Marcus is hyper-vigilant with a troubled past. He is a cynic and a contrarian who has listened to his father's stories of collapse since childhood. He finally begins to trust the world as the lessons of distant history become relevant again.

Living in a sleek downtown loft, she embodies modern normalcy. Demanding that Marcus live in the present rather than obsessing over a doomed future. She has to make life changing decisions with little time.

Haunted by Cold War memories and suffering from advancing dementia, his "corrupted hard drive" of a mind holds the fractured, trauma-triggered lessons of time.

She is a fierce, pragmatic mom with unwavering resolve in the face of the collapse. Living near the airfield, she gives Marcus intel about what's really happening on the ground.

He's out of the military, but it isn't out of him. He operates with clinical detachment and lethal efficiency. He provides Marcus an essential tactical advantage before making his departure.

A resilient 10 year-old boy who strongly resembles his father. Rescued from the suffocating, passive decay of the suburbs, he tries to understand what happened to his life while vowing to be the exact opposite of the "monster" that destroyed the world.

Sweating profusely and paralyzed by passive cowardice, he remains slumped in his dark, boarded-up home. As the toxic, helpless dependency that allowed entropy and greed to consume his family ends in tragedy, there is nothing he can do but accept his fate.

Adapting ruthlessly to the post-grid reality, he joins a local Atlanta gang and operates by the brutal "Rules of the Street," leaning into the dark, violent extreme of what it takes to survive the new normal.

A therapist who once cut through his thick, defensive ego with devastating, clinical precision, asking Marcus profound questions that continue to echo in his mind as the collapse unfolds.