So What IS ruined after an Apocalypse?

[evileeyore]

Originally Posted by Bruno

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.

How often are your roads completely rebuilt though?

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.

Sure, concrete is cheap. But most roads in the USA use asphalt, which far more durable (and easier to patch).

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by Bruno

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.

Paradoxically, as long as you have good drainage and no underlying rocks to prevent frost heaves, well-made brick, cobblestone, or dressed stone (i.e., Roman) roads actually hold up better than materials like asphalt or concrete. The trick is that the more porous materials allow water to drain away faster, and the material or gaps between individual bricks/stones acts as a sort of "expansion joint."

Of course, roads made of such materials die faster when exposed to heavy traffic, and fast-moving/heavy vehicles, so swings and roundabouts.

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by YankeeGamer

I think everything flooded--not sure. The pumps were sitting on the bottom, flooded out, for certain.

Of course, the tolerances on the pumps probably weren't as fine as on modern (TL8) equipment, and the engineers probably replaced anything made of organic material and brushed/ground the worst of the rust off before they restarted them.

Precision equipment, while more efficient, is also more vulnerable to things that interfere with that precision, such as oxidation, pitting, expansion, or misalignment.

For stuff in a sealed, sunken compartment, things get complex. Divers working on refloating the battleships sunk at Pearl Harbor reported that sealed compartments quickly developed a layer of hydrogen sulfide gas at the top of the chamber due to the anaerobic decay of organic material. This made salvage torch welding/cutting very risky.

The anaerobic environment also helped preserve certain types of organic materials below the gas-filled area. So, things like woolen uniforms and shoes survived for years after their former owners had decayed away.

In DEEP (>150 ft/50 m) water, lack of light deters scavengers, and water temperatures might start to get colder than at the surface. In deep fresh water, all but the most fragile organic materials can survive more or less intact for centuries.

For example, about a decade ago, divers discovered a nearly intact Revolutionary War-era ships deep at the bottom of Lake Ontario. Until they were stolen by illegal wreck divers, there were metal artifacts still visible on the deck.

The same applies to wooden objects in very deep high saline and/or anoxic ocean waters. Marine archeologists have found nearly intact ancient ships on the bottom of the Black Sea where conditions are normally dark and nearly anoxic.

[adm]

Originally Posted by evileeyore

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

Note that those roads have been maintained for centuries. The ones that were not taken care of, are gone.

[Johnny1A.2]

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

Paradoxically, as long as you have good drainage and no underlying rocks to prevent frost heaves, well-made brick, cobblestone, or dressed stone (i.e., Roman) roads actually hold up better than materials like asphalt or concrete. The trick is that the more porous materials allow water to drain away faster, and the material or gaps between individual bricks/stones acts as a sort of "expansion joint."

Of course, roads made of such materials die faster when exposed to heavy traffic, and fast-moving/heavy vehicles, so swings and roundabouts.

In engineering, efficiency/performance vs. endurance/ease of maintenance is a very common tradeoff.

This also applies to other structures. If you want performance, metal and glass, plastic, wood, composites, all have their advantages. But if you're building for endurance, good-quality stone is often the best option. A stone building may still be useful, with only modest maintenance, after the 'more advanced' steel/glass/composite/whatever structures are a memory, even if they are built at the same time.

[SimonAce]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Assuming 'canned' means an actual can (the type of thing you open with a can opener, no pull-tops or screw-tops), modern cans are thinner than older cans, so they're easier to damage, but if they aren't damaged, they're just as well sealed.

Yep. A lot of things that used to be in cans are now in pull tops including Spam though the Spam seals is still pretty good

[Agemegos]

There are roads, and there are roads.

Asphalt over roadbase goes to hell surprisingly quickly. Where I live a major road (the Pacific Highway) has been realigned three times in my lifetime. Abandoned stretches of road that are not driven on have trees growing through the pavement within five years. But the most recent construction won't go that way: it has a metres and a half of basement concrete with 150mm of reinforced concrete over that, and asphalt over that.

[YankeeGamer]

Some tunnels have lasted for a LONG time after being completely abandoned. If bored through solid rock, they might last for centuries if all goes well.

Things stored in tunnels can do reasonably well in some cases.

[lwcamp]

New York in a global cooling world is pretty much a worst-case for road survivability (and the survivablity of other large structures, like buildings or bridges). Frost heave is already bad enough in today's world, with the humid climate, lake effect weather in the Upstate region, and winter storms coming in off the Atlantic. As Bruno mentioned, add in more severe cold weather and the roads will deteriorate pretty quickly. On top of that, those second-growth Eastern hardwood forests are pretty aggressive, and will quickly start buckling flattop and exploiting any cracks to grow new seedlings (Sumac. Don't even get me started on the sumac. That stuff just crops up everywhere. Keeping it under control is like Whack-a-mole). On top of that the wet climate will give plenty of opportunity for water erosion, subsidence, slumping, flooding, and the like.

I would suspect that after fifteen years or so, you could probably recognize that a road or building used to be there, but that's about it. A five year post-maintenance road might still be navigable with an off-road vehicle.

But hey, at least in a post-apocalyptic world they won't be salting the roads every winter.

Luke

[lwcamp]

Originally Posted by PTTG

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.

Supercapacitors will remain chargeable pretty much indefinitely (at least if stored in good conditions), but will tend to lose any stored charge over weeks or months.

Luke