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Old 07-09-2019, 04:24 PM   #101
Christopher R. Rice
 
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Default Re: So What IS ruined after an Apocalypse?

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Originally Posted by lwcamp View Post
A century of growth in a year? I'd say under those conditions, anything that's not some monumental stone building (the equivalent of the pyramids of Chichen Itza or the temples of Angkor Wat), and that is in a place which gets enough rain to support woodlands or forest, will be torn apart and broken down without daily maintenance during the period of growth. Even plains will see the significant degradation of their structures - just look at the mounds of Cahokia and how little is left of their former thriving civilization. In more arid areas, things will initially fare better, but it will result in a massive buildup of fuel in an area that is, at least seasonally, extremely dry. The resulting wildfires are likely to destroy any wood structure; concrete and asphalt will fare better. In extreme deserts, of course (like the Sahara or Death Valley), there will be no real effect.

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That's a good point. I might drop it to just a decade. That would give me the greenery I want without making it basically forest EVERYWHERE.

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Here' are examples from where I live.

I often go hiking on a nearby mountain called Rattlesnake mountain. I have heard it is the tallest treeless mountain in the United States, but I don't have any real confirmation of that. In any event, the ecology is typical central Washington scrub-steppe - sagebrush, rabbitbrush, and bunch grasses growing in undisturbed areas; cheetgrass and tumbleweed are invasives that spring up wherever the land has been disturbed. There is little precipitation, the summers are hot and dry, and the winters vary from year to year between mild and severe winter storms. Except, when you go hiking on Rattlesnake Mountain, you see patches shrubs and the remains of the occasional small, skeletal tree. If you pay attention, you will see that the shrubs (and any associated trees) always occur in straight lines, cutting across the convoluted topography of the mountain. You will also find swaths of cheetgrass growing in straight lines. Sometimes you will come across a pit in the ground, as if someone had excavated a root cellar or latrine. And occasionally, you will find the remains of an irrigation pipe angling out of the dirt. It is clear that this area was once cultivated, with long vanished homesteads housing hardy pioneer families. But no sign remains of their houses or barns or outbuildings or equipment now. Because this land was irrigated, the land must have been settled up until the mid 1930's at least, since that is when Grand Coulee Dam allowed irrigation water to be efficiently supplied to the area. Since this area was part of the Hanford site, anyone living on it would have been kicked out in 1943. So in seven or eight decades, nearly all signs of human existence have been erased, leaving only scattered, tantalizing clues.

Also on the Hanford site, the towns of Hanford and White Bluffs were evacuated by the army in 1943 to allow the production of wartime plutonium to proceed with secrecy. Today, a few of their buildings survive, mostly made of concrete, usually just the walls with gaping holes where windows, doors, and roofs used to be. In 76 years, this is all that remains. Because people are still not allowed on this part of the Hanford site, I can't tell you how much other material remains.

This land is arid, with relatively mild weather and limited vegetation. Weathering and destruction of man-made artifacts by nature will be slower here than in many other places.

My sister and her husband have a farm on the other side of the state, where it is nearly perpetually drizzling and cloud covered; where moss and blackberry tangles grow rampant and every bit of land not actively cleared hosts stands of alder or Douglass fir or bigleaf maple or western red cedar. On a walk around a part of their property that has been too much trouble to clear, where the land is soggy and the moisture drips from the trees, there is an old pile of trash and the remains of at least two automobiles. The cars look like they date from the 1960's, although whether they were abandoned back then, or kept and preserved for some decades afterward I cannot tell. The cars are nearly entirely disintegrated, all I can make out from them are the scattered pieces of their rusted steel shells. Unless you are looking for scrap metal, I doubt there is anything salvageable there.

Luke
That is cool, my dude. I've settled on about "30 years later" as my drop off, so unless society can get back moving again small towns are probably going to be erased.

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While it wouldn't happen in a hurry 7 degrees colder means a 16 meter (C degrees) drop in sea level.
Which incidentally is the depth of the channels in New York Harbour.
Which is scary in and of itself. I wonder how much of the harbor might freeze over for a particularly bad winter. What might the stats on that be? Like, how cold would it have to get to start a freeze there?
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Old 07-09-2019, 05:31 PM   #102
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Default Re: So What IS ruined after an Apocalypse?

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Which is scary in and of itself. I wonder how much of the harbor might freeze over for a particularly bad winter. What might the stats on that be? Like, how cold would it have to get to start a freeze there?
Looking at some historic numbers for New York.
From 1780 - 1888 the east river froze over 8 times and the Hudson river froze 3 times. The temperature was recorded at -14 when both had frozen over in 1821.

With a full -7 degree temperature drop, maybe triple the likely hood? 1 in 4 for the East river and 1 in 12 for the Hudson river. It's all together possible that the chances of freezing over go up in a non-linear fashion and freezing over may be the norm.
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Old 07-09-2019, 06:01 PM   #103
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Default Re: So What IS ruined after an Apocalypse?

Good to know! Thank you, (E), as always you're a font of useful information. :-)
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Old 07-10-2019, 06:40 AM   #104
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Default Re: So What IS ruined after an Apocalypse?

There's a chef in Ireland using centuries old Bog Butter in his restaurant, but it's been stored in an aerobic acidic environment (buried in a peat bog). Enough chemistry has been going on there that I'm not sure what substance it actually is now - it might be more of an "interesting" flavor than a food.
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Old 07-10-2019, 07:15 AM   #105
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Default Re: So What IS ruined after an Apocalypse?

Bog butter sounds like a horrifying euphemism for something. Or maybe just an interesting old timey epithet.
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Old 07-10-2019, 11:29 AM   #106
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Default Re: So What IS ruined after an Apocalypse?

A restaurant serving people an ingredient that was buried in an Irish bog centuries ago sounds like a good set up for a horror adventure.

People all over the city with no obvious connection start meeting weird ends. The PC find out that the only thing they had in common was going to that restaurant and ordering a particular menu item. What else is buried in that bog?

Back on the topic, my guess is that it probably takes longer than just a couple of decades for sea water to give up it's energy and start to significantly contract, and certainly much longer for glaciers to build up. Sea level probably will have stopped rising and started to drop, but it wouldn't get down to the same level as the last time the earth was 7 degrees colder probably for centuries.
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Old 07-11-2019, 08:20 AM   #107
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Default Re: So What IS ruined after an Apocalypse?

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But how do those plants (especially the saplings) handle noticably colder winters? If only the older plants can survive the temperature drop, the destruction they cause is going to be lessened.
Young trees of the first regrowth group usually grow very quickly in the growing seasons, and there are plenty of cold-climate species that will invade New York City from up state or from Canada. They'll grow like crazy in spring and summer, sit mostly dormant over winter and then grow some more the next year, and so on. Open areas will become nearly impassable, choked with bush, very quickly once the concrete or asphalt has need broken up enough for the saplings to establish.

Given enough time (decades), this regen bush will be replaced by forests of larger, slower growing trees if the climate and soil allows, or otherwise will probably end up as scrubland.
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Old 07-11-2019, 09:22 AM   #108
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Default Re: So What IS ruined after an Apocalypse?

Another thing which goes south faster than people imagine is the sewer. Even on a micro scale, if your local lift station goes down, it will take less than a day of normal usage before there are serious backups for whichever house has the lowest drains.

And even if there were still gravity-fed sewers, the biggest threat to underground pipes is tree roots. And the second biggest is unusual freezing. So, in this scenario... I'd call it a total loss and figure that some alternative would be called for quickly.
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Old 07-11-2019, 04:30 PM   #109
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Default Re: So What IS ruined after an Apocalypse?

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Bog butter sounds like a horrifying euphemism for something. Or maybe just an interesting old timey epithet.
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A restaurant serving people an ingredient that was buried in an Irish bog centuries ago sounds like a good set up for a horror adventure.
It's just too bizarre not to share :) I can't remember what he said about the flavor, other than the inevitable "peaty".

For those of you following along at home, bog butter is either butter or lard or suet, some solid animal-origin fat like that, sealed up in a barrel-type-thing, possibly also inside a leather bag, and then buried in a peat bog for completely unknown reasons. It's a fairly frequent find for peat cutters, such that crazy chefs can just buy and eat some.

The probable explanation is a combination of storage and culturing/fermenting - when they repeat the process, 2-year-old bog-butter is a lot like North-African Smen. Smen, in turn, is a kind of cheese-thing made by burying butter + sage in a sealed pot for as long as you can restrain yourself from digging it up again. Apparently it tastes a bit like blue cheese, and while it's considered smen after only a few months, it's a bit like wine and considered to improve with years or decades of aging.
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Old 07-11-2019, 09:17 PM   #110
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Default Re: So What IS ruined after an Apocalypse?

Ok. Next question: what animals from zoos might be able to form a breeding population in the wild?
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