The downfall of the United States began in September of 2013.
Before the world was as it is today, with all of us struggling just to survive, it was a very different place. Television did more than broadcast The Hunger Games and news from the Capitol, it broadcast all kinds of programs. There were comedy and drama shows that were scripted and acted, there were documentary shows showing everything from the lives of animals in the wild to the lives of celebrities, and there were reality competition shows, kind of like The Hunger Games themselves only never even one tenth as barbaric. This is very important to note, as The Hunger Games evolved from these game shows.
Every year in September, there was an internationally broadcast show known as "The Emmy Awards", in which the most excellent shows, actors, writers and directors were acknowledged for their contribution to the year in television. In 2008, an award for Outstanding Host for a Reality Competition Show was added to the list of categories.
Before I continue, kids, there's something you need to know. I'm sure you've all been told urban legends about the man who destroyed what used to be The United States of America and turned it into this hellhole. You might have heard your parents refer to him as "The Dark One", or perhaps "You-Know-Who", or "He Who Must Not Be Named". It is true, the name strikes fear into the hearts of many and few dare to speak it even now, though the terrible man has long since died. If nobody has any objections, I'm going to reveal to you his name. Fear of the name only increases fear of the thing itself, a wise man once taught me. So here goes.
Before he became feared the world over, he was a public figure by the name of Jeff Probst.
Jeff Probst hosted a television show called Survivor, which is the very show from which The Hunger Games were born. Several men and women were placed on a deserted island with nothing but a film crew and put through a series of rigorous challenges. Every week, the contestants would vote the weakest link out of the show and they would be exiled from the island back to their real lives. The last man standing received one million dollars (dollars are the old currency, one million of them was a lot).
Each year since 2008, Jeff had won the Emmy for Outstanding Host for a Reality Competition Program. Feeling it was not fair, he withdrew himself from consideration at the 2012 awards so that somebody else could share in the glory. However, when he re-entered the nomination ballot in 2013, expecting to be automatically awarded the Emmy just by virtue of being in the running as he had for four consecutive years previously, he was disappointed. That year Heidi Klum, a German supermodel-turned-television-personality who hosted a fashion design competition program by the name of Project Runway, won the prize.
After his ascension to power, he had all copies of the 2013 Emmy Awards taping burned in The Great Purge, however the few people alive today to have seen it at the time insist that when they turned the camera on him following the announcement of Heidi's name, he had a smile on his face that did not quite reach the cold, dead stare in his eyes.
Heidi Klum's acceptance speech for the award that night was the last time she was seen alive. Following the ceremony she went missing mysteriously, only to be found dead two weeks later in a dumpster in an alleyway on the other side of the country. On the wall behind the dumpster where she was found, her killer had written a message in her blood:
"IN THE DUMPSTER, THE GARBAGE DUMPSTER, THE GERMAN SLEEPS TONIGHT."
Her killer was of course never found, but it's widely believed that the murder was carried out on Probst's orders.
Behind the scenes, Probst had been gathering a small following of fans who shared in his rage at the wrongful distribution of the Emmy that was rightfully his. This is where the derogatory term "Probstite" comes from, as this is what the public would later name his following. The similarity of this to the word "prostitute" led to the deaths of many hookers in the 2020s at the hands of extremely dim rebellion fighters.
Probst's following began to grow larger. Some followed him out of fear, some out of a misguided notion of his ideals. His following combined with his own vast resources from working on Survivor for an inappropriate amount of years eventually led to him taking over the television network that aired Survivor. He would continue to host the show while his minions ran the network, and each passing season would become harsher and harsher. At first the contestants were sent to places that were bitterly cold, then the time spent on the show would increase. Food supplies were cut drastically low and eventually, there was a contestant death.
The following season of the show, which aired in 2019, is now thought to be the prototype for what we know as The Hunger Games. The contestants were not willing participants and the only way out of the show was to either win or die. People were horrified, but ratings soared as voyeurism took over. Even though a growing suspicion around Probst himself led to him winning the Emmy every subsequent year out of fear for the lives of the other nominees, it was not enough for him. The 2013 Emmy had meant to much to him, and without it, all he wanted was to watch the world burn.
His resources and following ever expanding, Emmy voters all around the country began to turn up dead. It was weekly at first, and then it became daily, until he had killed every last one indiscriminantly. Even those that had voted for him in 2013 lost their lives in his blind rampage.
The rest is history. Probst would leave his hosting job in 2020 and organise a hostile take over of the government in April of 2022. From there he used his significant power and influence to carry out something akin to a nuclear Holocaust on his own country, in 2027 destroying the land and killing 65% of the American population in the process. From there he began to build a new America in his image. Thirteen districts surrounding the Capitol, which he would helm for twenty more horrifying years to come before his celebrated demise in February of 2048.
The Probstites had become aware of their public-given nickname and taken it one step further, giving themselves the official moniker of "Probstites Against Negligent Emmy Misappropriation". The Dark One, pleased with their initiative, used the acronym of this organisation to give his new country - his creation - its name: Panem.
At last his revenge was complete. The Hunger Games officially began in 2028. He decided that it should be children to compete as this would add to the tragic sense of loss felt by the public... not unlike the sense of loss he believed he had felt fifteen years prior when he lost that Emmy Award to the late Heidi Klum.
His death in 2048 was celebrated publicly, until it became clear that his death would not end the torment. His following has grown so large that there will always be a Probstite to take over whenever one falls.
