Editing Pirates of the Baltic Sea (section)

==The Northern Fallout Zone==

60 years ago, a nuclear explosion destroyed the Russian city of Murmansk, on the coast of the Barents Sea. Various conspiracy theories have attributed the event to anything from a terrorist attack or act of war to Russians nuking the city themselves to hide something even worse. But most likely it was an accident. There were not only nuclear powered Russian Navy ships at the port, Murmansk was also the home port to Atomflot, the world's only fleet of nuclear-powered icebreakers. Some of these ships were very old and poorly maintained, and one may have sustained a catastrophic reactor malfunction. Whatever the cause, the event did not just destroy the city and irradiate the Kola Peninsula where Murmansk was situated. The winds blew the fallout all over the northernmost parts of Finland, Sweden and Norway. The people were hastily evacuated. Thankfully, the area was sparsely populated, but entire towns still had to be abandoned.

Some months later, the area was leased by Reclaim International, a recycling and waste management megacorporation. The governments, in need of money to relocate the evacuated people, agreed to the lease, thinking that Reclaim might be planning to cleanse the area. Instead, Reclaim turned the Fallout Zone into the world’s largest dumping ground. Already irradiated, they started dumping the waste they collected globally, especially hazardous waste, into the zone.

The worst of the radiation has subsided, but the Northern Fallout Zone still remains irradiated. Not only that, now there is also toxic and otherwise hazardous waste lying around. Despite this, the Zone is no longer uninhabited. Over the decades, people have moved there. Most of them people not welcome elsewhere, such as refugees facing deportation, fugitives from law or escaped synths. But also daring people scavenging the abandoned cities and waste heaps for valuables, gangs and fringe groups seeking a place to establish their own rule, even hermits and groups of mystics. All of these people are called by the general name of Badlanders. So in addition to the other hazards, these days anyone visiting the Fallout Zone would also have armed gangs to worry about.