You know... now that I think of it, this story/Long Hike takes place in what was the US right?

If that's the case, what happened to The Pentagon/DARPA? I know a little about these cause I'm a US citizen and my family has a military background, BTW. Wonder how useful the tech or facilities in that place would be in this world... 🤔

Yep it takes place in the US.

Considering most pre existing buildings, cityscapes, and infrastructure were so thoroughly annihilated that it became more pragmatic to pull copper, stone and glass from the rubble rather than use any sort of prepulse tech, the Pentagon is gone.

considering moreover that the populations of the americas were broadly scattered about many dozens if not hundreds of planar as big or larger than the Americas, chances are any pre existing government agency or organization at best wouldn't be able to organize effectively but, more realistically, ceased to exist upon the Pulse.

I was more thinking about the experimental tech in the DARPA Labs and how the Pentagon itself could be used as a large/extremely secure village or town. Imagine what the Dreks could do if they were able to salvage/reverse engineer that old world military grade tech.

Fun fact about DARPA: The labs run super deep underneath the Pentagon (Division 2 got a surprising amount of detail about the Labs/Pentagon right. No idea how they managed that without getting in trouble) and some areas are structurally sound enough to withstand a strike by an Orbital Kinetic Bombardment Weapon or nuke attack on the Pentagon itself.

So unless the event in question literally split the ground several miles underground randomly across the country, its possible that at least DARPA could still be (mostly) intact. Just something to think about for future comics, you know?

I think you underestimate the scale of scouring and disruption that the pulse unleashed. I would argue those aren’t a factor anymore.

Goes beyond human super weapons, it’s an apocalypse brought by a tide of usually passive billions that took a brief moment of collective focus.

It could be a cool story! But one I personally don’t think the awakening setting would likely tell. But I’ll keep it in mind as there are places I think that could go

Fare enough. Never seen that kinda scale of destruction in media before so I most certainly wouldn't know.

If you ever do make a comic out of it, I only have one thing to say. I look forward to the inevitable chaos that comes from it.