The OSRegon Trail: Save vs Dysentery

I have a somewhat macabre tradition of re-watching the Ric Burns documentary American Experience: The Donner Party to celebrate the first snowfall of the year. It's an excellent example of the genre, and I could go on and on about it, but I won't. I can say with little doubt that it has influenced the way I have been running the food scarcity in the 'miserycrawl' module Deep Carbon Observatory. During this year's viewing I couldn't help but think of the Oregon Trail as a prototypical example not only of the miserycrawl, but of the 0-level 'funnel' adventures used by Dungeon Crawl Classics, and the resource-management and lethality of early-edition D&D.

Now, suitably inspired, I'm working on The OSRegon Trail, a D&D setting hack that intends to capture the pioneer experience during the westward expansion across North America.

Savages of the Abyss: 2076

2076...

Nearly a century after the hive-block food riots,

and the robo-holocaust incited by rogue supercomputer Blue Max,

Earth's oceans are almost dry...

Humanity ekes out an existence on the oceans' abyssal plains,

beset on all sides by an endless array of horrors:

Giant, floating Death-Heads,

Kill-Bots,

flesh-eating Sub-Humans,

and the Super-Apes...

Are the mysterious Clones here to help us,

 or are they servants of M.A.M.A, the crazed doomsday satellite?

Is the seed-ship Arkadia merely a fairy tale that brings hope,

or will it return to restore the planet to her former glory?