On a crisp January day, a Presidential inauguration day, a one-megaton blast ripped through the Soviet embassy in Washington, D.C. Subsequent explosions around the globe changed the face and the shape of the earth forever. Out of the ruins emerged Deathlands, a world that conspired against survival. In the blasted heart of the new America, a group of men and women plan desperately to escape the eerie wastes and mutated life forms of their nuclear hell. Three warriors—the tough, intelligent Ryan Cawdor, an enigmatic beauty called Krysty Wroth and the armorer J.B. Dix—set out on a harrowing journey to find a rumored enclave high in the mountains. Their aim: to unlock the secrets of prewar scientific experiments that could hold the answer to survival in the Deathlands of the future.

A generation after a global nuclear war, Louisiana is a fetid, sullen landscape of impenetrable swamps and grotesquely mutated wildlife. Above the gnarled bayous, radioactive red dust clouds race across the sky on nuclear winds; below, thick mud sucks at a man's boots. Now and then a biting acid rain falls, swept in on the boiling winds from the Gulf. In the reeking swampland that was the Mississippi basin, neutrom bombs have left barren cityscapes the territories of small groups of bitterly opposed survivors. Ryan Cawdor and his companions Krysty Wroth and J.B. Dix come upon one such group who are striving to revive life on earth the way it was before the bombs fell. But they're up against a postholocaust feudal lord who's just as determined to wipe them out. In the Deathlands, the world blew out in 2001. The future is emerging.

Ryan Cawdor's post-holocaust odyssey across America is about to come full circle-Ryan Cawdor is going home. Forced away from Front Royal by a power-mad brother who had already committed fratricide, Ryan had roamed a devastated America searching out the small pockets of life where civilization was being reborn. Emerging from a gateway in the ruins of New York City, Ryan decides to put his own house in order-it's time to avenge the deaths of his father and older brother. Accompanied by Krysty Wroth and J.B. Dix, Ryan Cawdor comes face-to-face with the harsh reality of post-nuclear America. In the Deathlands, honor and fair play are words of the past. Vengeance is a word to live by.

Ryan Cawdor and his band of post-holocaust survivors come face-to-face with a specter from the past: out of the swirling dust that was once New Mexico bursts a regiment of pony soldiers, led by a man with flowing yellow hair. Brandishing Colts and Winchesters, the horsemen grimly prepare to destroy the ragtag strangers, intruders who dare to penetrate their ruthlessly defended stronghold. As the final showdown nears, Ryan makes a startling discovery: either he and his companions have chron-jumped back to the 1800s, or General George Custer has been catapulted into the twenty-second century...

A generation after a global nuclear catastrophe, Minnesota is a steamy tropical environment of lush plants and horrifically mutated insects. Emerging torn and battered after a triple jump through the gateways, Ryan Cawdor and his band of post-holocaust survivors discover an abandoned cryonics complex-a doomed fantasy begun a century before in a world far away from Deathlands. Dr. Mildred Wyeth is successfully revived from subzero suspended animation and joins the team of warrior survivalists. In the jungles of Minnesota, the group discovers yet another freakish legacy of a world cone hideously wrong: Vikings. In the Deathlands, the past and the future are clashing with frightening force.