What would survive?

[Ysgarran]

even discounting those which were dismantled for construction materials).

I think the scavenging is something you need to take into account. Just how much scavenging has taken place? Would people 2000 years earlier than the characters timeframe be tearing these buildings apart to get some high quality steel? The ancient cities might a nice source of refined materials to use.

Cities were built because of the geographical location they occupied. You might have a large percentage of overlap between the ancient cities and the new ones.

Ysgarran.

 

[Zappo]

I wasn't implying that scavenging is irrelevant. I said that even without scavenging, the vast majority of ancient buildings did fall because of the sheer number of years they had to endure. The fact that there are buildings that remained standing for 3000 years is a matter of statistics; it's not normal for a building to survive that long.

Add scavenging, add that concrete is usually far less durable than stone, add that 10000 >> 3000, and I think that most modern constructions would disappear almost completely.

 

[Kyramus]

Watch A.I.

NY was submerged but otherwise intact for the most part. Assuming you didn't sink the eastern border, I wouldn't be surprised to see a new city connected to NYC since the foundation and structures are pretty solid, and NYC doesn't get hit much by natural disasters unlike earthquakes in california and tornadoes in texas and flooding in florida.

The Original Planet of the Apes showed part of the statue of liberty and that was thousands of years old.

 

[Barcode]

Re: Re: For another interesting read about post-apoc times....

Barcode- I highly recommend this as almost exactly what you want to read based on your description. It's an older book, Miller being one of the early Sci-Fi writers, and it's a quick read, too. The main focus of the book is on how language and knowledge are preserved over many centuries, long after an apocalypse, and what bits are rediscovered and misinterpreted. The story follows one individual, then leaps forward in time, several times, to other individuals. It's quite interesting both on its own and as an example of how early Sci-Fi can maintain some longevity when it focuses more on ideas than technology.

As to the rest, I think it was best mentioned above that things would get scavenged and recycled. Because of this, I think you would be safe deciding which bits you want to have survive, decide how they would, and have all other stuff picked clean if they would have otherwise made it through time intact. Imagine the earliest dwarves of your world mining away all of the remnants of the once great cities. Imagine early cults determing that plastic is evil and destoying it all in acid baths until there was nothing left and the cults dispersed some era prior to your campaign beginning. Any other pieces of technology you did not want to exist in your campaign can always have found itself disused, dismantled and destroyed (purposefully or accidentally), so choose what things you want to keep, and discard the rest (IMO)...

Canticle for Leibowitz is in fact my primary influence for the campaign, which is titled Full Circle. CfL goes full circle in a much shorter time frame - the new renaissance is in full swing by 3741, but then CfL was written in the 1950's. In CfL, the Simplification (riots by the survivors of the Apocalypse who blamed knowledge and technology for their destruction) took care of most of the vestiges of civilization. I always thought that was a bit illogical, but rampant scavenging over a couple of thousand years could easily take care of anything that wasn't buried.

So stone structures and plastic artifacts seem like the best bet. What are some major stone structures in North America? They already got to see Mt. Rushmore and the Wounded Knee memorial - their village was at the site of Memphis and they followed Grandmother River (Mississippi/Missouri) up into the high prairie. They are currently in Los Angeles (teleportation plot device) and getting set to explore California.

 

[Barcode]

I think the scavenging is something you need to take into account. Just how much scavenging has taken place? Would people 2000 years earlier than the characters timeframe be tearing these buildings apart to get some high quality steel? The ancient cities might a nice source of refined materials to use.

Cities were built because of the geographical location they occupied. You might have a large percentage of overlap between the ancient cities and the new ones.

Ysgarran.

I completely agree, and have almost exclusively used previous city sites for the location of villages and cities in the world. The trickiest part is digging up the old maps and early history of each city to find out why people settled there. Los Angeles, for example, has been so heavily terraformed that finding the essence of why folks settled there was at least a couple hours work.

Thanks for all the great responses!

-B-

 

[Henry]

Anything made of plastic will be around for tens of thousands of years. So there'll be plenty of fast food trays, barbie dolls, motorcycle helmets, souvenier elvises, ballpoint pens, automobile dashboards, laptop computer cases, plastic recycle bins, AOL CDs... Ditto for ceramics, like dinnerware, tile, Precious Moments figurines...

Alcamtar just gave me a beautiful image of an apocalyptic Cleric, scavenging through the ruins with his adventuring party, turning undead with his Holy Symbol, the Silver Disk of the Great God Aol, the all-seeing eye..

The sign above his shrine reads, "Welcome!"

 

[Umbran]

The pyramids in Egypt are well over 3000 years. They're hardly eroded at all.

Actually, the thing is quite eroded, if you look closely. We fail to see it because we generally only see them from a distance, and they are huge. If you get close to them, erosion damage is quite obvious.

Mind you, the pyramids have only really be subjected to erosion by windblown sand. Water is a much stronger source of erosion, and Egypt doesn't see much rainfall.

Think, for a moment, about a modern highway. You know why they seem to always be under construction? Because they are. They need constant repair in order to remain viable. The US Interstate Highway system hasn't been in place for even a century, and how much repair does it always seem to need?

Concrete buildings may need slightly less maintenance, but they will also crumble, especially in any area that gets moderate rainfall and has winters that commonly see freezing tempreatures. The combination of water and ice erosion would be devastating on the long term to an untended building.

Please, let's not use movies like AI as models for technical accuracy. Their imagry is chosen for dramatic effect, not for realistic science.

 

[Guilt Puppy]

The pyramids in Egypt are well over 3000 years. They're hardly eroded at all.

Hardly?

The outer layer of white sandstone (or whatever it was) is almost completely gone -- taken away by people, most think, but that's a legitimate form of erosion.

The larger blocks inside those layers are wearing away and cracking, as well... The pyramids themselves have stood for so long (and will continue to stay standing) because of their sheer mass... The majority of what supports them is insulated from the weather, meaning erosion will just cause aesthetic damage.

Not so for modern architecture. As pointed out, it's just a couple of layers through before you start eating away at the steel skeleton of a building: And then, collapse.

In short, what remains of modern times is not going to be the large buildings, and probably not the monuments either... It's what happens to be protected from wind/rain/water/et cetera... Subways might still be recognizable (if they haven't flooded), although the tracks will be ribbons of rust at best. The ruins of large downtown ares will probably still have enough inorganic mass that there won't be much plant-life, leading to dusty red wastelands (that's assuming concrete dust and rust can't support plant life, which I'm not sure of). Plastic will slowly deteriotate into strange deposits of goo... Not sure any remnants of that will be around in 10,000 years (they might not be biodegradeable, but they're still subject to entropy).

In short, not very much will remain. The question shouldn't be "what will remain after 10,000 years," because virtually nothing will, in its current form (except perhaps for the genomes). Look at it more like "what is big enough, protected enough, or durable enough that it will have any visible effect on the world, 10,000 years from now?"

 

[D-rock]

I can see groups of people getting into wars with each other for the rights to mine former garbage dumps. The the stuff that doesn't biodegrade could be highly valuable considering that it can't be manufactured anymore. Look at gold, it didn't have too many practical purposes for ancient civilization other than it was shiny, rare, and used for currency.

 

[Agnostic Paladin]

Tunnels wouldn't survive very well either; erosion plus tectonic activity would collapse them sometime in that several thousand years.