The Collapse

The Collapse

The Collapse is the wound at the centre of Kenshi. Everything you see is what grew over it, or never healed.

The catastrophe that ended the old world and turned a living planet into the wasteland.

Overview

The Collapse refers to the catastrophe — or chain of catastrophes — that destroyed the advanced civilisations and reduced the world to the harsh wasteland of the present.

The Evidence

The Deadlands, Black Desert and Ashlands are the Collapse made geography — irradiated, acid-bound, lifeless regions where the disaster's force was greatest.

Causes

Kenshi withholds a clean answer. Ruins, books and the Skeletons' fragmented accounts point to war, technological catastrophe and the breakdown of the old order.

Why It Matters

The Collapse explains the wasteland's fundamental condition — why the world is scavenged, poisoned and politically shattered.