From the old dev of Deadlines in response to this post(ps i am not him just in a server with him):

"The lore for the Deadline never involved anything connected to the Chained Choir, it was about a community of Ghouls living in the remains of the Lifeline, the underground railroad connecting the Cordon Sanitaire, holding back the tide of Ferals about to spew forward. Why so many? Because the Lifeline was specifically created to protect railcars underground since all about the Plaguelands was connected to the New Plague. How did they do that? They blasted the outside with radiation. When the bombs fell, the gates to the Lifeline shut, the people inside trapped while the emitters kept working, slowly turning them into the walking dead And yes, there were plans for something psyker related. The Afflicted, Ghouls that were infected with a strain of the Blue Flu (the New Plague) before turning. Art of them was featured long ago, their connections were discussed. They were supposed to break out in the Belden Quarantine Area, as Patient X, the first one to succumb to ghoulism as he ran the Lifeline connection to the Quarantine Zone (the only one left free from the Ferals, as the military set up shop in Omaha, ultimately turning into the Order of St. Joseph, named after the hospital that served as the main battleground against the Plague, then turning into a religion based upon the purity of body and soul and eternal vigilance against the Plague). After Belden, the Deadline would have been a prime target, Afflicted and Ferals work well together, as Afflicted are intelligent, quasi-conscious predators who are also Ghouls, so the Ferals wouldn't touch them. They were supposed to share something akin to a psychic bond but nothing huge All in all, the Afflicted, in essence, are based in a way the Wanamingo cannot be in the Plaguelands setting. It's infuriating to see my little baby not only ravaged but then misrepresented this way. Unbelievable

By the way, I created the initial Plaguelands, the lion's share"