After Us; IW help

[Drifter]

I don't know how to successfully phrase this for a search of the forums, but I'm trying to find out how long ruins can be expected to survive.

Specifically, I'm looking at a post-Apocalyptic setting such as Ariane in IW. Most, if not all of humanity is wiped out. How long can your average building survive, assuming about a TL6 tech max? By survive I mean to be reasonably structurally intact, and able to be rebuilt or retrofitted to be inhabited again.

Goal is to have areas colonists from other timelines move into nearly ready made housing, instead of building from scratch. At least in historically "interesting" areas, like Paris or London or New York. Sure they have to retrofit in power lines and cell phone towers, but having the period architecture would be a huge bonus for some groups.

I'm thinking that most cities will be destroyed by fires just after a few years of lightening strikes or the occasional chemical plant explosion. Most buildings will be destroyed, metal girdered skyscrapers survive as "skeletons", etc.

Area will effect this as well, with ruins in wet areas, like the Pacific NW or London, will be less subject to fires but more subject to rot, while desert area ruins like Phoenix or Cairo will be dry, but subject to fire. I'm interested in how long London can survive in that wet environment. A decade, a century?

Any help or advice is appreciated.

[Dwarf99]

Some Discovery and History speculations ballpark about 100 years, and some of the buildings are crumbling at that point.

[quarkstomper]

I'm pretty sure we have a page about this subject on Arcana Wiki, culled from a book about what would happen to our cities and things if humanity suddenly disappeared. But I can't find the page and don't remember the title of the book. Maybe Jürgen or one of the other Arcanists can help me out.

[Drifter]

Originally Posted by quarkstomper

I'm pretty sure we have a page about this subject on Arcana Wiki, culled from a book about what would happen to our cities and things if humanity suddenly disappeared. But I can't find the page and don't remember the title of the book. Maybe Jürgen or one of the other Arcanists can help me out.

Perfect, I found Post Apocalyptic Decay on the site. Just what I was looking for - after a century housing is completely gone in areas with flooding or hurricanes, otherwise roofs are sagging or collapsed. Most famous cities will be in that state, if not totally burned away. Places like London, Paris or New York will still have any skyscrapers they had in 1915, and large, stone or masonry buildings, but everything else is pretty well gone. No ready made, local "color" housing except in arid areas, unless you want to live in Notre Dame.

I saw parts of those Discovery channel shows, Life After People and one other, but its pricey on Amazon, even used, so I won't be getting that any time soon.

Thank you for the help

[Phil Masters]

The book is probably The World Without Us, by Alan Weisman.

[Dustin]

I think the best case is cities with a lot of brick and stone buildings, in a seismically-stable area (like London). They would still suffer a lot of damage over time from both the occasional fire and subsidence of the underground utilities and undercutting by streams and rivers, but these would probably only take out patches of the city. As long as you're willing to accept patchwork areas of surviving building stock away from the city center, and not an intact ghost town, I think you might be able to make a go of it.

That said, the smart play would be to re-use the masonry for new (and safer) buildings, so on that level it might not matter how fallen-down they are, as long as you can get to the bricks and stones for cheap building materials of your own.

[combatmedic]

Originally Posted by Dustin

That said, the smart play would be to re-use the masonry for new (and safer) buildings, so on that level it might not matter how fallen-down they are, as long as you can get to the bricks and stones for cheap building materials of your own.

Yeah, I agree.

That kind of re-use has plenty of historical precedent.

[safisher]

Originally Posted by Phil Masters

The book is probably The World Without Us, by Alan Weisman.

Yes, this is the book you want. It's very descriptive, though a little preachy.

[Centisteed]

Originally Posted by safisher

Yes, this is the book you want. It's very descriptive, though a little preachy.

I own that book, but still need to read it. The History Channel came out with a pretty long series of things that the book likely covers (though I'm sure the book is deeper).

One thing for sure: gas lines. I think a lot of houses, buildings, etc would explode in likely just a few months or a year. It'd all be burned down, unless somehow the gas line is somehow cut off before it gets to the city, etc.

In Alas, Babylon, the real issue was finding salt. So many things we take for granted..

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Centisteed

One thing for sure: gas lines. I think a lot of houses, buildings, etc would explode in likely just a few months or a year. It'd all be burned down, unless somehow the gas line is somehow cut off before it gets to the city, etc.

Why? Many buildings are abandoned for days at a time and nobody is too concerned they will explode as a result. I doubt many people shut off the gas when going on a week's vacation, and yet their houses don't explode. Nor do businesses that are more or less abandoned over the weekend blow up all that often. If a lot of them are going to explode over the course of a month, a similar number ought to explode on Sundays over the course of a year right now.

Anyway, where is the gas coming from? Nobody is keeping the production going. Some natural gas wells may feed directly into distribution lines, but I expect most of them have some sort of intermediate step that isn't continuous flow. And once the first couple buildings do explode, the gas flow is pretty much cut off everywhere else in that town - anything that's still flowing is flowing out the shattered pipes at the blown up buildings.