The world of Mind’s Edge is shaped by fallout, infection, and the slow normalization of catastrophe. This lore overview explains the key systems and concepts that define the setting.
The nuclear states are the regions most heavily affected by the accidental nuclear war. New England is cut off, both to contain contamination and to keep the rest of the country from seeing what “containment” really looks like.
Life in the nuclear states is marked by shortages, radiation related illness, crumbling infrastructure, and a deep sense of abandonment. People have adapted, but the adaptation has a cost.
Radios are individuals affected by the fallout in ways that manifest as psychic abilities. Their minds can project destructive thoughts, influence others, and in rare cases, fracture reality inside a person’s head.
They are simultaneously valuable and feared. Some people want to weaponize them. Others want them contained or erased. Radios themselves carry the trauma of being turned into something dangerous by circumstances they did not choose.
Worlders are those who live outside the contaminated zones. They enjoy cleaner air, more stable infrastructure, and a narrative that keeps the nuclear states at arm’s length, dangerous, tragic, and “handled.”
When Worlders enter the nuclear states, they bring with them resources, weapons, and authority, but not necessarily understanding.
The corporate heads being killed are part of a larger economic system that profits from isolation. They fund operations, contracts, and policies built on extracting value from a region that was never fully recovered, only fenced off.
Their deaths are not random, they are a direct response to the role they played in shaping the region’s suffering.
From Los Angeles, Edge’s handlers see the nuclear states as both a threat and an asset: a place to test policies, hide mistakes, and quietly remove problems. The distance lets them make decisions that feel abstract on paper but are devastating on the ground.
