Yeah sounds reasonable. Basically the concept I'm looking for is that of an Earth gone wild. The holocaust has to be very particular targeting humans specifically buy leaving the rest of the Worlds environment unaffected. Basically trees and plants encroach upon abandoned cities. In the aftermath of the Twilight War, people would not have had the resources or the organization to fight off the plague so mostly they just died. But alot was spared the initial effects of the nuclear war. Alot of houses were perfectly intact but were simply unoccupied, and three centuries of weathering encroaching plants and animal inhabitation has taken their toll. The highways would have cracked and the asphalt would have disintergrated over this time. The humans at this time might have thought that this was some sort of judgement day, they would have tried to survive as best they could by scavenging the ruins, and eventually the stuff that was in easy reach would have been used up, and this just leaves the vaults and things buried underground that are harder to get at. The world of 2300 would have greater forest coverage under this scenario than it does today, their would be less land under cultivation as their would be fewer people to feed. The people who were spared the pague lived in isolation from the rest of humanity to start out with,and they weren't the most technically skilled, and they didn't know how to maintain much of the technology so it fell into disrepair, and their immediate focus was on survival and they didn't have enough manpower to maintian the infrastructure of the manufacturing base, so they kept a level of technology they could maintain. Adter about a century and a half towns and villages began to form, there was still the fear of the plague before then, but the plague had run its course and towns and villages formed and people organized and diversified. A kind of feudalism organized around manor houses took hold in North America, very few people can read, and the art of the printing press was lost, as the more primitive movable type kind didn't exist and most of the more advanced kind didn't function and the key word is most. Basically the native self-reproducable technology is medeval, steel is however much cheaper than in the original middle-ages due to all the scrap that is laying around, I imagine that this would bring down the price of platemail and swords quite a bit, however guns are also quite durable, and they can last a long time. Much harder to find are vehicles that actually work, although the rusted hulks of many abandoned cars are quite common, the ones that were buried under refuse and dirt probably have more usable scrap metal in them than the ones that were exposed to air, and every once in a while a time capsule or a vault is uncovered. Certain people anticipated the end of days, and took measures to preserve certain items so that they wouldn't be exposed to the elements. Even during the plague there was time to store things in vaults, there were people doing this during the last days after the initial Twilight war.
Most people are illiterate in this world, although their are learned sages that can still read and write English. Uncovering a working technological artifact can and has changed the local balance of power many times.
The interstates are still well travelled, but this time with horses and wagons, the fact that there is two of these roads running parallel to each other is often a mystery to many people who use them as are the strange black rock paving stones that are very brittle and shatter easily. Mostly the highways are dirt and rock at this time kept clear by the traffic and the ruts of wagon wheels.
