Rat Men

 

Although the older generations approach to it has been superseded, and replaced, they have not given up with what they’re doing. They are what they are so they continue to do what they do in addition to, in parallel to, interchangeably with, the newer upgraded ways of doing it. 

Apply this to all things.

If I were to approach that I would consider two things, in how the story is presented. People (the reader) need to orientate; so we cling to something familiar. That means a historic precedence. It's useful that a lot of European history is an awareness of 'history repeating itself' which is largely to do with progress being two steps forward and one step backward. 

We had the dark ages after the fall of Rome so cultural progress had first to stabilize, which took over a thousand years, before it can progress, the Rennaissance period was a high point which led to the industrial revolution a few centuries later, which led to World War.

Within that, are areas where one small group is much more advanced than the others, develops new things, then has to fight to protect itself and/or invade everyone else, then the new things go out to become normal everywhere. 

There are already labs in our own time which are doing things such as putting human brains into animals, transgenics, so ... if the Wuhan virus was an accidental leak from a gain-of-function research, we have a precedent for an accidental leak as the intelligent little horde of rat-people break out of the lab and go into the wild to reproduce with normal rats, which causes a lot of problems. 

Most of those will die off due to the radiation (in the post-apocalyptic world) and because rats are food for other animals, but they are clever, already even without human minds spliced into them - those are going to be a problem in the future. 

We saw planet of the Apes, its not the monkeys which will be a problem its the rat-human hybrids. We already have those in labs. Now, I know that would be a very different approach to the story you are telling, to involve those into it. 

There is a tree to ideas can be enhanced and exaggerated or ignored or accepted a standard in the background somewhere. We can draw on them for inspiration where it becomes relevant. What are the themes?

Integration of technology with biology is a vast field of study. AI designed lifeform are grown originally in a laboratory, before released in the wild to reproduce for themselves, discovering their place in the new ecology. They will require a food, there must be recognition of how they affect the environment for example, if they burrow, they create tunnels and mounds. do they eat other foods and therefore mutate from their original form? In what way? The geneticists, the biologists, the cyberneticists.

These creatures intelligent enough to mimic their originators and replace them. Rat-men have their own geneticists. 

The rat human hybrids are telepathic. They were collectively to create a strong telepathic field which can target an individual or a community to put thoughts into their minds and override them. The community is a based around this. They affect other animals. The psychic field protects their own environments and makes them invisible . The species can do this too simply not as efficiently and powerfully.