From the introduction:
The post-holocaust genre has had good representation in science fiction literature. Most of the sources available were written, curiously enough, before World War II. The remainder seems to come from the cold war days of the mid-seventies into the early eighties. It has only met limited success as a role playing platform, all of the available games "out there" seem to support either World War III itself or else hundreds to thousands of years after the fall of civilization.
Wasteland HERO tends to be best played three to five generations after the final fall of civilization. The world is an ecological nightmare and very few life forms have survived intact. Of those species that survived, humans fared the best. They were ready for the devastation that they created. Their progeny, however, didn’t survive entirely intact. The integrity of the species was threatened spawning several new sub-species. As it turns out most of the "Neo-Earthers" were a product of the collapse of scientific ethics in the last days of man. The once familiar creatures of the earth were transformed into mighty beasts worthy of legend, and hostility quickly replaced serenity for the sake of survival in a barren world.