Metro 2034

Prologue

It is the year 2034. The world lies in ruins. Humanity is almost destroyed. Radiation has made the destroyed cities uninhabitable. Outside their borders, some say, endless burnt wastelands and impenetrable mutated forests extend forever.

But nobody knows exactly what there is. Civilization fades away. And the memories of man’s former greatness slowly retreat fairy tales and legends.

It has been over twenty years since the last airplane started. Rusted train tracks lead into emptiness. And when the radio operator listens for the millionth time to the frequencies where once New York, Paris, Tokyo and Buenos Aires broadcasted, he hears nothing but lonely howling.

It has been twenty years since then. But mankind has already left up its reign over the earth to other species. Creatures of radiation, that are far better adapted to the life in this new world.

The era of man is over.

But the survivors don’t want to admit that. Some ten thousand humans are left, and they don’t know, if except for them any are still alive – or if they are the last in this world.

They inhabit the Moscow metro, the biggest atomic bunker that was ever built by human hands.

The last sanctuary for humanity.

Almost all of the survivors now alive were in the metro on that day. And that saved their lives. The hermetic security gates of the stations protected them against the radiation and the terrible creatures from the surface. Old filters purify air and water. Resourceful tinkerers constructed dynamo machines to generate electricity. In underground farms humans farm champignons and breed pigs. The poor don’t fear the taste of rat meat.

A central administration doesn’t exist anymore. The stations have transformed themselves into small states, where humans gather around ideology, religion and water filters. Or just unite against enemy attacks.

It is a world without tomorrow. Dreams, plans, hopes – for all that there is no more place. Feelings made place for instincts, and the most important of all – to survive. At all costs.

The story before the events of this book is told in the book “Metro 2033”.