[ WP ] Humanity is no longer Earth 's Apex Predator .

When I was your age, I spent a lot of time hunting in the ruins, risking myself and my future children for the ancient tools that might help us survive. I remember staring at the tall metal and poured-stone buildings, wondering how people defended them. The elders say that these towers were sheathed in gleaming glass, that people walked boldly through open terrain. 
 
 It seemed so foreign to me, the world that existed before Brutes. 
 
 I wish I could go back again, to look again at those odd, fearless structures. When you see them, know that they are relics from a safer, peaceful time. Now, the ruins are thick with Brutes, and with the lingering poisons of the suicide booms, when the cities of the world killed themselves in blasts stronger than dynamite or gunpowder. We lost the knowledge to make those, we lost the tools to build them. But they did more harm than good, so maybe it ’ s better gone. 
 
 The survivors of those ancient explosions marked the most poisoned places with this symbol. The three triangles pointing to a circle, done in black and yellow, but sometimes scratched onto walls. If you see anything like this, remember the danger. You can walk there for a short time, but the longer you spend there, the more you risk an illness we can not cure. Even if you do not fall sick, your children may be born wrong. Strange growths will form on your body, and pains grow inside where the healer can not help you. 
 
 But there are other dangers. Watch your feet, and where you put them. The broken metals are sharp and also poisoned. If you hunt an animal and it has the foam of madness at its snout, kill it but leave your arrows. Do not eat the mad animals, or you will catch the madness. Burn it, if you are able. If you collect water, search for the cleanest, upstream of the city. Look at the plants that grow at the edges, at the animals that live and drink there—or their footprints. If there are bones in the water or near it, leave. 
 
 But most of all, be wary of the Brutes. You have lived here safe and far from them all your life, but you have seen the drawings. 
 
 Green Brutes are by far the dumbest. They survive by strength and that they can eat anything. You can outrun a Green Brute. They give up fast, and you can jog for hours if need be. If cornered, hide or climb where it can not reach. It may wait outside your hiding place if it knows you are there, but if you are small and quiet and still, it will forget you are there, and it will go to its den when the sun turns red. You can emerge in safety at dusk. Greens hunt by sight. They have good hearing, but poor noses. Their danger is that they are everywhere. Flee one with a reckless route, and you risk running across another. 
 
 Horned Brutes, have long arms and will dig for you if you hide. Escape into a deep tunnel and out the other side, or climb out of their reach; they fear heights and can not squeeze into narrow spaces. They are too swift to outrun. They hunt by hearing, and some believe they can taste the warmth of your skin. Like the Green, Horned Brutes are forgetful, but more, they are impatient. If they can not easily reach you, they will move on. 
 
 The Furred Brutes are the most dangerous. They hunt by scent, and will track one of us far beyond the ruins. They are more patient than Horned Brutes, if you are cornered by one, it will hide and wait for you to emerge, then attack. These Brutes will wait for days if no better hunting catches their attention. 
 
 Never follow the same path for three days; on the third day one will be waiting for you to return. Furred Brutes climb with more agility than us. They are narrow and flexible and can squeeze into places that might seem too small for creatures so large. 
 
 There is little safety if a Furred Brute stalks you. It will attack you from behind in a soundless leap. It will drop upon you from above. Your best defense is insanity—seek to lead it to a Horned Brute, then flee their confrontation. 
 
 I want to tell you more, I want to tell you how to stay safe in any situation, but here is a truth, one I learned at great cost. There is no safety, and no matter what I say here and now, it is your inner strength, your intelligence and resourcefulness that are the most important. These will bring you home. 
 
 Look at the ruins and wonder at a life before the Brutes, but do not yearn for them too much. Think to now, think to tomorrow, and remember, always, that you are being hunted. 

