1. Viserion

    Viserion Senior Member

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    100 years after

    Discussion in 'Setting Development' started by Viserion, Feb 24, 2020.

    If human society collapsed tomorrow due to a massive (insert catastrophe here) and one hundred years passed, what would be the state of humanity? Basically all electronic tech is gone, and the economy, governments and militaries are collapsed. Would cities be severely overtaken by nature, would any major roads survive and what sort of artifacts would survive?
     
  2. Rzero

    Rzero Reluctant voice of his generation Contributor

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    (Please forgive my sarcasm in advance. I'm just having fun. :)) In answer to your question, I'd like to refer you to about a quarter of all science fiction novels.

    Okay, real answer: That depends. Are we talking 100% annihilation? Because if humans don't exist at all, but everything else is fine, there was a very cool show on Discovery years ago called After People (I think.) And (spoiler) nature wins. According to their models, most places where plants and animals exist, everything returns to jungle after a while. It was a good show. You should check it out. they talk about different places around the globe, as well as what would happen in a year, five years, a hundred, etc. It's fascinating.

    If you're talking about a scenario involving survivors after a catastrophe that affected the environment, please see smart-ass paragraph one, because it's anyone's guess and lots of people have published their guesses.
     
  3. EFMingo

    EFMingo A Modern Dinosaur Supporter Contributor

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    Answering this question is part of the fun of being a writer. We could all answer this a thousand different ways, and all of us would correct. How about you figure out what your intention is wit the story, and then shape the annihilation around that. And yes, I agree with @Rzero , go read science fiction. Nobody truly knows the answer to these questions, and the possibilities are defined somewhat by the manner in which human kind died off. A plague is going to have a much different world a hundred years after than that of a nuclear holocaust, or solar flare burnout. This is your job as a story teller. Have some fun with it, and remember to read. See what's already out there, and compile your own thoughts on the subject.

    Discovery puts out a variation of this show every few years. They're all pretty fun, and as new ones come out, they tend to incorporate more trending ideas for global annihilation. Show can be a fairly good reference in this respect, but it's definitely not any end-all-be-all. Somewhat worth at least one viewing of the newest iteration.
     
  4. Thorn Cylenchar

    Thorn Cylenchar Senior Member

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    There was a television show called 'Life After People' on the History channel that went into what would happen to cities, infrastructure, art, ect after humanity is gone, but it would be relevant to what would happen if we lost the ability to maintain it.

    Pretty quickly roads would start breaking down/breaking apart. Well not having automobile traffic would help in the short term, in the first couple years you would start having the effects of the hot sun, frost heaves causing expansion and contraction of the soil, floods washing away/damaging portions, and fires damaging portions. Then, you would have animals damaging the structures(digging under roads causing collapse, ect) and plants starting to grow in the cracks. Within ten years I'd say most of the roads would start being pretty overgrown.

    Fire/tornado/floods/hurricanes/blizzards would all heavily impact areas especially if humans do not have the ability to repair the damage/clear the snow/put out the fires.

    Look up 'Kudzu' and its effects on the SE US. Without mitigation it could easily overgrow towns.

    For buildings, once you get a leaky roof or a broken window or door to allow animal or water intrusion, the effects will quickly escalate, allowing rot to set in.

    People underestimate how much maintenance is needed to keep everything in one piece.

    What would still be intact in a hundred years? The older, heavy stone buildings(at least parts of the walls). Portions of bridges and roadways. Many of your dams I would think would still exist(just due to how heavy duty they are)
     
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  5. Viserion

    Viserion Senior Member

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    Humans survive, in a vaguely tribal/feudal society. The apocalypse was a zombie prion transmitted through water and skin contact.
     
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  6. Rzero

    Rzero Reluctant voice of his generation Contributor

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    Are zombies still an issue? If so, how bad? How many humans left, how many zombies?
     
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  7. Viserion

    Viserion Senior Member

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    It’s a ratio of about 2:1 in favor of the zombies. They’re not a huge problem, but they still occasionally raid farms in packs.
     
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  8. Some Guy

    Some Guy Manguage Langler Supporter Contributor

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    Planet Terror meets Resident Evil?
     
  9. big soft moose

    big soft moose An Admoostrator Admin Staff Supporter Contributor Community Volunteer

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    is the prion still lurking out there infecting normals? (this is one of my issues with a lot of apoc fiction - civilisation as we know it wiped out by ebola, super flu, covid19 or whatever... but 100 years later all the survivors are magically immune)
     
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  10. Viserion

    Viserion Senior Member

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    It’s still around, and some people were immune from the start. Most people are still susceptible, so water is always boiled and filtered repeatedly or gathered from rain.
     
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  11. newjerseyrunner

    newjerseyrunner Contributor Contributor Contest Winner 2022

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    Just to be clear, boiling water will not destroy a prion.

    A hundred years is not a long time. Nature will be rampaging through it, but it'd still be very recognizable. Chernobyl happened a little less than 50 years ago, and there is still writing on the chalkboards at the schools, you could look at it fro inspiration. Big buildings will still be in tact. The Empire State building is 90 years old. Windows might break but the structure of it will remain sound for hundreds of years more.
     
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  12. Some Guy

    Some Guy Manguage Langler Supporter Contributor

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    I had to work hard to find a way to flatten everything while still allowing 1 in 11 to survive, and not just die out later. What 100 years later looks like depends on a lot of circumstances. Choose carefully, or handwave it if it's not central to the story.
     
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  13. Rzero

    Rzero Reluctant voice of his generation Contributor

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    Remember three things: gasoline expires, plants eat buildings and cats taste like chicken. :bigwink:

    When it comes to human behavior, I tend toward the hopeful. I think the cooperative and the generous will win out over the opportunistic and cruel, especially while we're still in crisis mode. After that, it will likely be the same old struggles on a different field, with equality or kindness as a tenet being something we have to fight for within the institutions we establish. We've taken countless generations to get to where we are now, and despite what the cynics say, things are better in general and continue to get more so over time, because that's what we fight for. I think in a civilized location, a mostly-apocalypse will bring out the best in more people than the worst.

    A hundred years later, who freaking knows. I want to say that we wouldn't have to crawl all the way back from the dark ages, but who could be sure. I just know the trend will be a positive one, if slow. Technology won't be lost. It could take years to get things up and going again, but I think after a century, power plants would be running, communities would be well established, if sparse. I don't know about travel or communication. Governments would likely vary wildly from region to region. Many would immediately start up democracies again, while others would tend toward communal structures. Where populations are close, there would be treaties and centralized governments. Other places might fall into warlords and feudalism scenarios. It's anybody's guess.

    That might have been a lot of convoluted nonsense there, but my point is that a hundred years is enough time to get things done. If the cities and the power plants and oil refineries were spared a nuclear war, then not much has to change technology-wise. At least not for long. The major differences, I think would be how societies function when there are only a handful of people left.
     
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  14. Some Guy

    Some Guy Manguage Langler Supporter Contributor

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    Well put.
     
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  15. Aldarion

    Aldarion Active Member

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    That is not actually that weird. Some people will be immune, and a disease that has wiped out the civilisation will have to have been so virulent that basically only immune people will have survived. Otherwise it would not have managed to spread that wide.

    In small groups, yes - humans after all cannot survive on their own, and are hardwired by evolution to form groups/gangs/whatever. But there will be warfare between the groups.
     
  16. big soft moose

    big soft moose An Admoostrator Admin Staff Supporter Contributor Community Volunteer

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    Nope - because viruses mutate... that's why you can have flu more than once...
     
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  17. Aldarion

    Aldarion Active Member

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    Depends on the rate of mutation, though. Flu is highly mutation-prone, which is why having immunity to one type of virus often does not (sometimes does, often not) confer immunity to another strain of flu. On the other hand, smallpox vaccine was developed when Edward Jenner observed that milkmaids who had previously caught cowpox were immune to smallpox - which itself is much more lethal than cowpox. So if you have disease which is a) highly infectious, b) highly lethal but c) has low rate of mutation, then it may be possible for it to wipe out most people but spare some who may have genetic immunity. That being said, I do agree that something like that is more likely to happen with bacteria - for example, Black Death which hit Europe in 14th century was not as lethal as it could have been because there already had been an epidemic of Justinianic Plague, which was a related (though perhaps not exactly the same) strain. And bacteria can, in fact, survive for a long time in adverse conditions by forming bacterial spores (endospores).

    @Viserion This may help.
     
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  18. Friedrich Kugelschreiber

    Friedrich Kugelschreiber marshmallow Contributor

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    I don't know if you've ever read Day of the Triffids?
     
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  19. Rzero

    Rzero Reluctant voice of his generation Contributor

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    I love John Wyndham. He's been accused of writing "cosy catastrophes," but I actually like the idea that there might be hope after the apocalypse. Just because it's the end of the world doesn't mean it's the end of the world.
     
  20. Aldarion

    Aldarion Active Member

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    No, I haven't.
     
  21. Some Guy

    Some Guy Manguage Langler Supporter Contributor

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    *shrugs*
     

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