notes/setting: Change what caused the apocalypse

The previous scenario never felt right and was too "preachy" for a fun story.
Politics don’t belong here.

notes/setting.txt

@@ -6,38 +6,24 @@ to reflect the current setting when I have real information to fill in.
   - relatively slow, gradual downfall of civilization - not a fast
     wipe out event 
     - ppl had time to prepare
-  - humanity discovers a new way to generate nuclear power some time in
-    the 80s 
-    - upsides: 
-      - moar powar
-      - less waste
-      - comparatively straight-forward to get going
-    - downsides: 
-      - absolutely needs to be maintained well
-      - horrible accidents 
-        - huge explosions
-        - scatter toxic globs of radioactive chemical sludge 
-          - areas where this stuff lands turn into wasteland for centuries
-            or millennia
-        - release some toxic gas that decays slowly over time
-    - power plants of this kind are built everywhere
-  - as accidents happen, ppl cry for alternatives but nobody does anything
-    about it bc it's not economically viable
-  - a bunch of wars happen and a few of the power plants blow up 
-    - conventional wars, no MAD scenario
-  - areas are abandoned causing civil wars in other locations due to
-    refugee crisis
-  - in the chaos, more power plants blow up making it difficult to survive
-    at the surface due to contaminated atmosphere 
-    - the rest of civilization has to wind down and disappears
-- story takes place roughly 110 years after the apocalypse 
+  - humanity discovers a new, safe alternative to asbestos in the 1970s
+    - problem with it: one of the precursor chemicals is way worse than
+      asbestos itself but its fibers decay within a couple years
+    - an industrial accident in the late 80s causes an ongoing unstoppable
+      reaction producing this material
+    - attempts to contain it fail and the atmosphere gets contaminated
+    - the reaction continues producing the material for at least a decade,
+      possibly even into the early 2000s
+    - most places are completely unsafe to inhabit by 1995
+    - Earth's surface is uninhabitable for decades to come due to the sheer
+      amount of fibers that got released into the atmosphere
+- story takes place roughly 110 years after the apocalypse
   - story starts on Tue, 2106-06-01
   - just enough time for no living memory of the "old world" to survive
   - slight retro-futurism 
     - for the most part, technology is stuck in the 80s or 90s, but there
       are some key differences 
       - the underground city has only electric cars
-      - aforementioned nuclear power plants
       - successful cryogenic preservation
     - computing is different 
       - home computers are rare - they are similar to early to mid 90s