Nuclear Warfare

[travis1325]

I am a writer and I am working on a story of a post-nuclear war Earth. I am very confused. I know that, as a writer, I can make the world whatever I want it, but I want it to be sound as well. I need the Earth to be destroyed, I need civilization to be warring with one another over resources, and I need them to NOT know what happened in the past. I thought maybe 200 years down the road would be a good time frame, that way most of those who knew what happened would be dead and gone and the new people wouldn't have a clue. Then I researched and found that, 200 years down the road, there would probably be a lot of reconstruction and having things kind of back to normal.

 

Is there a way for this to work? If a group of people were far enough out they would have been cut off from communication with others, they wouldn't have any electricity, maybe there would be traveling merchants they could trade goods for, but they could be completely cut off from knowing what happened.

 

Please help, I am willing to change the date to make it fit, but I want my characters to be pretty in the dark about what happened to lead Earth to this point.

[travis1325]

Of course for the sake of keeping the story going properly, maybe no one knew what happened anywhere. Would that even be possible?