Published by Brendan Mackenzie
One minute the world was screaming. The next, it was dead air. There were no "out of service" icons, only a sudden vacuum where our lives used to be. Beyond is not a story about the end of the world. It is a story about the walk back to what remains. It follows the slow and difficult journeys of survivors as they navigate a landscape stripped of its digital pulse.
Listen on Apple Podcasts19 min
You only saw half the truth. Now, as the primary system goes silent, something far worse wakes up inside the abandoned missile silos of the American Midwest. A cold red signal has begun its twelve-hour countdown to global erasure. With time running out, a single radio line cracks to life across the Atlantic. The filter was just the beginning.
31 min
Cold steel, long-lost sisters, and a terminal message that changes everything. In the final chapter of Beyond , the walls come down—and the true architect of the quiet world is finally revealed.
32 min
Stripped of his wilderness and confined to a sterile, concrete room, Scott is confronted by a young, calculated leader who represents a new society—one that has abandoned the ruined, centralized grid of the old world to build in total, invisible isolation. But this interrogation isn’t about power lines or resources. It is the reckoning of a deeply personal debt left unpaid for over twenty years.
19 min
The mountain has fallen silent, but the stillness is far from empty. In the wake of an unseen transformation, Scott finds himself hunted—not by a creature of the wild, but by the undeniable consequences of a life he thought he had left behind. As the shadows lengthen across the village, the boundaries between the known world and the encroaching darkness begin to dissolve. When a group of disciplined, mysterious strangers arrives, the fragile security of the valley is shattered. Who are they, and what have they come to claim? Join us as the variables shift, and the truth of Scott’s past finally comes to collect.
16 min
A single circle with three intersecting lines. A mark carved into stone, etched onto a forgotten gate, and now, buried in the snow on the handle of a stranger's walking stick. In a world that has finally gone quiet, a routine rescue on a freezing ridge line reveals that we are not as alone as we thought.
15 min
In Chapter 17 of Beyond , the narrative stretches forward 25 years into the deep future. High in the freezing monochrome of the northern Cairngorm forest, Scott has carved out a fragile, self-sustaining sanctuary. The sharp terror of "the Quiet" has faded into a dull memory, replaced by the comforting white noise of a predictable daily routine. But in a world forcibly put to sleep, safety is an illusion. When the morning routine curdles and the behaviour of his loyal dogs signals a shift in the valley, Scott is forced to realize that their peaceful haven might just be a beautifully curated trap. The end game of Scott's story begins now.
17 min
In this episode the static clears to reveal the twist; Scott, the empathetic salesman searching for his wife, and Dan, the ruthless survivalist who treats humanity like a bad equation, are the exact same person. Born out of a bitter betrayal when his companions abandoned him in the dark, the cold persona of "Dan" took over to survive the wasteland. But when a chance encounter with a kind stranger completely shatters his hyper-rational logic, the math of survival fails.
9 min
Trust is a luxury the world can no longer afford. In this chapter, Scott wakes up in the bleak concrete ruins to find the ultimate betrayal: Jack, Jessi, and Sarah are gone, and they’ve taken his rucksack—and his remaining means of survival—with them. Left with nothing but the clothes on his back, Scott faces a definitive turning point. Stripped of his altruism and the illusion of companionship, he sheds the weight of his past ideals and embraces a ruthless, solitary efficiency. The journey to London continues, but the man walking it has changed forever. He is moving forward alone, self-sufficient, and determined to survive at any cost.
11 min
Following a devastating betrayal by Jesse, Jack, and Sarah, Scott reaches a brutal psychological breaking point. Stranded and isolated, he realises that to survive a dying world, he must shed the skin of who he used to be.
16 min
She knows Scott saved her from paralysis in the gridlocked city streets, but she also knows that every hour he spends helping her walk to her parents' village is an hour keeping him from his own wife in London. Standing over a sleeping companion, Sarah makes an agonizing, quiet choice. In a desperate bid for self-preservation, she reaches for Scott’s rucksack—stealing his meager survival line of rations, water, and clothes before slipping out into the grey, salt-crusted dawn completely alone. It is a necessary cruelty born of desperation, setting off a chain of tragic misunderstandings that will echo across the next twenty-five years
17 min
Driven by an agonising, primal panic for his missing twins and daughter, Jack and Jessie make a split-second decision to slip out like ghosts into the dark. Trusting his instinct that the mission overrides all else, Jack rationalises a necessary callousness. By leaving the safety of the ruins and the group he is flung into a desperate race toward the Bristol docklands. But as they navigate a changing world of fortified barriers and cold lockdown protocols, Jack’s singular focus creates a devastating blindspot
20 min
Two years after the blackout, the world has traded digital noise for an indifferent silence. In this episode, we meet Mary, a woman whose sturdy, gentle nature refuses to be quelled by the harsh reality of survival. While scavenging for mushrooms in a dense forest, Mary discovers a wounded traveler. Watch as a simple, illogical act of kindness shatters a shell built by years of paranoia. This chapter explores the profound friction between the cold logic of survival and the human necessity for mercy.
11 min
As the rest of the world huddles together for warmth, Dan retreats into the deep silence of the forest. In this chapter, we follow Dan’s return to his meticulously crafted "fortress of solitude," where survival is a binary equation of caloric intake versus energy output. After a successful but dangerous scavenger run, Dan confronts the "variable" of his own memories. When he discovers a bottle of perfume in an abandoned suburban home, the scent of jasmine and pink pepper threatens to breach his cold, analytical armor. Listen as he makes the ultimate choice between human sentiment and the "machine" of survival.
22 min
Sheltered within the weathered, ten-foot-thick walls of a shelter, the group confronts a reality far colder than the concrete floor. In this episode, Scott, Jack, Jessi, and Sarah huddle together as the "Great Reset" begins to settle into the marrow of their bones. Listen as the tension peaks during a series of raw, late-night revelations. Jessi challenges the logic of Scott’s journey to London and Jack grapples with the "debt" he owes a family he frequently left behind for the military.
13 min
The group confronts the fragile boundary between sanctuary and delusion as Scott discovers the reality behind Stephen’s "global frequency." As the mystery of the worldwide blackout begins to unravel through long-hidden forum logs, tensions escalate into a final, violent confrontation.
20 min
Driven by the need to reach their families, the group navigates a treacherous river crossing in a manual rowing boat, battling a powerful rip current that threatens to pull them out to sea. Seeking refuge inland, they stumble upon a cottage that appears to have the "mechanical heartbeat" of a working generator. However, they soon discover the occupant, Stephen, is a man whose reality fractured long before the blackout.
16 min
The adrenaline of the crossing has crashed, leaving the group exhausted and freezing on a cold, pebble-strewn beach. In this episode, we break down the pivotal "firelight confessions" where the characters shed their old-world roles and confront the terrifying reality of their new motivations. From Jack’s struggle with his military past to Sarah’s quiet act of kindness, this chapter explores how human connection becomes a "force multiplier" in a world of isolation.
17 min
This episode follows Scott, Jack, Jessi, and Sarah as they reach a critical juncture in their journey toward the English coast following the "Deep Thought" blackout. Having navigated the gridlocked streets and escaping the city of Cardiff, the group reaches a dilapidated boat club where they must decide how to cross the estuary.
18 min
While others cling to the hope of the old world, Dan has evolved into a predator of the new one. He lives by a singular, chilling mantra: "Humanity is a variable, altruism is a complication". In this chapter, we follow Dan as he moves like a "ghost" through the decay to infiltrate a sprawling resource camp.
1 min
In this introductory clip from Beyond, we explore the chilling moment the world stopped. It wasn't a war of bombs but a system wide correction orchestrated by the Deep Thought and designed to save the planet by grounding its most chaotic variable humanity.
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