North America was ground zero of Apocalypse's Empire. Manhattan had been conquered by his forces and lay in ruin. The skyline resembled charred matchsticks starkly jutted from a mist of billowing smoke and choking ash. Familiar landmarks such as the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building were horribly damaged. Rubble, trash, abandoned taxis, and smoldering buses clutter the streets, while vermin run unchecked. Towering above all, symbolizing Apocalypse's complete domination stood the imposing Citadel that was the mad immortal's stronghold. The eastern half of the continent, from Florida to the upper reaches of Canada, was under Apocalypse's direct control. The countryside, like New York City, had been devastated. Shopping malls were home to wild packs of dogs, the super highways are clogged with burned-out cars, and smoking human death camps known as Breeding Pens pockmark the obliterated landscape.

Delegating his authority, Apocalypse divided the western half of North America, then called The Badlands, and assigned it to the Four Horsemen, his chosen cadre. The northwest portion of the United States and a southern section of Canada was ruled by Holocaust, Apocalypse's most powerful henchman. Mikhail Rasputin, brother of Colossus of Generation Next, controlled an equal portion of land adjoining to the east. The Great Plains and an area of southern Canada, where many breeding pens were found, were held by the conniving Sinister. The southwest region of the U.S. and a large portion of Mexico had fallen to the mysterious Abyss.

The majority of Canada though is not as heavily patrolled and was dotted with many human hideouts. But the region had been heavily damaged, snow piled up unchecked, and packs of wolves roamed the deserted cities. Across the northwest tip of North America, severing Canada from Alaska snaked the monstrous Wall of Apocalypse. Cutting across thousands of miles, this fence of death blocked the back door human escape route, from the Bering Straight into Asia.*

France, once a receiving site for humans who were lucky enough to have escaped Apocalypse's empire, was no more. The country had been bombed ruthlessly, and even Paris, the City of Lights, was mostly extinguished, lying under hundreds of feet of water in places. London had been fortified as the capital of the Human High Council; Big Ben overlooked a militarized zone whose crowded streets hummed with rumors and paranoia. Muir Island, off the northern tip of Scotland, was now home to the monolithic Sentinel Processing Plants. Moira Kinross, the island's previous occupant, constructed the plants there after she married the robots' creator, Bolivar Trask.

Wundagore Mountain, once rising out of the Slavic region, was no more. The site of Apocalypse and Magneto's second monumental battle, the mysterious mountain was completely obliterated. As a result of the massive explosion for which the Master of Magnetism was in part responsible, the Earth's electromagnetic field had been severely traumatized. The resulting chain reaction caused worldwide, global natural disasters: floods, earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis, and wildfires that struck simultaneously. The world's weather patterns had been subsequently disrupted, triggering unprecedented occurrences of blizzards, heat waves, snowstorms, and monsoons.*

The southwest region of Africa had been transformed into the human military's defense region. Sentinels patrolled Africa's southwest coast; behind the Sentinel region were defense lines cut into the earth by the free humans. While these precautions were necessary, the activity unfortunately further eroded the already sparse landscape.*

Japan was a country in flames being overtaken. Apocalypse targeted this island nation due to its developing economic system and growing population. The Silver Samurai lead as many refugees as he could away from Apocalypse and his forces. As the Samurai continued his evacuation, Sunfire ambushed Apocalypse and fought valiantly but could not stand up to the might of both Apocalypse and his son, Nemesis. The two tortured Sunfire by drowning him in a river filled with the blood of his dead countrymen.*

The ancient warlord called Apocalypse arose and cast the world into a horrifying eugenics war pitting human against mutant in a struggle for supremacy. The war eventually spread south to Central America where Magneto attempted to free an outspoken critic of Apocalypse, the American Statesman Robert Kelly from a Mayan Temple which had been convered into a prisoner camp.

Central America had been flooded, covered by leagues of churning sea. South America was targeted by Apocalypse, as a measure of genetic cleansing, and much of it had been pummeled by limited nuclear warheads, creating a Chernobyl-like wasteland of scorched earth, with mutated life forms and horrific radiation contamination.*