"Post-Apocalyptic City Ruins: Lots Of Rubble, Right?" Topic

After a nuclear war (except for the ground zero), alien invasion, major asteroid/comet hit, this is what I would expect a city to look like:

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No visible streets, and lots and lots of rubble.

Wouldn't it be easier to start a game board with a textured 2" thick layer of polystyrene, with lots of depressions and lots of debris hills, and then just have the tops of building skeletons stick out in a not-too-straight fashion?

Has this been done? Any photos?

CC

More collapsed ruins (these from WTC):

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If the collapse of a couple of very tall buildings left very few recognizable landmarks, wouldn't the collapse of most of the buildings in a city be even worse?

CC

I would do a Google image search for Stalingrad. That would probably give you a good idea of what a ruined city looks like.

Thanks!

Yep. I don't see any clean streets showing up there either. And that was with conventional bombing.

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CC

Here you go.
link

MrW,

There you go!

CC
PS. I should have mentioned that a few weeks ago I had started my search for post-apocalyptic cityscapes. Now I am after examples showing how that can be applied.
TMP link

I don't believe it. With all the work that the rest of us put into creating "realistic" battlefields, Mrwigglesworth nails it with some milk crates and sweepings from his workshop floor.

Wiggy, that's awesome. Excellent job.

A better one may be to look at an actual result of nuclear war. Try this Wikipaedia link for Hiroshima.

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I would expect less damage (rubble) but more due to fire or weather.

Depending on how long it has been lots of plants, weeds

Goods and realistic based upon your initial scenario.

However other scenarios would leave less damage. These would include the use of neutron style bombs, enhanced dity bombs, a bio or chemical incident or a panedemic.

A lot of wooden structures in Hiroshima. Most of the city just vaporized. The few building still standing look to be made out of Concrete.

Sorry guys it not mine!
I found it here.
skankgame.com

I would do a Google image search for Stalingrad. That would probably give you a good idea of what a ruined city looks like.

Not really, as buildings in most cities are now made differently from Soviet Russia.

In the past big buildings were held up by the walls. When ruined the walls stand and the insides fold down. This gives the "Berlin" and "Stalingrad" looks with lots of ruined corners, but little by way of floors or roofs.

Nowadays, multi-storied buildings are built around a strong concrete core, and the walls are merely facings. When they are damaged the outsides fall off, but the insides (including floors often) remain.

It partly depends where the damage comes from. Normal artillery can't damage the central core and just flakes off the outsides. Nuclear bombs from above would damage the roofs a lot more. Earthquakes and missiles would either bring a building down or leave it relatively unharmed.

Look at pictures of apartments in Chechnya, Bierut etc to see what I mean.

So all those GW landscapes, with that Berlin look of ruined corners, are very unlikely for the future, since concrete and the ways of pouring it is unlikely to be uninvented.

You guys have some really great stuff here. I especially like Wigglesworth's milk crates and busted up ceiling tiles.

However, I think one thing to consider is just HOW post-apocalyptic things really are. I think there would be a big difference between 100 years after the bomb, 20 years after the bomb, and 20 minutes after the bomb.

The farther into the future you go, the more buildings will collapse, get overgrown by vegetation and possibly have various tribes of mutated (or otherwise) survivors building villages amidst the ruins, if they are not too radioactive.

Remember, the Charleton Heston Planet of the Apes movie is post-apocalyptic, but the key to the whole film is that you don't know it until the last thirty seconds or so.

There's a lot of nice pictures on that site, wigglesworth – thanks for the link.

Mrwigglesworth,

Milk crates.

I can't believe it. It looks so…urbany…

Here's the how:

skankgame.com/Highrises.html

Lots of great ideas on that site.

I bet this would be a lot easier to make:

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This is actually a shot from the film "Beneath The Planet Of The Apes".

CC

So if I take all my Epic city ruins and put concrete 'cores' in them with flooring… I'll be okay on the authenticity angle?

I'm also glad to see that I'm not the only one here who looked at the WTC pictures and saw terrain reference material.

I think Saber6 nailed it. it depends on how long it is after Apocalyptic event.
Yesterday Lots of rubble to the point it would be difficult to find a flat spot to play on. Months ago… scavangers would have cleared a lot of rubble, first for usable items or food. Then as time went on…. clearig away brick and morter: building materials to prepare dwellings to escape the weater,
In time weeds, trees and oter vegitation would push up between broken masonry too big to drag off. And in time unless there was some benefit in establishing a new town there the forest or jungle would take over as it has with the Axtec amd Mayan cites in central America. I have read that the jungle so covered an area that people had passed withing meters of a runis and not discovered it.

It's hard to envision New York or LA covered in jungle or massive vegetation but, what the heck, Logan and Thundar the Barbarian had to cut through vines and such. :)

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CC

blastwavecomic.com

The gold standard in post-apocalyptic goodness.

Seriously, I'd check out pictures of Beirut during the civil war.

Another thing to look at is chernoble in russia. The deserted town near the nuke plant was deserted. It's now being overgrown with plant life. Trees and plants are growing inside the deserted buildings causing them to become unsafe and many will no doubt collpse in the future. In another 10 years or so the town could well be consealed with vegetation. Nature will allways take back land which humans have deserted and stoped destroying.

I recall an article in new Scientist a few years back (searched for it but couldn't find it) that added a few extra twists.

Basically, many cities are coastal or on the flood plains of major rivers, and we don't realise how active the drainage systems of modern urban areas have to be. So railway tunnels and underground systems would start to flood within weeks to months of maintenance failing, and many areas would return to marshland quite quickly as flood defence s were breached, or rainfall wasn't drained. That's not too great for building foundations either…

Vegetation would start to return within only a few years, and existing tree roots and grasses/weeds would start to break up tarmac roads and concrete even more quickly. The city remains would be hidden by woodland or jungle in 200 – 500 years.

Ancient buildings often remain standing because they were heavily over-engineered by people who didn't understand physics, but knew they had to make structures that would last. Modern buildings and materials, however, are designed more efficiently, which is why they can collapse so spectacularly and quickly when exposed to a mode of failure that the designers didn't consider. Many designed materials are not terribly photostable either, so things like plastics will rot after a few decades. In other words, a ruined "concrete jungle" would start falling down far quicker than, for example, stone built structures that have survived for hundreds or thousands of years.`

Of course, the most interesting time for gaming/terrain projects would be months to decades after the apocalypse – you still have recognisable structures but they're covered in ivy and foliage, piles of rubble but the landscape has not completely returned to wilderness, sewers and underground lines are partially but not completely flooded, and there are still technological toys to play with that have not rusted away or broken.

"Basically, many cities are coastal or on the flood plains of major rivers, and we don't realise how active the drainage systems of modern urban areas have to be. So railway tunnels and underground systems would start to flood within weeks to months of maintenance failing, and many areas would return to marshland quite quickly as flood defence s were breached, or rainfall wasn't drained. That's not too great for building foundations either…"

An urban marsh! I like that.

CC

Highway overpasses are resilient to Static Overpressure, and hence are tough to nuke. Don't know how safe it would be as cover, though. Also, depends on if it was an airburst. A ground burst would make that big pile of rubble. I kinda like the concept of very small, tactical, enhanced radiation weapons, much easier on the infrastructure, which is nice.

I can't believe how good those milk crates look…

These guys are going to have fun hunting humans in that urban wetland preserve:

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CC

I spent last year in Baghdad. I can't speak for elsewhere in the world, but the buildings destroyed by this war from the air are mostly intact walls with collapsed centers. I will post some pictures for you this weekend.

Lost Pict

I can't believe how good those milk crates look…

Clearly an underutilized gaming resource, eh?

The models on the Skank site are cool.

I think in the Babylons Burning bumph it mentions cities becoming flooded as sea levels rose. I fancy a table of flooded ruins with survivors living on upper floors of buildings, rope bridges and homemade boats/rafts.

This is one of my favorite threads ever here. Fascinating stuff!

The Killzone yahoo group used to be like this. Lots of good ideas.

The Skank site is one of my favorite post-nuke sites.
I really appreciate their indy I-do-whatever-I-think-is-cool approach.

Maddan: I always envisioned abandoned city-cores with ruined buildings connected with rope-bridges and shanties on the roof. Easy to defend from potential raiders trying to get up too. Flooded streets is a nice concept too…..

Area23 – that picture you paint reminds me of the Carmaggeddon TDR2000 game. You drive race around post apoc ruins, and the locals have linked various ruins with rope bridges. Great fun and lots of inspiration in there. I always enjoyed knocking Zombies off the tops of buildings with the car!

LOL.

Must have been a BIG car, MadDan. :)

CC

No – it was a little red armoured sports number with a massive jagged blade that ran along the centreline of the car. It was great for slides. I would steam up to the zombie before it could lob a molotov and hit the handbreak and turn hard! The side panels/door knock the zombie over the edge.

So here are some buildings destroyed by air from the Baghdad area. These pictures were snapped a couple years after the strikes. Typically, the outerwalls are intact and the roof and interiors are collapsed.

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Lost Pict

In the exchange for playablity versus realism, I went for more playability in this Stalingrad game at an HMGS South Convention.
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Bill

Based upon current SITFAT projects for helping Third World areas build houses and other structures with deris such as bottles, cans and old tires, I would imagine that innovative humans in a post -Apocaliptic future would build villages from the same sources that modern humans are doing.

Seconded on the urban marsh.. would be fun to have a game with ruined buildings and rubble protruding out of green effects water.. swamp boats versus giant gator-taurs?

One thing to bear in mind: Concrete decomposes rapidly, compared to stone and the like. You'll have some clumps of rebar and gravel with a few beams sticking out.

A nice site, showing what disused (not actually detroyed) buildings look like:
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Oh, and just as an aside: The lads over at GW have proven themselves oddly useful, in finding a cheap source for rubble: Take plastic modelling sprues, and run through a hand-cranked sausage grinder. The result: broken bricks and detritus, suitable for scattering.

Interesting article about post-human Earth here:

TMP link

CC

Ok. Based on the article on that last link . . .

1) I would probably have a full board/table painted swamp green/brown, with a few highlights to break the monotony.

2) Over this, I would place a plexiglass sheet for depth.

3) I would then make each building ruin or pile a separate island.

How does that sound, in principle at least?

CC

You should probably consider what the cities were made out of before they were bombed.

Hiroshima is very flat because Japanese buildings weren't built to be amazingly sturdy. Look at how the odd very strong building didn't get totally destroyed.

A nuked Manhattan (assuming it doesn't all fit under the epicenter) would probably look like the first picture, plus the flooding mentioned earlier in the thread.

Semi-flooded and much-overgrown ruins, escaped zoo animals, a small remnant human population . . .

Planet of the Apes, here I come . . .

TMP link

Would/should the Apes fear the water? If so, the humans will have some advantage in that setting, right?

CC

Cacique Caribe, there's a new comic out that may be of some interest to you. It's called "Zero Killer" and it's from Dark Horse Comics.

I was going to post a link but I don't know how to do it, lol.

Here's the story:

1973: Global skirmishes lead to a massive nuclear war know as "Zero Hour". Over 90 percent of the human population is annihilated. Nixon and Ford are assassinated during the chaos, along with most of the House and Senate – leaving JOCOM, a militarized vestige of the United States government, in control.

2007: New York City, present day. In the thirty-four years since "Zero Hour", those civilian who survived the nuclear fires have settled into a culture of "gang protection" livin in crumbling, half-submerged towers and quickly forgetting a somewhat civilized past..

I think within a year of destruction tremendous amounts of vegetation would pop up in a destroyed New York. I live about 13 miles away from New York City and in my yard (which I do keep up) going away for two weeks saw massive weed and sapling growth along with creepers, with which I have been fighting a multi-year war, getting back into the hedges and back on to trees.

Maybe I should start with something like this . . .

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Then add water and lots and lots of plants and trees!

CC

CC:

Get that ground up green foam from a RR hobby site, spray all ruins with tacky glue spray, and shake over, then repeat but with a dark green flock. This would give the moss, moss, moss effect that would surely happen (especially with Washington DC being built over swampland).

If playing a miniatures game with RPG aspects, work in malaria rules.

Mysterioso

"work in malaria rules"

ooooo, that would be nice!

CC