So What IS ruined after an Apocalypse?

[Aldric]

What happened and how long has it been? Decades could be 30 or 50 or 80 years I guess.

Also... Where there any other survivors who might have already grabbed everything that was available?

[Þorkell]

Originally Posted by Christopher R. Rice

Does cold have an actual effect on battery life or is that a myth?

It kind of depends what you mean by battery life. I know that when you're photographing in cold weather you keep the batteries close to your body because they last longer there, you can even switch a depleted battery from the camera and bring it to the (body) heat and recover some charge on it.

[Mysterious Dark Lord v3.2]

The majority of everything on a store shelf travels a minimum of a hundred miles (and in some cases many thousands of miles) before it gets to retail outlets. The first thing that goes in an apocalypsse will be convenient sourcing of anything that orginates over thirty to fifty miles away. The modern highway systems in North America and Europe will help immensely in the survival of older small towns.

I specified "older" small towns. Modern suburbs will lack food production, and may even lack water supplies. Suburbia will die out, and older towns (that in days past had farmlands surrounding them and were built next to water sources) will be in a position to flourish after the "population adjustment".

Many major cities may become trading hubs with a fraction of their original population. But many of those cities will have paved over or used up their water supplies and be unable to grow their own food. Those cities will be depopulated.

To reiterate - without the supply networks of modern civilization, communities will be dependent on their own food and water supplies.

[Christopher R. Rice]

Originally Posted by Phantasm

What was the nature of the apocalypse? Nuclear war? Total polar ice cap melt? Solar flare?Alien invasion? 40 foot tall mutant-hunting robots?

What kinds of buildings are left standing and what are reduced to rubble?

Originally Posted by Aldric

What happened and how long has it been? Decades could be 30 or 50 or 80 years I guess.

Godlike supers broke the world with their abilities and vampires. It's a combination of global cooling creating a mini-ice age (about a 7 degree drop from current temps) due to messed up weather control, a vampire virus that made South and Central America very hard to deal with, and a few other things. Most buildings are intact, but runaway use of powers has made green and growing things explode in growth when the weather is right (most of the northern hemisphere has Alaska's climate basically - lots of cold, one or two months for growing stuff, etc.) so that's affected buildings. Essentially, imagine a supers fight that lasted months and you get the idea of the amount of damage that's been done to structures. Put that through a 10-year winter and you get closer.

It's been at least 30 years, but no more than 35 (I still haven't quite decided yet).

Originally Posted by Aldric

Also... Where there any other survivors who might have already grabbed everything that was available?

Yes. People have been scavenging for a while, but that's not really important at the moment. I'm just trying to decide what IS still around.

How long do rubber tires last? I know they can dry rot in a year or two, but what about if safely contained elsewhere and outside of the weather.

[Christopher R. Rice]

Originally Posted by Þorkell

It kind of depends what you mean by battery life. I know that when you're photographing in cold weather you keep the batteries close to your body because they last longer there, you can even switch a depleted battery from the camera and bring it to the (body) heat and recover some charge on it.

Cool. Did not know that. I assume this is personal experience then?

[Christopher R. Rice]

Originally Posted by Ashtagon

Corpses left exposed in a typical temperate climate will be reduced to skeletons after a year. The skeleton can take another 40-50 years to be reduced to dust. This all assumes insect and microbe life hasn't been removed by the apocalypse. Burial practices, fossilisation processes, and environment can extend these almost indefinitely.

https://www.aftermath.com/content/human-decomposition/
https://www.quora.com/How-long-do-bo...hey-are-buried

I . . . did not know this. Interesting. Thank you.

Originally Posted by PTTG

Cold reduces the reaction rate of a battery, but not significantly compared to just sitting out in the elements. If you want the PCs to be able to find a few charged batteries when all the other ones are long dead, go with supertech, or at least supercapacitors. There's not a significant enough difference between normal battery chemistries to even exaggerate in a cinematic game.

Noted!

Originally Posted by PTTG

Electronics in general, if they were protected from the initial EMP or whatever caused the apocalypse, could survive for years provided a dry and reasonably temperate environment. Realistically, they would need cleaning and stable power to use safely, but cinematically, you could get away with just plugging it into a dusted-off solar panel or electricity-themed super.

What sort of cleaning? Just the general outside or break it open and dust it with canned air?

Originally Posted by PTTG

Solar cells decay over time (the oldest ones around still function at like 60% their nominal capacity), but if they aren't cracked, they will still work for a looong time. Decades, though the inverters and storage systems they're hooked up to will fail much sooner.

That's interesting because a lot of the power in the campaign setting is greener than our world - the Transatlantic Pulse destroyed much of the power infrastructure at the turn of the century and when it was rebuilt it was rebuilt using modern (at the time) teach. So that's super-useful info.

Originally Posted by PTTG

Gasoline goes bad within 3 months worst case, but even non-cinematically, a well-sealed and well-blended mix might last for at least a year or two. Cinematically, the gas is always good, even if it's moonshine.

That I didn't know. How long does oil last? Is there a way to refine it in small batches into gas?

Originally Posted by PTTG

You might rely on cinematic forces to make some post-apocalyptic hazards more severe. Cinematic nuclear fallout -- even in the case of non-nuclear apocalypses, plants and storage areas fail -- becomes an immediately deadly threat, rather than a statistical one involving decades of increased cancer risk.

One of the things that occured was a super "ate" most of the radioactive material in nuclear plants so that's effectively a non-issue.

[Christopher R. Rice]

Originally Posted by Mysterious Dark Lord v3.2

The majority of everything on a store shelf travels a minimum of a hundred miles (and in some cases many thousands of miles) before it gets to retail outlets. The first thing that goes in an apocalypsse will be convenient sourcing of anything that orginates over thirty to fifty miles away. The modern highway systems in North America and Europe will help immensely in the survival of older small towns.

I specified "older" small towns. Modern suburbs will lack food production, and may even lack water supplies. Suburbia will die out, and older towns (that in days past had farmlands surrounding them and were built next to water sources) will be in a position to flourish after the "population adjustment".

Many major cities may become trading hubs with a fraction of their original population. But many of those cities will have paved over or used up their water supplies and be unable to grow their own food. Those cities will be depopulated.

To reiterate - without the supply networks of modern civilization, communities will be dependent on their own food and water supplies.

Yeah, I actually knew this. I figure most folks are going to grow as much as they can in the greener months since winters are basically a 7-9 month period at this point.

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by Christopher R. Rice

How long do rubber tires last?

10 years is the usual rule of thumb. UV, ozone, and humidity are bad (tire manufacturers recommend airtight plastic bags as covers to protect stored tires), as are extreme temperatures (below freezing, or over around 80F). If you can seal them and climate-control them, then they can last a very long time, but "apocalypse" suggests you won't have the climate control at least.

They also need to be stored somehow without pressure that will deform or flatten the tire -- not in big stacks (no more than 5-6 feet if stacked horizontally) or random junkyard piles, nor mounted on cars, but preferably vertically on racks. Tires that get deformed from all that weight while uninflated can crack when inflated (or worse, a bit later under driving stress).

Scavenging from wrecks or a freeway full of an abandoned traffic jam is a cool scene, but realistically you wouldn't get much use from that 30 years after.

[Christopher R. Rice]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

10 years is the usual rule of thumb. UV, ozone, and humidity are bad (tire manufacturers recommend airtight plastic bags as covers to protect stored tires), as are extreme temperatures (below freezing, or over around 80F). If you can seal them and climate-control them, then they can last a very long time, but "apocalypse" suggests you won't have the climate control at least.

They also need to be stored somehow without pressure that will deform or flatten the tire -- not in big stacks (no more than 5-6 feet if stacked horizontally) or random junkyard piles, nor mounted on cars, but preferably vertically on racks. Tires that get deformed from all that weight while uninflated can crack when inflated (or worse, a bit later under driving stress).

Scavenging from wrecks or a freeway full of an abandoned traffic jam is a cool scene, but realistically you wouldn't get much use from that 30 years after.

VERY useful to know. Thank you. You also gave me an idea for how to introduce tech that should be otherwise unavailable: a super with the power to protect items from damage, wind, weather, etc. setting up caches all around. I already have some precog warnings going on, having someone directed by said precog is easy enough.

[khorboth]

One underrated problem is fuel. liquid fuels like gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel go bad surprisingly quickly.

Gasoline has a stable shelf life of about 3 months. Less if it's mixed with ethanol which it usually is in the US to reduce emissions. More if it's mixed with stabilizing chemicals, but 9 months is pretty much the outside.

Diesel can be stored longer, generally 6-12 months. I didn't find a ready source for jet fuel.

Engines can be run on high-content alcohol, and maybe some are converted that way, but human or animal power seems more likely. Burnable material is more likely to be used for heating and calorically dense items are more likely to be used as food than distilled. But if some industry has returned, it may well be running on alcohol instead of oil. Given the overgrowth of plant matter, this may be even more practical. Particularly for cooking and heating.