#danger days lore

[pyrosaintt]

when danger days first came out I’m sad to say I was on the hate train I remember sitting and crying to it though… I slowly got over it by liking one or two songs but greatly ignoring it

It wasn’t until I read Marx, came out as queer, and my brain became more developed that I really appreciate the album

It’s genius really! But Gerard should have sent everyone a copy of the manifesto prior to the release imo lol

it was way ahead of its time. I think maybe it became more relevant with orange in the White House in 2016 and even more relevant in 2025

[z0mbiepois0n]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MIKEY WAY

[blood-injections]

Came across my sort of headcanon masterdoc for how BLI was started that I all wrote down because I have an au in my drafts that deals with the creation of BLI and the killjoys and danger days universe if the Fab Four were there since the very beginning and how they went from normal teenagers to rebels fighting a war and. holy SHIT guys this shit is genius and I totally forgot about it all. Anyway figured I’d finally post some of it.

As we all know, canon information on the formation of Better Living and how the country became a postapocalyptic, irradiated dead zone is… scarce to say the least. We know that there were the Helium/Atomic wars but don’t know if those are separate wars or two names for the same thing. We know that the great fires happened in 2012 and that they were a possible cause for the rise of Better Living. We know the pig bomb was dropped in 2017 thanks to a Cherri Cola tweet and if I remember correctly it was dropped in Texas(literally can’t remember if that’s canon or part of my shit) and probably related to the wars, which apparently took place not long before the music videos. We know that the further out into the zones you go the more radiation there is and that as of 2019 the zones get acid rain. And we also know that Australia somehow just up and disappeared which is by far the most eldritch canon detail about the dd universe.

But that’s it.

So I have built upon the breadcrumbs of canon and just sweeped some under the rug and done quite the feat of worldbuilding to explain how BLI and the killjoys came to be.

In my mind it all starts in 2012, but it’s probably been in the works for decades. There were conspiracy theories of corrupt governments and secret societies but nobody knew the true extend of it. One second the country was running as normal, the next the government was taken down by people in its own ranks, people that have lied their way to the top and were secretly working together just to take over. In a day the country falls, America attacks itself. Communications are cut off along with everything else that society needs to function. Power is shut off nationwide, satellites are disabled, missiles(non nuclear) shoot into the air just to turn around and attack the very land they hailed from. From the ashes of America rise the corrupt individuals that made it all happen, with the woman that’ll become known as the director at the helm of it all. They form a new government and try to round up the survivors, intent on creating a utopia from the rubble.

I have no idea what’s going on with other countries if they help or if this new government attacked any other countries or just its own or if a world war is essentially started I just figure since canon didn’t touch on it and nobody else ever does I won’t either. Use your imagination I guess.

But it’s 2012, the country is in shambles, the biggest cities have fallen, smoke covers the land. The great fires of 2012 start not a week after the demolition of the USA, beginning as fires from burning cities that cause surrounding land to catch light and later on, its deliberate napalm to shape the path of the fires and drive people out of their shelters, using the destructive powers of Mother Nature to literally herd survivors to certain areas of the country.

The great fires quickly lead to the start of the Helium/Atomic wars, which are two names for what’s the same fight, but different sections of it. The helium wars come first, a rebellion to the new government was quickly formed by what remained of uncorrupt military and control over weapons are essentially split between the two sides. An all out war breaks out and the sides start off evenly matched, the numbers of those loyal to the new government and those remaining images of what fell fairly well matched.

A month after civilization falls the new government drops the first nuke on New York City already demolished by the first missiles, its now doomed to be a nuclear wasteland as well. It seems like this would be called the atomic war, with the use of atomic bombs, but it’s not. This is the true start of the helium war, for it seems both sides are suddenly eyeing the precious resource, for who has control over its production might very well come out on top of this fight, for helium is used in everything from medical technology to space exploration and national defense. It’s used for welding and in rocket fuel and nuclear reactors and yes, nuclear weapons. And it’s already a finite resource, non renewable and already said to be running out. And now in this ruined country there’s more of a demand for it then ever. And guess what? The United States is the biggest producer of helium worldwide, with the largest helium deposit located in Texas.

It’s unclear which side drops the second nuke, but what matters is that it falls smack dab on top of that deposit. It seems desperate times call for desperate measures and the desperate measures were to wipe out the source of advancement for the war completely. It becomes known as the pig bomb.

The fight goes on for two years during which the new government builds ‘safe zones,’ aka walled cities for survivors to head to, just to get trapped in and made to work. The rebellion is diminishing and unfortunately the enemy is winning. Then the third and final nuke is dropped, once again by the new government. It’s discovered that the rebellion was actually the side to drop the pig bomb, but it did pay a crucial blow to the enemy and helium remains scarcer than ever, meaning they must limit what the manufacture and how they build.

The third nuke is dropped northeast of the pig bomb, around Wyoming , and the sick thing is it doesn’t do that much. The country there is already burned flat so it wipes out a good chunk of the rebellion that was hiding in the Midwest but other than that all it does is drive the last of the survivors to the far west, where the ruins of LA and the biggest of the safe zones resides. The placement of the nukes really locks off this to-be battery city and the zones, trapping them in a big irradiated box.

At this point numbers in both sides have dwindled and fighting has died off, not to a standstill, but the last bomb marks the official end of the helium wars as the last survivors trickle into the LA safe zone and the surviving rebels hide just outside it, in the fairly untouched desert and ghost towns that litter the borders. Supplies on both sides are running low and this quiet period of rebuilding and recollecting becomes known as the dust bowl.

The west is pretty much uninhabitable aside from this chunk of land and the rest if the country is all burnt up and cut off and the northeast is a no-go zone to radiation and in fact the entire east coast has essentially fallen into a nuclear winter, fucked up from the trade winds carrying over the radiation and ash clouds from the pig bomb and the great fires and even after two years they sky never seems to clear. The entire eastern half of the united states is a wasteland of dust storms, acid rain, pockets of radiation, and thanks to permanently altered weather patterns due to rapid Atlantic climate change from all the ash and radiation clogging the atmosphere, that means the coast is under attack from a constant barrage of deadly cyclones, meaning even if it wasn’t irradiated, living there is impossible due to the monthly high winds and flooding and all the horrible things cooking up in that ocean.

For anyone that didn’t make it to the LA safe zone, still stuck in survivable pockets of the country in the Midwest or even in the deadly east, none of them are going to last long for sure. Anyone that didn’t head west while they could has to watch out for whoever is left there with them, scrounging for resources. Looting gangs and desperate madmen roam these states and they won’t show mercy. It’s kill or be killed beyond the wall of radiation that now separates the far west from the rest of the country.

That quiet time known as the dust bowl passes slowly and at some point the LA safe zone becomes known as Battery City and the safe areas around it and the small bit of the west coast not ravaged by radiation or fires become known as the zones, numbered one through seven by how risky they are to inhabit, one being the safest, just beyond the city walls, and seven being the most dangerous, with the highest levels of radiation. They’re not perfect circles like the canon maps, since there some small dead pockets of radiation and stretches of ash land(fire ravaged areas) that are deemed inhabitable. The zones are also much larger than canon, stretching out into the edge of Arizona and maybe even Utah and Nevada.

All levels of the zones are desert wastelands, but go north and that’s the ash lands, the giant stretches of land burnt through by the great fires. The fires took months to die out and some are still burning, but the empty areas on the edge of the north zones are a true wasteland, the soil contaminated by the vast amounts of ash that coated it and if you drive through it you just kick it all up, then you can’t get out of your car or you can hardly breathe. Step onto that dead land and it’s completely barren, it feels like another world. Nothing grows, not a sprout is to be seen, just the vast dark, dead, soil. As time passes and the zones get a culture, they say that’s where you go to die, they say it’s filled with ghosts.

But back to Battery city, it’s 2016, the dust bowl period is coming to an end and each side has been rebuilding. The city is shinier then ever and the new government, now calling themselves Better Living Industries, is putting all their resources into medical experiments and technological improvements, working on robots and AI and mind altering medication. With each passing month the citizens seem to become more sated and meanwhile in the desert, the rebels are having some improvements of their own. After the last bomb fell and everyone headed to the zones and the rebellion survivors found each other, they had to spend time figuring out how to survive while avoiding the city and whatever was happening within, but now it’s been a couple years of recuperation, and the rebellion has been planning. They’ve heard of the experiments Better Living has been doing and what’s going on with the citizens and they’ve decided it’s time to stop just surviving and start fighting again, and this marks the start of the Analog Wars, a much smaller scale fight, free of missiles and bombs, it’s just one side against the other with mainly handheld weapons. It’s named for the rebellions reliance on analog equipment like radios and other older devices since there’s no normal communications or electronics available. They use things like morse code and secret messages to communicate via the airwaves and this is where Doctor Death Defying gets his big role. He was a marine turned Helium War survivor and veteran, losing his legs in the fight, and now he may not be able to be on the front lines but he mans the radio and somehow always stays positive, spreading news and hope through the zones. He coins the term Killjoys for the rebellion and this is the time when the zones culture starts blossoming, with Doctor Death coming up with most of the slang, originating as unique code words to let rebels what’s going on and where without BLI figuring out what they’re talking about, and the young folks somehow taking the lead in the fight instead of the few veterans that remain. They’re not trained soldiers, just people fighting for what’s right, and that’s what makes them dangerous. The rebellion gets their hands on some of BLIs weapons, the laser guns, making their fight more equal. The Fab Four pop up around this time and they inspire people across the zones, a team of four friends that found each other in the apocalypse, they’re still pretty much kids but now they’re leading the fight against BLI. They remember how life used to be but as the years pass and they really become soldiers, they start to forget, until all they know is the desert and a life that’s a cycle of violence and hope, life as killjoys.

When 2019 comes around and the events of the music videos may or may not happen, it’s still technically the Analog War but the term isn’t really used anymore, since it’s just life for everyone at this point, having weekly skirmishes with BLI goons, which start turning up as dracs and scarecrows instead of just soldiers in 2017.

But it’s 2019, we’re all caught up, it’s life in the zones as we know it, and that’s all I have for you today.

[asmogorna]

theyre pretty cool ig

[realkilljoyhoursnow]

Thank you Show Pony for your generosity in donating this photo to the archives! This polaroid of Cherri Cola and Dr. Death Defying sadly suffered from a bit of colour-shiftery over the years, but the fading doesn't seem too bad (so I didn't digitally touch it up like I normally do.)

I believe this photo must have been taken on their rest leave during the last days of the helium war? Or sometime pre-radio station? The timeline is unclear based on hairstyles and injuries gained during the war. I asked Show Pony for more context, but xey sadly were not present on this occasion. I can only assume Tommy Chow Mein took this particular photo as the three were in the same troop, but he refuses to comment.

[youmustfixyourheartt]

My dealer: got some straight gas 🔥😛 this strain is called “Danger Days: The True Lives Of The Fabulous Killjoys” 😳 you’ll be zonked out of your gourd 💯

Me: yeah whatever. I don’t feel shit.

5 minutes later: dude I swear everybody wants to change the world but no one wants to die

My buddy Party Poison pacing: BL/ind is lying to us

[cowboycatss]

is this anything

[discocritic]

here's my take on the helium wars and the analog wars, which danger days canon delightfully decides not to expound upon literally like. at all:

before everything went to shit and the global superpowers of the pre-better living industries era were simply chugging along, mass-producing new technology and consuming massive amounts of energy, there was a sudden helium shortage. while most of this history is lost to time, it's thought that this one defect in the global supply chain launched a series of foreign intelligence conflicts and introduced a general suspicion of corporate and government agencies. somehow, better living industries rose out of the remains of a powerful conglomerate and made a name for itself as the proponent for a new and improved future.

about two decades after this, total war broke out across the entire globe. initially, the fighting involved nuclear destruction and the newest wartime technology, but after years of conflict with many corporations--which are now the chief forces driving the war after the fall of many countries' governments--war tactics devolved back into the "analog" methods of trench warfare. the analog wars themselves were actually multiple different instances of this kind of fighting, as the conflicts eventually became scattered around the globe as more and more of civilized society was destroyed and previously-developed cities became nothing more than wastelands.

when nearly all of what used to be the united states was wiped out, leaving only smoldering remnants of what used to be huge settlements, better living industries rose up out of the ashes and established a looming presence in the general area of pre-war los angeles. they channeled all of their energy into building up a powerful, advanced-tech regime, satiating their new citizens with promises of an improved, state-of-the-art new way of living. they kept everyone within the city limits with half-baked rumors of deadly radiation, bloodthirsty desert inhabitants, and the general fear of the remains of the unknown. out of the public eye, however, they were attempting to subdue the residents of what they deemed the "zones of radiation" or the "zones of destruction"-- depending on what records you read--and to find ways to force the desert wasteland into becoming a vast energy generator for the city. of course, this didn't work, and much of their progress was abandoned as they finally retreated back into the well-defined area of battery city. every so often, though, they still send their draculoid patrols or fearsome exterminators out to patrol the desert and put down any traces of what might one day turn into a revolution.

[blluntrotation]

Who is this dude??

some simple drawing cause i wanted to draw blade again

[discount-oranges]

thinking about mcr/killjoys magical girl au

would anyone be interested in this???

(the killjoys would be the magical girl forms of the mcr members)

edit: masterpost here

[apostaterevolutionary]

Dragon Age 2 is so funny cause the whole game is like 'oooh magic and blood mages and demons, so scary oooh, you need to be scared, so scary and dangerous oooh'

And meanwhile here's a clip I just re-found of my 100% non-magical Hawke stabbing a near full health ogre so hard it literally explodes

[pyrosaintt]

children where can I read the kill joy comics online?

[z0mbiepois0n]

[blood-injections]

Zones location idea: A car wash where music always rings out, ominously at all hours, but never anything but daft punk echoing through the stagnant desert. A neon sign proclaims what the structure is but some of the letters are shorted out so at night all you can see is RASH. The building is illuminated with flickering orange streetlamps and a generator ever-churns out back but no one knows what it runs on, just like how the car wash isn’t self-serve but no one knows who works it. The concrete is potholed with soapy, oil-slick technicolor-colored puddles that boil come the noon heat and evaporate leaving a sticky residue in their wake. The curb is littered with cigarette butts, firecracker skeletons, tempered glass rhinestones and candy wrappers. There’s no use for a car wash in the zones, your ride’ll be dusty within five minutes, maybe no one goes there at all, maybe no one’s ever been, but there’s stories about it all the same. Like the one that says when you go through the wash isn’t your zones that you roll back out into, but a different desert entirely.

[cadriox]

DracoEd broke into my house one day and made their bed here ever since

Through the Gate by Preelikeswriting: https://archiveofourown.org/series/781794

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[realkilljoyhoursnow]

An early battery city newspaper clipping of a young sailor from Morrow bay, California, 1980s (colourized by me!)

AKA Doctor Death Defying, famous zones radio host (r.i.p.)