Where did all the plastic go?

[Kilmore]

I hate to say it, but even 10,000 years in the future, the North American continent's gonna still be crapped up with a lot more than just plastic.

Just about everything is going to break down enough to be useless, but very little is actually going to dissappear without a trace.

However, a failed colony on another world is a lot more likely to have what you're looking for. This colony isn't as likely to be as broadly colonized as the modern world. There is going to be a lot more virgin territory to explore. In fact, the former colonial cities may be unapproachable due to environmental residue, giving you a high level "forbidden land" with strange monsters if you choose to use it, and also since they are unapproachable, less crap is likely to come out of it.

Also, since it is another world colonized by humans, the technology is going to be higher, presumably making the artifacts more useful than modern crap that is useless after three years, to say nothing of 10,000 years.

 

[Drawmack]

Fires, big but controlled fires. Where could we got those in DnD hmm oh yeah fire ball spells. A sect of clerics who worship the god of knowledge surmise that plastic was the downfall of man after reading histories (actually fiction but they don't know that) about the evils of plastic. Therefor they go on a crusade to rid the world of this most vile substance. They gather it together in specific places and burn it using fireball and such. It leaves behind a vary think, very hard black disk (read plateu) where the burnings took place, with the passage of time these disks have turned into cave comeplexes within barren plateus. These complexes are filled with monsters who dislike cold.

Here's my big question how are you going to get rid of garbage dumps research shows that those things will not have decomposed in that amount of time? This would probably be a good place for the enzyme that eats garbage. But since it eats garbage it can eat anything, literally. Now the garbage is depleated and these bad boys are loose in the world. But when placed in a barren plateu they feed off of that for 10d4 * 100 years.

Just my 2 coppers

 

[BlackRazor]

Leave it.

If you want to keep thing realistic, plastic will still be there in 10K years and this fact is curently a major environmental concern. Why is plastic such a hard substance to get rid of ? Macromolecules.

Most of the plastic bag you see today (specially saran-wrap and other pellicular stuff) is actually a single HUGE molecule of plastic in wich every single chemical components linked together without break. This peculiar characteristic make it nearly immune to bacteria and decomposition. Why does no bacteria attack it ? Energy balance.

To make common plastic you have to inject a good quantity of energy in a chemical reaction called polymerisation wich is used to make nearly all plastic we know. This mean that to break the molecular bond and thus be able to "eat" the plastic chemical components (like our stomach do with food, break the meat,veggy or fruit molecules and harvest the resulting enery and vitamins), bacteria would have to invest MORE energy that the plastic would give her by eating it. They would literally starve to death trying to eat plastic !

Plastic however is not indestructible. The easiest way to destroy commercial (i.e cheap) plastic is to expose him to normal solar light. The U.V ray cary lots of energy with them (sunburn anyone ?) and they "weaken" the molecular bond of the Macromolecule, making plastic hard and brittle over time (5 or 6 years), prone to break and chip like soft stone. This could create "plastic filed" where accumulated plastic chips gather dust like boulder fileds. High grade plastic, like Nalgene or Propoxyl are however more stable and nearly impervious to U.V. radiation. These are here to stay.

Even whorse are the composite, carbon fiber and graphite material. These compound are able to whistand hundred of thousand years of erosion without breaking. Almost like a diamond. Even aluminium dont last that long. Your player could find the remaning composite structure of modern aircraft and wonder why somebody build such strange thing.

- Plastic doggy dog in the snow...

 

[WizarDru]

The question is, how do I get rid of all the plastic? I don't want the world to be littered with styrofoam peanuts and plastic sporks or Coke bottles. I want the occasional plastic artifact to throw at the PC's, but given the rather sizeable half-life of plastic, I need to explain away the rest of the current supply of plastic garbage.

Removing all the plastic seems a tad extreme, really. Your players don't have to know what it is, and many plastics could get buried, lost or destroyed due to any number of environmental factors. Part of this depends on the cataclysm that befell your campaign world, of course. Many modern structures should and would survive, and remains, often useless ones, would still be about.

Plastic could easily be mistaken for multiple substances of the ancient world, given how many ways that it is formed and used in the modern world. Consider a plastic bag versus a refabricated park bench versus a shirt made from plastic. Folks without the technical knowledge might not even realize that they are, at their root source, the same substance. The players might have plastic and have no idea (50% cotton/50% rayon? What madness is this? What is this rayon and what sort of creature has it for fur?)

Alternately, you could have something along the lines of hunter/killer nano-robots that seek and destroy plastics. Imagine tales of an ill wind that destroys items and things at random, while leaving people mostly unharmed. Ancient tales survive of this strange fast-moving haze that could destroy ancient vehicles, clothes, and many ancient objects the way that heat destroys ice. This allows you to have some objects made of plastic when you want, but generally account for their overall destruction. You might liberally apply this idea to other substances, possibly having very selective, 'smart' nanites who only destroy certain subsets of objects, such as metal vehicles or fiberglass superstructures.

 

[Maldur]

Nifty idea as well.

It makes for a very scientific explanation of a magical event.

The characters know its magical, but you can use your modern knowledge to keep it consistant.

 

[Kyramus]

recycle plastic into a more compact form capable of being stored in boxes (never been opened box coffins).

several warehouses full of them. What's this got to do with the characters? Well.... what would you do when you accidentally wake up an army of chuckies?

 

[Zappo]

Zappo!

Yes?

 

[Dagger75]

I read a novel with somekinda bacteria/virus that ate plastic.
Ill see if I can find the title when I get home this afternoon.

I believe you are thinking about The Andromada Strain by Michael Critchon.

 

[WizarDru]

Yes?

Que Kermit the Frog: "Gah. It's a running gag."

 

[schporto]

Well if you want to still use it alot of the park benches are now recycled plastics. Its also going into roads. Decking material.
As for a reason to get rid of it. Mmmm. If you 'apocolypse' was a biological one that was transmitted from joint contact with plastic. (i.e. I touch the milk jug and transmit the germ to it, you touch the same jug and are now infected. a week later we're both dead) Once civilization found out (especially the media) we'd all burn all of our plastic. This could (ok this is most likely an exageration but work with me) cause so much smoke that 'nuclear' winter occurs (ok plastic winter). Shrug. There's my stab at it.
-cpd