Ever-Expanding Bunker

About

The Ever-Expanding Bunker is a collaborative writing project centered around the concept of a massive, ever-growing bunker populated by survivors of "the event" and governed by "the computer" tasked with ensuring humanity's survival. Originating from a Political Compass meme with numerous Wojak characters posted in June 2020, the project is developed by the Ever-Expanding Bunker subreddit and Discord.

History

On June 5th, 2020, Redditor Randomaspland posted a six-by-six Political Compass image themed around a "massive, ever-expanding bunker," with the setting explained through the description of 34 initial characters, most of them drawn using Wojak templates. The post gained over 13,900 upvotes in the /r/PoliticalCompassMemes^[1] subreddit in six months (shown below).

On the same day, Redditor fenskept1 created the /r/Everexpandingbunker^[2] subreddit, crossposting^[3] Randomaspland's post to it. The subreddit invited subscribers to create original works based on the canon compass, with multiple users submitting original characters and memes referencing the developing lore in the following weeks (examples shown below).

The subreddit was later joined by the creator of the original compass, who, on September 22nd, 2020, posted an expanded, nine-by-nine Political Compass that included the new, user-submitted characters (shown below).^[4]

In the following months, Randomaspland posted an additional base canon "MAW" compass^[5] and supplemental independently canon compasses based on various timelines ("The Deep Dark Canon,"^[6] "Death of the Computer,"^[7] "War to Take the Surface"),^[8] all based on characters submitted made by subreddit's members (shown below).

As of February 8th, 2022, the official /r/Everexpandingbunker sub had over 13,000 subscribers.

Glossary

The Ever-Expanding Bunker lore is centered around several canons, most notably the original compass and its expanded version ("The Bunker"), "The Death of the Computer (DOTC)" canon, "The War to the Surface" canon and "The Deep Dark Canon," each of which explores different alternative timelines.

In all canons, several key elements are present:

• Humanity was forced to enter an underground bunker following The Event. The nature of The Event is unknown. The Event made the surface currently uninhabitable.
• The bunker consists of multiple levels (4000 according to the "MAW" canon).^[9] Workers are always working on expanding the bunker further. The passage of time is measured in Cycles.
• The top levels are governed by The Computer whose primary objective is protecting humanity. The Computer enforces a human breeding program with selected individuals forced to breed.
• Sustenance is distributed by The Computer in the form of poor-quality food rations.
• In addition to The Surface, dangers are present in the bunker. The Flesh is an Eldritch Hivemind-like entity that manifests itself through "flesh growths," which must be routinely cleaned by common workers.^[10] The Bogs (based on The Bogdanoff Twins) are a mysterious non-bunker entity the nature of which differs between canons.

Search Interest

External References