This is a long one, folks.

Some time in the summer of 2011, I begun writing a script. I called it DEMENTIA and it was a post apocalyptic zombie script. It followed a character called Nathan Mercer, a survivor of the apocalypse as he explored ruins and destroyed buildings in the search of his mother, who went missing some time prior. The story was set in the U.S, but obviously it was to be filmed here in Sweden.

The script wasn't long, and had Nathan fight his way through an abandoned factory, until he later stumbles upon two children -- brother and sister. The brother was supposedly dead, until the end of the scene when he wakes up and Nathan has no choice but to shoot him. The rest of the script continued his search for his mother, but also his attempts to keep the girl safe. Her name was Heather. At least I think it was, I can't seem to remember..

Now in the script, the characters always knew what caused the world to turn into hell, but it was told in bits and peices throughout the script until the end. Basically, scientists had found a cure for cancer. A certain fungi, that, when manipulated a mutated properly, could halt the growth and spread of tumors. As a side effect, some samples mutaded out of control and became immune against further treatment and instead became a threat to its host.

And then those samples somehow got stolen.

On December 7th, a series of coordinated attacks were carried out in multiple cities all around the globe. So-called dirty bombs, all containing an even more aggresive mutation of the fungi. When the truth of the bombings finally broke, it was already too late -- a huge amount of humanity had been infected, and it continued to spread. Before the end of the year, the entire globe was infected, and soiety begun to fall apart as panic spread like a wildfire. No cure was found as the infetion seemed impervious. But then, a breakthrough: normal pain medicine such as aspirin or ibuprofen could slow down the infection. Not stop it, but halt it for a few days.

So the remaining survivors are on a constant hunt for mediation to halt the process and survive a little longer.

Now how the hell does this tie into zombies and the name of the script? The mutated fungi, once it found its way into a human host, would mutate into a parasite, which would then travel up the host's spine and finally settle between the two halves of the brain. There it would mutate further and begin morphing its host.

It begins with anger. They become angry, lashes out and become more confrontational and aggresive. Finally, at the end, they become extremely volatile and will attack and kill. They're not zombies, they're still human, just really, really pissed off and violent. They can be hurt and killed just like any other human. Towards the end, in the final hours, the host would shut down, loosing the drive to kill, and loose all memory of what had happened. A state similar to dementia. Then they pass away.

But they don't stay dead.

After the death of the host, the parasite gets to work, and takes full control of the body. Mere hours later, the dead will rise again, now a proper zombie that can only be killed by destroying the parasite -- destroying the brain. In this altered state, the host not only becomes violent, they become down-rigjt deadly. They can run, climb and other basic movements, and they will use all their enhanced senses to stalk their prey and kill without mercy. Nothing but destroying the parasite will kill them, and nothing can stop them.

At the end of the script, Nathan has gone a few days without medicine, and is beginning to feel the changes, When he finally finds his mother and realizes she's been dead for quite some time, he looses all will to live. In the final scene, Nathan goes wild thanks to the parasite taking ove him, while the girl hides behind a tree in fear. Eventually he pulls his gun and shoots himself in the head. All is silent.

The girl slowly comes out of her hiding place and approaches Nathan's dead body. She reaches out for the gun, when Nathan suddenly wakes up, growls and grabs the girl. Cut to black. The end. An unpleasant ending, for an unpleasant story.

We begun filming that winter, and this is what we made:

Quite clearly, it's a movie made by amateurs, filmed with a potato. I also made a short trailer, set to Johnny Cash's God's Gonna Cut You Down, but that trailer is lost somewhere in space.

We had a crappy camera, poor props, poor costume and poor skills. But despite that, I enjoyed writing and filming it. Now that I have more experience, better camera, better editing skills, better proprs and a better understanding of movie making, I would love to go back and remake and perhaps even finish the movie. But that's not an option, since the factory we filmed in was torn down a few years ago. Not to mention the fact that the friend who helped me film refused to go back there.

See, on the last day of filming, something happened that both scared and rattled us, something within the ruins. After that, my friend refused to ever return to the place or even talk about it. Whenever we went by it for some reason he would focus his eyes on his feet. I've never seen him scared before, but after that one incident, he was terrifyed of the place.

Yet, I didn't give up. I liked the universe I had created, and started working on it, just as I built Valtheim. The universe was first expanded. but then it was changed quite a bit. I felt that only zombies wouldn't be too entertaining, so I decided that the universe would have been affected by a new ice age in 2013. That was a cool idea at fist, but I soon realized just how limiting it was.

So I instead changed it again, into what it is today. I still call it DEMENTIA, but it's pretty different from the zombie-script. The universe now centers around Sweden and the survivors of an unknown, airborn virus. Society has fallen, and the air has been deadly for years. The only way to survive outside is with gas masks, and if you hope to find a place to live, it better have some sort of ir filter, an sealed doors. Bunkers was one of the main plaes used as shelters.

The virus that caused it all was dubbe Demens in Sweden, as it just like dementia, erased your memories before death. Yet the cause of the virus still remains unknown. No real answers are given, just theories. Government experiment gone wrong. Aliens, Terrorists. God's punishment. Something supernatural. No one knows.

Stockholm lies in ruins, but there's still some hope: Knutpunkten, or The Knot, in English. In the former Swedish house of parliament, survivors have gathered and created a sort-of shanty town, which remains one of the few civilized places known in Sweden. Even Nathan Mercer is in the universe, as an American stuck in Sweden, and he's still searching for his mother. I want to write short stories, or longer ones, set in this universe. I even have a script planned in my head, just haven't written it yet.

I have this idea churning in my head; a story about a man named Jonas who lives alone in the northern parts of Sweden, alone with only the demented zombies occasionally showing up. Otherwise, he's completely alone. After a scavenge run for food, he finds the remnants of a campsite, and finds a journal containing parts that there may be survivors in Stockholm, or maybe even in Denmark.

So after his hideout is destroyed by the demented, he gets the perfect chance to investigate the claims of the journal, and heads south, to Stockholm.

Eventually, he arrives in the capital, and after a brief struggle with the demented, he's saved by a couple of people dressed in strange gear and gas masks. He wakes up in a strange building filled with survivors all living a pretty comfortable life. Now, originally, I wanted this place, the former parliament house in Stockholm, to be called Citadellet, or The Citadel, but I realized that that name has been used so many times already that it just wasn't good enough. So It became Knutpunkten instead.

Anyway, he learns that several hundreds of people have turned the parliament into a miniature city, complete with farmers, merchants, brothels and even crime. Due to the long time he's spent in the outside world, he is called upon by the highest powers of the city, and is offered a post as a Väktare, a protector of the city and its people.

But after some consideration, Jonas decides that he doesn't want to stay there; after all the time he's spent on the road, he wants to go back out there and see if he can find other survivors and communities. Seeing the chance of others still alive, the guardians of the city provide him with weapons, food and a radio that should have long enough range to reach them in case he finds anything. So Jonas heads towards the other place he thought survirors would be; Denmark.

That would be the end of the story, but if I continued it Jonas would eventually reach Öresundsbron, a bridge of 15,9 kilometers, going between Malmö in Sweden and Köpenhamn in Denmark. On this bridge, he encounters a man hanging by his feet from the rails, and he would help him down. Upon doing so, he learns that this survivor calls himself Profeten, or The Prophet, and claims that he was strung up as a punishment for his sins. He claims he knows how to cure the demented, and so Jonas and him form an uncertain alliance, as they then explore Denmark together.

They encounter survivors, maraduers and murderers waging their own war in the ruins of the land, a battle that will be lost no matter who wins. Jonas keeps in contact with Stockholm, and is adviced to not get involved in the battle and instead look for other survivors. But after finding a young child lost in the warzone, Jonas goes against the advice of his friends in Stockholm and decides to protect the child from harm, which pulls him into the war between the two factions.

Things get spun out of control when The Prophet says he has sided with the opposing faction, and they develope a sort of sibling rivalry between them, though a much more deadly one. I don't know exactly how i would end, but I have some ideas.

Another idea I have is two former lovers who turn Knutpunkten into a warzone...

Just don't think that this in any way aims to offend the real victims of dementia. It's a horrible sickness that change our loved ones into husks of their former selves.

7284487 This is a really cool project. I look forward to seeing what else you will do with it.