So What IS ruined after an Apocalypse?

[Michele]

Originally Posted by Rupert

After fourteen years it'd almost certainly have been flooded. I very much doubt the compartment would have been truly watertight to start with.

Not only that, but the damage incurred by the structural elements would probably mean that at least small leaks come to affect the hatches' sealing.

[RyanW]

Originally Posted by YankeeGamer

Geosynchronous satellites will be in orbit for a LONG time--usable--not as long.

LEO satellites, especially ones with high surface area to mass ratios, won't last very long. Cubesats typically reenter after a couple of days.

[ericthered]

If ground control goes away, will LEO satellites still end up being decommissioned properly? And would that be enough to start off a kessler cascade?

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by ericthered

If ground control goes away, will LEO satellites still end up being decommissioned properly? And would that be enough to start off a kessler cascade?

LEO stuff decommission themselves, the problem is somewhat higher orbits. And no, it means they won't get cleaned up properly which is a problem if people keep adding new satellites without removing old ones, but presumably they aren't launching new satellites either.

[Christopher R. Rice]

Thanks, y'all! I was just wondering because my PCs have a technopath among them that might be able to reach one of the satellites by power stunting. He could then use them for all sorts of things. . .

[(E)]

While probably not in the right location something like "Arthur" was a long lived satellite dish.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goon..._Earth_Station

[Johnny1A.2]

Originally Posted by evileeyore

That's a standard trope in sci-fi circles.




Some of these shows vastly overestimate how fast things will fall apart. I remember an episode of Life After People where they claimed roads will be unusable within 5 years after people are gone and I was just like "What? Do they not know how well built roads are?"

An unused road can last centuries. There are spots of old Roman roads that still exist today, and they didn't sit unused for that entire time.

They can last for centuries, but by no means is that guaranteed. It depends on the road, the usage, the environment, etc. It so happens that the Romans were good at civil engineering, and made their stuff well, but most of it is long gone.

A modern road would survive several years in a useable state, unless something actively wrecked it. But exactly how many years would be highly dependent on how well the road was made, what kind of ground it was laid across, the weather/climate, the local biological situation, and other factors too.

In some places, even well-made modern roads would be the worse for wear after 5 years. In other places, a well-made modern road might still be readily driveable at 25 years.

An example of what I mean: in the American Midwest, a lot of otherwise well-made roads are laid across river flood plains instead of rock or high soil. This only matters when the river floods hugely, which is unpredictable, it might happen a year after the apocalypse or it might happen 20. But when it does, that nice modern road will need quickly need work.

Likewise, the breakdown of a nice modern road will be slow at first, but when cracks and crevices do start to appear, unless the road is in a very dry climate, or one with nice even above-freezing temperatures, the breakdown will quickly accelerate when water starts getting into the cracks and freezing.

A road near the coast has to deal with salt water, too.

Five years is an extreme...but things will go south fast overall.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by evileeyore

Some of these shows vastly overestimate how fast things will fall apart. I remember an episode of Life After People where they claimed roads will be unusable within 5 years after people are gone and I was just like "What? Do they not know how well built roads are?"

In some places, roads may well be unusable after only 5 years. Most roads aren't freshly-paved at any given time, and I know of quite a few roads in and near my hometown that require patching on a yearly basis thanks to winter potholes (in fact, it's not uncommon for the same stretch to need patching multiple times in a year, particularly when winter keeps fluctuating between rain and snow). I could readily see the roads in that area becoming undriveable in 5 years' time, but my experience with them is while they have a good deal of traffic daily. In a post-apocalypse, lack of stress from heavy vehicles driving over them would probably extend their lifespans, although the freeze/thaw cycles would still produce some rather nasty potholes, as well as softening the road up to allow plants to infiltrate (which would then break it up even further). They'd probably still be usable for foot and likely bicycle traffic, however.

The idea all roads would be undriveable after 5 years strikes me as highly unlikely, however.

Originally Posted by Christopher R. Rice

Question: Satellites - would they still be in orbit and usable?

If any supers survived the apocalypse, there may be some that have been using their powers to help maintain useful satellites. Flying bricks with Space-Capable Flight (and EVA suits or advantages that replace the need for such) might be able to directly interface with and perform maintenance on the satellites, and a tinker/gadgeteer/whatever-your-setting-calls-them who already has some experimental satellites in orbit may be able to remotely maintain those, and maybe suborn some of the others that are no longer in use. So, even if it turns out there shouldn't be any functional satellites still in use, there are ways to justify such existing if you wish.

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by evileeyore

Some of these shows vastly overestimate how fast things will fall apart. I remember an episode of Life After People where they claimed roads will be unusable within 5 years after people are gone and I was just like "What? Do they not know how well built roads are?"

In Canada, which America now enjoys the weather of in this apocalyse, the annual freeze-thaw cycle will wreck roads without anyone driving on them at all. Completely unusable by your usual road vehicles is not out of the question, although vehicles with at least some offroading capability would be "ok" - not barreling along at 55mph unless you have a death wish but tootling around in your pickup or SUV seems reasonable if they aren't the decorative kind, and actually have the right suspension.

This would be magnified by bringing Canadian weather to areas that never built to standards for them. I was flabbergasted to see highways made of concrete in Mexico. That just doesn't work here. The ground can move up to 20"-odd inches over the course of a winter. We build our houses with very deep foundations to try to get under the frost and we build our roads with the resignation that they will heave and crack and need a lot of maintenance. Roads with traffic here don't really have even a 5 year lifespan, if you have a thing against rampant potholes. I've just learned to live with them, myself.

Along with generic weathering, don't forget changing water courses causing erosion, flash flooding causing washouts, forest fires and lightning strikes causing spot damage, rock- mud- and land-slides, treefalls, etc.

One thing that's usually missed in this discussion is that right now, most of the roads around us are not new roads. They already have some years on them, potentially a substantial number of years. Only a few roads will have been layed down in the few months before the apocalypse, and it's 5 years after The Apocalypse not 5 years after creation. What's the average age of a road surface in America?

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by Boomerang

Back when I still used to work in the lab the test for rancidity of oils was based on measuring the peroxide value, the idea being the degree of oxidation corresponded to the degree of deterioration. But you could always tell by looking at the colour and smelling the sample which ones would pass or fail the test.

This is true for most foodstuffs. Even if you're careful to exclude O2 during the packaging process, O2 precursors might still break down to release oxidizing compounds.

This means that storage temperature is a huge issue for shelf-stability and shelf-life, since up to a point, the warmer the temperature, the faster the chemical reactions run.

For containers where there is the possibility for gaps to develop in the seal, allowing gasses to escape and enter the container as it expands or contracts, or for gas-permeable containers (like some forms of plastic containers) ambient oxygen levels and temperature swings become important.

For transparent containers, light levels/type becomes important since light penetrating the container can trigger unwanted chemical reactions. (e.g., "skunking" of beer is caused by certain frequencies of UV light penetrating the bottle interact with certain hop compounds to release mercaptans. Dark brown glass bottles greatly slow this process. Green bottles are a speed bump. Anything in clear bottles is made in a way that prevents the light-struck reaction from occurring.)

Put canned or bottled/canned in glass jar food or drink into a cold (1 *C/33 *F), humidity- and temperature-controlled, dark environment, and it could potentially last in reasonably decent shape for decades.

In ideal conditions, as long as the natural acidity of the food/drink doesn't eat through the seals, and it is packaged in such a way that oxygen can't penetrate the container, the material might be edible, if not palatable, for centuries.

FWIW, I've stored bottles of commercial beer in the conditions I've described and they were nearly as fresh after two years of storage. Canned beer held even longer.

I've also consumed 20 year-old cans of US domestic light lager stored in indifferent conditions (someone's basement storage area), and found them to be drinkable, but notably stale.

As a test, I also "aged" bottles of commercial craft beer in awful conditions (an uninsulated attic in a temperate climate). After 7 years, they were extremely stale, but still drinkable.

Finally, "miracles occur" when you get controlled oxidation of highly alcoholic (6% ABV or higher), with a sufficiently high level of polyphenols and/or melanoidin products. This produces sherry-like or "dark fruit" notes.

Additionally, aging turns fusel alcohols and similar unwanted byproducts of fermentation into a vast variety of breakdown products, which also interact with melanoidin/polyphenol breakdown products. These processes all add to the "complexity" of the beverage, which is why you pay much more for aged whisky than for rotgut straight from the still.

I'll let Kromm weigh in on the effects these processes have on wine, should he care to do so, but some brands of strong dark beer stored in stable cellar conditions remain tasty - if obviously aged - for decades. Strong meads can hold for similar lengths of time. Ciders and country wines usually go downhill after 2-3 years and eventually go to vinegar.

There are also instances where historical brewers in the UK and elsewhere have discovered caches of 19th century beer and shared them with beer writers (e.g., a few years back, a few bottles of very strong "Arctic Ale" brewed for the Franklin expedition were discovered in the brewer's old cellars). The writers reported that the bottled beer was somewhat sour and very sherry-like, but still drinkable. Very old (60-80+ years) bottles of wine usually don't fare so well and end up as very expensive vinegar.