Hullo, Stephen,
To be honest, this is one of the questions about the game world that I had debated asking here on the forums. In the three or four campaign scenarios that I've run to this point, that is the one aspect of the playtest versions of the game and playing in the game world that aren't really clear.
Granted that things have to be pretty bad for the survivors, as the game *is* post-apocalyptic, but it has been eighteen months (?) since the Night of Fire, so I would hazard a guess that there is some semblance of emerging into the ruins to find food, water, shelter, and so forth.
Okay, while I understand the gist of what you're saying here, how about some examples of this?
While I agree with this, I think it also depends on what one means by "bad things". There are likely to be all the standard sequences and the like of post-apocalyptic stuff happening, but it can get to the point where it is stereotypical, even if it is happening in a fantasy wolrd like [i\]Desolation[/i], and can become too...commonplace.
I think some guidelines on the sort of stuff to have the characters see, specific to the
Desolation world, would be useful here. Heck, you could even make this into an article for the website in PDF.