Bill. The game's most efficiently deployed supporting character — the prepper who survived the collapse through paranoid preparation and ruthless self-sufficiency, who had a partner and lost him, who maintains his fortress of one with the specific bitterness of someone who has been proven right about everything and found it offers no comfort. Bill's town is what thriving looks like without anything to thrive for.

Saving the world's cost is the game's thesis delivered through Bill rather than stated directly: someone always pays the full price so that someone else can move through the space the payment bought. Bill paid. Frank paid. The road past Bill's town is possible because of what happened there.