Shortwave radio, the only surviving means of mass communication, is eagerly monitored and reveals a chaotic situation after the Fall. Several people, including some who had been officials of the former US government, claim to be the new or currently acting US President, but others are now self-proclaimed monarchs of various regions or areas. Many people subsist by looting former stores and by catching rats and various fish, especially the now-plentiful giant carp, which are mostly either former pet goldfish or their progeny, engorged by the massive supply of food available to them, primarily in the form of human and animal corpses. Some advanced technical knowledge was maintained by the means of the preservation of a collection of books, which had been wrapped in impermeable plastic and submerged in a septic tank shortly after Hammerfall and later retrieved by a JPL scientist, who realized their potential value and likely scarcity in a post-Hammer world.