political hand wringing, and Jurisdiction Friction stop things from moving more smoothly. Much to the chagrin of more rational people.
• Zombie Apocalypse: From early stages, to In progress.
• Zombie Infectee: Par for the course.

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