Wow! Tiiny.....I am beyond intrigued. Thank you so very much for sharing your experiences. Can you describe more of your world,what society was like,is there government of any type? Was the west coast of the U.S completely annihilated? So some of these creatures are mutations created from the radiation after the nukes hit? What kind of weapons were used? How did groups communicate with each other? Was it more of what we would think of as the Middle Ages-society? What technology was there? Were people aware of things like multiple time lines,clairvoyance etc? Were their certain nationalities that seemed to have more survivors? perhaps indigenous peoples,like American Indians or the Aborigines of Austrailia? And can you explain more of what was in the bodies of water?
Holy cow that's a lot of questions. I'll bite.
I want to make the obvious statement, I'm not from your specific future and can't release details about a future I know nothing of. Examples are that here communism took root in China, the USSR disbanded about 30 years ago here and there is no US military base called Dreamland. The 2016 Election here Donald Trump also took office instead of Jill Stein. My timeline's history is such that communism didn't take up in China resulting in a democratic republic and a strong ally with the USA with American military bases in Taured. Here Taured doesn't exist
The 2020 presidential election in the United States was by an everyday average US citizen rather than a business tycoon, lawyer, career politician, etc which was a landmark in recent US history. The first openly gay and openly atheist president, I even share a name with him but that's coincidence. His name specifically was Glenn Lutz. He had a very poor rating from what I can recall from old newspapers. Not sure what his actual policies are by I do see some parallels between President Lutz and President Trump in regards to the media. I've even read a headline that read "President Lutz to destroy same sex marriage" even though he himself was a gay man married to another gay man. I'll digress, modern politics can be very touchy as I'm aware.
Society itself depended solely on the settlements in question and to be fair they ranged from complete anarchy to authoritarian totalitarian nightmares, some free societies, others are societies of slavers. The settlements nearest each other tend to be similar as they share resources and trade via bartering, though add vast wilderness between them and you'll see societies go from peaceful anarchy, to totalitarian monarch telling you when you can eat, drink, bathe, and dictating every single aspect of your life. So by and large government itself could be considered more akin to a small township with a mayor, just remove the state and federal government and let those individual towns make up their own rules and just let what happens just happen and that's the end result.
In regards to the west coast of the United States, I'm really not sure, I only know from my history of what we were able to recover from old libraries that housed newspapers in their archives, I'm not sure about what parts of land where survived. There were reports of Western USA, central and western Amlatida (Canada for you), much of north eastern Africa, where all they hit I'm not sure entirely.
I would suppose radiation did cause some of the mutations, but there were news reports in the papers about the USSR releasing a new kind of weapon that would've completely destroyed the USA and taken out most of central America and was noted that it wasn't a bomb. I don't have details where that weapon landed, but from what I've seen of pictures in the newspapers and from here, I can tell you that the plants, land masses and wildlife overall nothing like what were in the articles and pictures therein.
"What kind of weapons were used?"
I've heard rumors of an advanced civilization very far north called "Paradise Sprints", but what I know now from this universe the technology that was rumored to exist in that society aren't feasible. There were stories of them being able to hover in planes unlike we've ever seen before making no noise and weapons that simply made everything aimed at disappear. The weapons we actually used in our daily lives was anything we could get hour hands on. Typically bows and crossbows would be used to propel arrows and bolts because we didn't really know how nor the technical means to make ammo, just if we found ammunition went bring it back to the settlement for storage in case of emergencies. We did end up with various melee style weapons, like spears, daggers, swords, mostly from what we found. Otherwise we'd fashion a blunt weapon.
My personal favorite was something I learned to make myself from black rock, I know now as obsidian. Chip away at some of that into nice little shards and glue them with sap to a sturdy stick and you have one of the sharpest blades. Worked really well with cutting up soft tissue though they'd break easily against anything too hard.
"How did groups communicate with each other?"
Settlements nearby each other would end up having traders and scouts go between each other for bargaining resources, skills and the like. I was forced out of the settlement I was raised in around 12 years to live in another one just east of it. Only maybe 5 minutes on foot to reach it, so it wasn't too terrible to get to it, other settlements were much further away spanning days to reach them, if you reached them. The settlement I ended up at was called Demons Curse, everyone that was very sick was sent there to keep the remaining population from also becoming ill. My illness was that I was quickly losing my hearing. I'm deaf today.
Except in exceptional rare cases of an armored vehicle cruising through or a the even rarer plane overhead, communication remained local to the general region. Devils Curse ended up with a lot of elderly, deaf, blind and generally very ill or dying. I knew a few other deaf in Devils Curse that tutored me in non verbal communication. It's signing though is nothing like ASL is here.
"Was it more of what we would think of as the Middle Ages-society?"
I would have to say yes, much like that. Add a lot more wilderness and tons of animals that will kill and eat you to the mix, shake it up until it becomes cloudy with a small hint of every man for himself. Now garnish that dish with a side helping backstabbing. I'll be honest, I'd have sold my own dad and mom out to their deaths if I knew it would get me rewarded with meat. Anything other than tree bark and awful tasting roots.
"What technology was there?"
Rumors of advanced societies off in an area that's so far with vast wilderness and ocean aside? There were computers, laptops, cell phones, tablets, and a whole host of other spiffy toys, provided there was a method of giving them power. I've seen tablets and laptops before, but I've never seen them turned on. An elderly man had quite the collection of misc junk in Devils Curse, though I've never seen any of them with power, but he's told me stories about how they would turn on and display images and that they could talk with each other over vast distances and stories of how you used to be able to call someone on the other side of the world and talk as if they were standing right there with you. I've read articles about the latest and greatest Fujitsu tablet and smartphone in a touch screen race with Kellogs for the fastest and all that hoo ha. And yes I'm aware Kellogs here is a cereal company, that hasn't escaped me.