Rapture is a fictional city in the BioShock series published by 2K Games. It is an underwater city that is the main setting for the games BioShock, BioShock 2 and the DLC BioShock Infinite: Burial at Sea; it also briefly appears in BioShock Infinite. The game's back-story describes the city as envisioned by business tycoon Andrew Ryan in the mid-1940s as a means to create a utopia for mankind's greatest artists and thinkers to prosper in a laissez-faire environment outside of increasing oppression by the world's governments. However, the lack of government made many people uneasy, and the masses turned toward political activists like Atlas who advocated stability under a government, turning the city into a dystopia; and on the eve of 1959, a civil war broke out, leaving much of Rapture's population dead. The remaining citizens either became psychotic "Splicers" due to the effects of ADAM, a substance that can alter genetic material, or have barricaded themselves from the Splicers to protect themselves, leaving the city to fail and fall apart around them.