The World of 2075
The world was ending. Not with a bang, but with a whimper.
Since the last superheroes left this universe in the first decades of the 21st century, the world had spiralled into dystopia. The economic, political, and ecological crises of the 2020s and 2030s left every nation on the brink of collapse; some closer to it than others.
By 2075, the United States had settled into a kind of stability. The Federal government had maintained control over the East Coast, barely, by a combination of extreme policing and appeasing the population with "bread and circuses". The masses in the cities immersed themselves in ever-more violent "reality" entertainment, and managed to ignore the economic hardships, frequent power blackouts, crumbling infrastructure, and queues at the soup kitchens.
The collapse of the farming ecosystems left the American heartland in an even worse situation than the coastal areas. The flyover states were now very dangerous places for the few travellers who ventured outside their cities. Local robber barons and wandering armed gangs dominated the landscape, unchallenged by what little law enforcement remained.
Texas became the first state to officially secede from the Union, becoming the Republic of Texas. Other, primarily Southern, states became independent in effect if not in law, simply by refusing to pay Federal taxes and rewriting those parts of the Constitution they found inconvenient.
As the world's oil reserves finally dried up, petrol engines became first an expensive luxury and later a near-impossibiity. Air travel was the first transportation system to collapse, effectively isolating the major American cities from one another. The main means of travelling between cities became electric-powered vehicles. As law and order broke down, and roads become increasingly hostile, these vehicles started to be armed and armoured, as the only way to get essential cargos through to the cities that needed them was to have more firepower than the people trying to stop you. The truckers and other drivers who plied the inter-city highways were a tough and resourceful breed, a law unto themselves, hired guns both feared and admired by the populations that relied on their services. In a world without law, these drivers were the new superheroes.
In this world, one group of visionaries was working behind the scenes to not only slow the decline of civilization but to reverse it and lead humanity to a new, utopian future. They had resources, and they had a plan. Now all they needed was a group of fearless drivers willing to undertake a dangerous road trip across the country. A trip which could result in the world's salvation.
They found seven drivers. Now, all they had to do was hope some of them survived the trip...