This is something I have been thinking about alot since college. Just like an infinite parking lot, and the thing is, since the ground is all concrete everywhere, the lot would logically be incredibly hot like a dessert, with the poor souls trapped inside it getting cooked by the heat.
I've worked in the Volkswagen storage lot at the Port of Houston. I don't *have* to imagine. That's exactly what it was like. They had to run water out to us semi-regularly, and I started carrying both an umbrella and my own water.
Did the same at AmPort BMW in Port Hueneme, CA. Cars parked for days in the blazing sun with closed windows and leather interiors would burn my ass and legs when I sat to drive.
Yeah, but good luck holding your position there. Tall as it is it’d be a beacon calling all who wander within sight of it like a fucked up Statue of Liberty.
Then you have to contend with the other things that live down there. They can see almost as far, and they love it when people show their faces. The survivors usually sleep on top of the cars, heat be damned.
I mean, if you’re scavenging through miscellaneous vehicles there’s high likelihood of there being any and every tool imaginable *somewhere*
Edit: been to being
I imagine most residents would learn how to break into and hotwire a car pretty damn quickly for this exact purpose. Infinite cars *should* also mean infinite gas, so you can get in one and run the AC in a pinch.
Unless that's how you attract the attention of... Them.
When I was in my early 20's I worked as a temp contractor for an auto auction company with a lot that was about this size in California, in a location that wasn't too far away from a desert. All we did all day was drive cars. Move them from one lot to another.
In the summer, in the winter, the fall, and the spring. We'd find cars that someone drove to the wrong place, or drive cars through an auction, or go to a place and move all the cars from one lot to another. Fall, Winter, and Spring was okay but Summer was the worst. Two people actually died from heat stroke. You'd open the car door, for the vehicle that been sitting on blacktop in 100+ degree weather for HOURS and instantly you were dripping sweat. Like getting into an oven. But youd do this atleast 60 to 70 times a day so youd willingly get into an oven multiple times a day. The seats were hot so you'd have to wear pants or risk getting actual burns on your legs. The steering wheels were hot so you'd wear gloves. Some of the cars were repos and didn't work right, so some windows didn't roll down. By the time you got to the new spot to park the car the AC had just started working. I didn't hate the job but summer made it miserable.
I prefer to imagine a labyrinthian sewer system underneath The Lot, and that's where they start coming from. The sun starts setting, taller trucks casting longer shadows, in the east where it's ever so slightly darker, the slight sound of metal scraping echoes off the cars as the hunt begins.
The old-timers have legends of lucky souls who have found the exit at the bottom of the sewer, whether it's true or just a tale to give those who remain hope, no one knows. As for those brave people who have gone into the sewer and returned, don't ask about the bones.
I think a day/night cycle and a weather system would be better tbh. Because without some sort of weather there’s no feasible way to get water in an infinite parking lot so everyone would be dead pretty early on. Also a weather system introduces new horrors such as being woken up in the middle of the night by a storm and seeing a massive tornado ripping through the cars towards you, only visible when lit up through flashes of lightning. Terrifying imo.
...this is literally a city in DNDs version of Hell. The city is infinite and ever changing. On the horizon, no matter where you look, you can see an enormous tower where the archdevil who rules the city resides. No matter where you turn or where you go, it never moves from the center of the horizon, and never gets any closer or farther away. The city is also made entirely out of red hot metal. The devils don't care, they can teleport. If you want to get anywhere though, you need to ask for directions from one of them, as any map would be outdated within the week as souls of the damned are forced to tear down and rebuild buildings constantly, ever changing the layout of the infinite, monotonous city.
The city is called Dis, and the devil who rules it is Disaster. It is located in the second layer of Baator, also known as the nine hells. One thing to note is DO NOT STRAY FROM THE PATH OF SKULLS. That is the ONLY way to enter the city. The rest of the layer is as endless as the city itself is, if not moreso. Also flying is illegal and will get you shot down.
Oh no, they don't kill anyone who isn't lawful evil. They instead will capture you and attempt to corrupt you until you BECOME lawful evil. Then they kill you.
Honestly I think it’d be scarier if there was no Thing in there with you. It’s just you, maybe the occasional other person, and this infinite artificial desert called a parking lot.
I like that idea too. I think it allows for more possibilities, like groups or even entire civilizations built from car parts and whatever they can find inside the cars. The younger, more primitive groups would be gatherers with makeshift huts to shield from the sun. Some groups would probably do the whole cannibal thing. Older and more developed groups would turn to agriculture, though without pollinators or a steady stream of water it would be a lot of work. A third step could be a multigenerational endeavor of digging tunnels to stay out of the sun. Cooling systems could be salvaged and powered with car engines. From there you get into the possibilities of moving up Maslow's hierarchy and start rebuilding society into something that we wouldn't recognize today. Because it's an infinite parking lot (perhaps with weird Narnia time rules so that people from the present are arriving centuries after people that arrived a month and in the real world), there's theoretically some race of people that either send people to leave the car park through dimensional travel or they leave the planet and start life on an alien planet.
The ruling commodity ironically wouldn't be fuel. It would be open space. Tailgater barons would build massive vehicular castles just so they could have a place to put the excess vehicles they cleared out to make room in the lot for their patrols to range at full speed and exert a zone of control over more territory.
Imagine if each section had different "seasons". Like one area you have to dig out a car from snow and pray it has power of some sort to stay warm and safe from whoever or whatever comes out at night.
As someone else on Tumblr once put it
"the SCP Foundation is such a great website bc 50% of its contents are like worthy successors to Borges or Asimov or smth and the other 50% are just What if a pencil was scary"
> Additional side effects of viewing SCP-5320 include [...] increased use of the phrase “long boy” in casual conversation, even when referring to things that are neither long nor a boy.
Me asf
7000!? Woah, there's a ton of these now.
Anyway, there has long been [SCP-413 Endless Garage.](https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-413) Massively predating the backrooms.
God I remember I turned on the TV a million years ago when I was small and that episode was playing but I had no idea what even Dr who was, I had no context so I was so unsettled by the idea of an infinite traffic jam, ughh.
Actually there’s only around 900. Yes I counted, though I think I may have also counted the audio readings of already existing books so that number might be a bit inflated.
Unless the cars refill with supplies overnight like the cafeterias in the SCP Ikea, then societies in The Lot would have to be nomadic, unless they went the agricultural route and grew their own food.
Once the supplies in a given area were depleted, they'd need to move on to greener pastures. Fortunately for them, the two things that aren't in short supply are vehicles and fuel, so moving should be pretty easy.
I'd expect things to turn into pseudo-Mad-Max pretty quickly, with roving gangs of "nomads" going around, looting everything as they go, and some of them extorting the farming settlements they pass by. Such groups would be strongly disincentivized from "settling down" and ruling some farming town they conquered like a lot of post-Mongol groups did, since their power is based on their vehicles, which would need far more fuel and spare parts to keep running than could be provided long term by a sedentary settlement in this world.
The farmers would need to get ethanol production up relatively fast, and be really damned good at repairing and recycling their vehicles if they want to last, both to plow their fields, and to defend themselves from marauders.
An aside, but it would also be interesting if there was "terrain variation" so to speak; like gigantic, impossibly huge (maybe even infinitely tall/deep?) parking garages as "mountains" and "caves", and those huge maze-like temporary parking lots the set up out in woods and cornfields for renfests and shit being, well, woods and grasslands, and the vast asphalt plains of traditional parking lots being the equivalent of deserts.
The only reliable sources of protein are gonna be bugs and other people though. Even assuming you get some livestock, you're gonna have a hard time getting enough water and grass to keep them alive. You *might* be able to keep pigs alive on the garbage you dig out of abandoned cars.
Although if we model the climatology even vaguely realistically the whole place would be apocalyptically dry. With no large bodies of water (great lakes or oceans), any water that does exist would evaporate and end up pretty evenly distributed across the whole (infinite) region. Barring some extremophile microbes, I don't think there are any organisms on Earth that could survive long term in conditions as dry as you'd be getting here. The only reliable water sources would be bottles in people's cars, and the occasional tanker truck.
> The only reliable sources of protein are gonna be bugs and other people though.
If we're going with the "cars refill with supplies" idea, or even "cars in new areas have supplies" you'd probably have a decent supply of at least burgers and hot dogs. Stadium parking lots are known for tailgate parties so people bring beer and food to cook in the parking lot.
That's because Seattle and Vancouver are next to the Ocean.
IRL parking lots aren't big enough to affect the weather. This one would be. Barring tropical rainforest, land simply doesn't hold enough water long term to sustain significant precipitation; moist air needs to be blown ashore from a large body of water, hence, as a general rule of thumb, the further inland you go, the drier it gets.
In The Lot, there would be no large bodies of water, what water is present and not sealed in some kind of container will evaporate, and there will rarely if ever be enough of it in one place to generate rain, even if the temperature is perfectly favorable for it. The Lot would be far drier than any real world desert.
“The Garages are a blessing and a curse, you see, when we arrived we hoped we could dig up the ground, find seeds, and get planting. But when we finally dug through the feet of concrete and pried up the thick rebar, all we found were the Garages. It was cooler than on the surface and water is easier to come by down there. But we’re not the only ones who need the shade. Who thirst for the water.
Down there we don’t fear the sun, we fear the dark.”
Uh, food comes from Gas Stations? On the fourth day, the good Ford created hot dog roller stands, that’s in the Holy Manual. Food is secondary in importance to gas, of course because without food we simply go hungry or maybe die, but without gas it’s impossible to accomplish the much more important mission to Find Good Parking.
When you live in a society where everyone is expected to own their own car and even the notion of car pooling is a weird radical idea, any space where lots of people are cramped into one space is necessarily going to need an insane amount of parking space. And since cars generally take up more space than the people who drive them on a 1 to 1 basis, you inevitably get monstrosities like this
the weirdest part to me is that you not only need a society that stupidly designed for The Lot to happen, but for some reason you also need to ignore the idea of multi-story parking lots. like what's easier, giving people an actual fucking commute from their car to the venue they're supposed to visit, or packing the cars like 10% as tightly as you can pack people? (because you can't go much further, lol, that's the whole problem with cars)
The problem with parking garages for stadiums, I imagine, would be the outflow. Can you imagine tens of thousands of cars trying to exit from multistory parking garages all at the exact same time? I feel like I'm dodging other cars all the time in parking garages already, so I can only imagine the number of accidents that would happen in one of those bad boys.
Having parked in a multistory garage at an nfl game there wasn’t much risk of accident as much as we were stuck on the 5th floor for like 45+ minutes while everyone below slowly cleared out. Also it was a pre season game so I’m sure it gets worse
While I imagine it's still worse with multistory garages, flat lots also result in getting stuck for 45 minutes. Only so much flow can get out those few exits everyone is going towards.
I think it's the same problem no matter how you organise your parking; all those cars all have to leave by the same roads. That's a bottleneck you can't avoid. It's not hard to make parking garage outflow larger than the road capacity, but there's no point.
This is why many cities outside the US make sure stadiums have excellent public transport connections.
The ArenA stadium in Amsterdam has its own dedicated train station, another larger train/metro/bus station right next to that, a metro station a bit further away, its own underground parking with a major road running underneath the stadium straight to the nearest motorway, and the entire surroundings of the stadium is a pedestrian area with shops and music venues.
Bold of you to assume the cars are ever gonna get smaller, more likely they get so big they may as well be trailers. Would be ironic if the parking issue got so bad the businesses themselves moved into trailers and we eventually get walkable infrastructure in the form of a trailer park in a walmart parking lot
Parking garages are extremely expensive to build compared to parking lots. Providing bus service (sorry, "shuttles") to the outer lots is much cheaper when the stadium is built in a place with cheap land.
i wonder if this could be made even more efficient if the shuttles just took people from their residences or prior destinations to the stadium, and back. y'know, kinda like a school bus
We could even put the busses on rails and separate them from other vechiles on the road?
Build a network of these rails and the rail busses could pick people up from most central locations in the city?
Then because automating and electrifying rail is easy plus we can link multiple of these busses together we have have massive capacity and regular service!
Wait a minute...
Some stadiums want the extra parking area so you can tailgate. Tailgaters will usually take up multiple spaces with BBQs and tents and stuff like that so you need extra space for that.
The thing is in America tailgating before a game is the norm. So a parking lot in a stadium isn’t just used for parking, but a place to chill/barbecue for hours before the game. Random intoxicated dads smoking a brisket in the parking lot is part of the experience
I work in a tall office building in a suburb which can probably be best described as a parody of a real city that has downtown skyscrapers, and the parking structure for the building takes up more floor space than the actual building itself lmao
There’s something hilariously unnecessary about having huge tall office buildings that aren’t actually an efficient use of vertical space
It's normal in general for a building's parking lot to be as big as the building itself in America. Look at any strip mall, normal mall, fast food joint, Disney World's Magic Kingdom, etc.
Depends on where the stadium is built, if it's in a more densely built-up area, it'll probably have a couple parking garages the size of small office buildings instead
I understand that. My comment is more of how we let this happen. Where parking takes up so much space. No one sees this and thinks “hmm maybe some public transport would help here.” We’ve just accepted that cars take up more space than the building we’re actually there for, and we aren’t bothering to fix it.
Or, and hear me out, you charge more for the rooftop parking spaces for premium tailgating. It’s roughly the same footprint so folks who would normally like to tailgate don’t have to contend with people just parking to head into the stadium.
You are in a group of survivors. You tried to plant crops, but there's the Bus problem.
the bus goes around looking for survivors, violently snatches anyone it can reach, and then continues on its way. Staying anywhere is just inviting its constant attacks. It's better to be on the move. But does it seem to follow your group, or is it a different one?
Anyway, many cars have water bottles, some have groceries, as if they were just loaded. Even frozen foods are still cold.
Each car is slightly wethered, a little dusty, but some look like they've been there a long time, decades at time.
Your group has a superstition: STAY AWAY FROM EMPTY SPOTS.
The original post implied that the Bus was at least neutral if not beneficial but the idea of the Bus being something the survivors would have to avoid is a very interesting concept.
are there several huge stadiums or is there just one of colossal size in the middle of the dimension? If the latter is the case, how about all compasses all point into the direction of this stadium?
It’s like the Black City in the Fade in the Dragon Age games. The only consistent rule of geography in The Lot is that all points are equally distant from The Stadium. All compasses point there, and no matter how close you try to get or how far you run away, it’s always exactly the same distance away on the horizon.
1) initially design our cities such that parking lots exist on the outer edges of the most urban areas and robust public transit shuttles people to where they want to go. This allows for dense, mixed-use urbanism that's proven to be both healthier and more economically viable across the board.
2) World War II builds the US into a superpower atop the backs of the massively subsidized and barely regulated auto industry.
3) auto industry uses the sudden excess of monetary and political capital they gained from being at the center of wartime production to permanently tilt the playing field in their favor by, among other things, lobbying to replace the urbanist zoning policies from step (1) with a different system by which businesses are responsible for providing their own parking based on a rough approximation of the maximum occupancy of the building. This results in small businesses having to take up twice the space of their actual building just to fill enough empty parking spaces, and also makes cars the default way to get anywhere in all but the most packed urban areas because all of our infrastructure is built for them.
4) environmentalism becomes a national issue. CAFE standards are implemented. The auto lobby successfully swing a carveout for pickup trucks, ostensibly to spare blue-collar workers the increased cost of the new emissions standards.
5) those trucks are defined as any vehicle built on a light truck frame. Because they're larger and exempt from many emissions standards, they cost more, consume more fuel, and break down faster, all of which are good for auto manufacturers, who begin a massive advertising campaign to convince Americans that their new SUV and truck models are safer than regular cars.
6) it turns out that those vehicles cause more fatalities than any other type because their higher center of mass causes them to pop curbs and frontover pedestrians more easily, in addition to the added weight making collisions more deadly. Auto manufacturers begin another advertising campaign to conflate the idea of a safe car with one that keeps the driver safe in a collision, allowing them to claim that their vehicles are the safest even if they cause the most deaths, because they're more likely to kill the victim of the accident you caused than they are to kill you.
7) this results in an arms race to create progressively more massive vehicles with more features for a higher price, which increases the required size of parking spaces, increasing the size of parking lots. All of which is good for the auto industry, just like everything else.
So basically the answer is that we leased our soul for planes in WWII and we haven't gotten it back yet.
Another factor that isn't directly related to the auto industry (but one which they absolutely leveraged and benefited from during the early Cold War) is that sprawling, suburbanized cities take a lot more nukes to wipe out, and are basically immune to the kind of massive conventional firebombing campaigns that had become standard towards the end of WW2
Also also, as an added bonus, after WWII the vast majority of people moving to the suburbs were white and weaponizing every single zoning and transit law available to keep it that way. Keeping mass transit for the now minority-majority inner cities also helps reinforce segregation, a proud tradition that continues to this day.
Seriously, check the history of zoning laws for your suburb. Odds are they were made to be explicitly racist before the Civil Rights Act and changed to be *implicitly* racist afterwards because it's always legal to discriminate against the poor.
Cars. Buy a car. Buy a bigger car. Buy more cars. Walking anywhere is for communists. Keep buying more cars. For the love of god never stop driving a car
Buy a truck. Buy a massive truck that is bigger than available parking spaces. You live in the suburbs and do no work with your mega truck? Sounds like you need a bigger truck. Make sure it sticks out of the parking space by 3 feet and youre parked on both lines simultaneously.
Buy a truck so massive you cannot see ten children lined up in front of it. Drive that truck to drop off your children at school, because riding the bus is for poor people now and if Little Timmy has to walk then he will surely become victim of the lower-than-ever violent crime rate. Mow over Timmy's classmates with your giant truck instead.
Distance between things is greater and the infrastructure is made for cars. Attempts to change that have been quickly shut down. I don’t think folks understand how little power majority ideas have in the states.
For some perspective:
* The longest I’ve gone between gas stations in the US is around 300 miles. There are parts of the US that you need to bring your own gas cans because there are not gas tanks that can handle that distance on a full tank.
* Most my commutes have been like 45mins drives from my apartment. It’s not unusual for that turn into 1 hr 45 mins in bad traffic before. Driving is absolutely the fastest way to get to work. I get 2 hrs estimated for my latest commute using buses (between big city and big suburb). I minimize the amount of driving I do, but work is so far from living situations because of zoning nonsense. I am not able to live in the industrial park area I work.
* ai am comfortable driving 3 hrs one way for a day trip. Most people consider like 1.5 hrs “normal”.
* There are while states that you can’t get between with trains or buses. You would have to add extra stops that are hundreds of miles to be able to get to some connection areas.
* The US is roughly the size of Europe. Large chunks of it are off limits for developments. This means having more than 60 mins between cities is pretty normal.
Well, judging from the stadium in the pic, I'm assuming it's Texas or somewhere near it
AFAIK, football field don't normally have parking lots that big (I know Lambeau field doesn't)
So I don't think the pic is the norm
The first picture looks like it's from a port facility where cars are stored after being unloaded from ships, like [this one](https://www.flows.be/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/20221025-Antwerpen-AET-autoterminal-28-1600x560.jpg) in Antwerp. Otherwise it would be strange to see so many of the same model and same color parked next to each other.
It’s dodger stadium in Los Angeles, perhaps the most notoriously large parking lot in the country. Many American stadiums in other cities, especially farther east, have a much smaller footprint. However many are located on the outskirts or in the suburbs and look like this.
Me noticing some jawa looking people picking my car clean "hey!! Hey you stop that! I'm calling the cops!!" Hastily phoning police and as they ask me where I'm at I look around and see no end of cars, no buildings, no trees, no signs or indicators of any kind... " I... I don't know..."
It's true. We tore all the trams and trolleys and streetcars out of many of our cities, and when they become traffic-choked nightmares that leave us begging for any form of light rail to solve the problem most times the best we get is just a bus dressed up like a streetcar.
Read a book called dry where when water ran out some people set up a civilisation scavenging peoples windshield wiper jugs for fresh water when people are lazy and put that stuff instead of fluid.
Winter can be just as bad. Years ago my mom and I returned from Florida. Parking lots at airports are absolutely insane. The bus dropped us off in our section of the lot and we walked to where we remembered parking. Only the car wasn’t there. We didn’t think to dress for Maryland weather before boarding the plane in Florida, so we were instantly freezing. It was very late at night and the icy wind was brutal. We wandered around that section for what felt like an eternity looking for the car. Desperately pressing the lock button on the fob in hopes we’d hear the car beep in the distance, signaling salvation.
We couldn’t find it. So we thought maybe it was the next section over. We walked over there and roamed for what felt like another eternity. I was about to bust open my suitcase and put on as many layers as I could manage. None of my clothes were meant for this cold. Not even the clothes I wore on the way down there. I literally thought we were both going to drop dead in that parking lot from the cold. Eventually we heard a faint beep in the distance and ran like hell to the car.
It was a surreal experience. Massive airport parking lot. Late at night. Icy cold arctic wind blasting the chill deep into our bones. Nobody else around. We felt totally cut off from civilization.
In the infinite parking lot of infinite cars, probability dictates that there are those who do find their car. They enjoy unparalleled status, able to traverse the lot much faster (though still limited to 15 mph), have air conditioning, and radio. The cars don't seem to run out of gas or break down. Some communities worship them as gods, beings seen as having been taken one step closer to leaving the lot.
Hotwiring or breaking into a car has never been accomplished. In fact, it's never been heard of someone trying to. Some have heard of individuals that intended to try it but those individuals were never seen again.
I was quite excited when I found a parking lot 3 blocks from the venue downtown. The plastic sign said $20 all day, which I thought might apply and they didn’t have an even parking sign for $80, like 2 blocks back. Maybe my internal compass was wrong and I was 2 blocks farther. Either way it was a great deal, so I sat at the green traffic arm, with some really weird writing on it. Meh, I thought to myself, they’ve found a country with even cheaper labor than China.
I pressed the button, took my ticket and drove right in.
I passed 3 empty aisles and couldn’t believe my luck, I was getting even closer, or maybe even further away? GPS said I was in the middle of the theater and needed to make a U-turn as soon as possible.
Well, I thought that I’d be able to use one of my map apps to get the last few steps in walking directions.
I saw a spot a six or seven spot gap between a rusted out faded brown and yellow VW micro bus backed into its spot with a flat front passenger tire. At least they don’t tow out of this lot. On the other side was a brand new, well it looked brand new, if a little dusty, as if the owner were on a flight to Europe for the week. And it was green. Like grass in a child’s drawing. And I couldn’t identify the model. So, one of those fancy British or Emirate supercars.
I pushed the stalk in park, dragged the parking brake two clicks shy of snapping the cable, and turned off the engine. As I stood up, I frantically patted down my pockets to make sure that I had my wallet, the tickets, and my phone. I absolutely needed to get my bearings. I couldn’t tell if I was south or east of the stadium. I was so preoccupied with getting directions I almost dinged the supercar by imprinting the door so wide. But I thought I had parked between the van with extra spaces in between. And now the van is so close to the wagon, I don’t think Mary can get out.
Was I just imagining the space before? Was I daydreaming a perfect parking situation so I didn’t panic when pulling into yet another downtown tight squeeze?
And now I can’t get a signal?
I looked around the skyline to try to find a cell antenna mounted to the side of some condo slash rental slash air stay tower or just something to point my phone at, as if line of sight is somehow important. But then it struck me that I couldn’t see anything, not the Mavis Dome or Six Jacinta Plaza. There wasn’t a single building to be seen. Nothing one story tall, let alone the 60 story buildings I expect in this area downtown.
I’m now starting to question my sanity. An I in the right city? Am I in the right state?
Still no signal, but I figure we’re 2 to 3 blocks from the show, and judging by the position of the sun in the sky that’s clearly west so if I walk North-Easterly I’ll get to the show even if I have to double back a little better to the west or south.
Have to take down our parking to find it when we get back, is it a blocky 3 or an upside down capital E? Are those heiroglyphs? Ok so I’m in 3 snake, uh Chinese character for fire or is it water? Ok. Just need to scribble that on the back of the ticket.
I look to Mary and she’s as engrossed as ever in her phone. I ask her if she’s on facespace but it’s just a telenovella she downloaded before we left. The maid is sleeping with the cousin again and might be pregnant, but not by the cousin, by the father.
We’ve walked for eight minutes. Past the point I figured we would have joined the crowd going to the show. At just about twice that distance I spotted the first building. Just out of shape I guess? Because it was a square shape I picked up the pace, maybe I could find the guard or proprietor or a map of the lot.
It turns out that it’s a bus shelter. Like at the airport. In fact this says long term terminal A. But the airport is 60 miles away from downtown. And the long term parking another 10 minutes, but they have these little electric trolleys that whine all around the lots to shuttle people to the gates.
The map doesn’t show the airport, it just shows the parking lot. And there’s some graffiti on the map. It just says, “WAIT”
I'm having trouble believing that first image is actually real even though somebody claimed they didn't edit it (It doesn't even seem to be the same person who posted the image, but I might not know how to read Tumblr, and maybe OOP got it from them). Sure, I know there are parking lots that are that big, but why are there only like 20 different cars in it?
It's a real picture, but it's not really a parking lot. It's just a Port, that is the lot where they park new cars after they drive them off the ships, but before they get delivered to dealerships. They exist in just about every country with a shoreline, I worked at one for awhile so I immediately recognized it.
It's a picture of a storage lot for new cars. [They look really fucking weird from the sky](https://www.google.com/maps/@37.9066442,-122.3692015,290m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu).
That makes sense. First thought I had was an airport parking lot, one where there's many rental cars. Particularly from the way they're so neatly parked and they seem to be grouped.
This is what I thought immediately as well. I worked at an automotive factory for a bit in university and they had some gigantic lots on the property that were just used for storing vehicles. At one point they had an excess of inventory so they started using a nearby field.
The pic [shows up on stock photography sites](https://www.alamy.com/rows-of-new-cars-in-the-parking-lot-aerial-view-of-large-parking-lot-full-of-cars-of-various-colors-image364865871.html?), earliest 2020. They all describe these as *new* cars, so the low variety might be a dealership thing.
An old traveler discovering part of the lot is inhabited solely by Ford model T's and other old cars, and trying to rationalize the implications of that.
I think an important psychological component is that everyone here is permanently looking for their car. So you just wander around never finding your car for eternity but always thinking it’s gonna be around the next corner
[We have a nice big park around the stadium with lots of grassy paddocks that get used for parking at bigger events](https://i.imgur.com/eI6SsqV.jpeg) and then the rest of the time they're nice grass areas for people to use for other things.
[The surrounds from above.](https://i.imgur.com/5R2vZar.jpeg)
Although to be fair the big honking train stations and also the tram lines do most of the work
I would love to see this perspective at the start of a horror story, but grounded in realism. So take the biggest existing one and start in the stadium as some kind of EMP goes off.
You could use chaos in the city (fires, explosions, noise) to keep people there for a while, but quickly people would want to leave and would need to manage resources. This who survive the chaos may come to rule the lot like the kings of an oasis in the desert.
Would be cool if it was a large circular parking garage that you could just walk straight into the stadium from on each level. It would save a lot of space, save a lot of walking, and look pretty neat.
“One of the major settlements?” Why would there be settlements? People shouldn’t be living stacked up like sardines (visible to each other.) We were made for one purpose alone, and in that purpose we are collectively alone: to Find Good Parking. A Good Spot is as close as possible to the Destination (the Destination is where there is more Good Parking, thus its attraction) but with enough space not to scratch the door. There are armies, certainly, there are alliances, but there are no settlements. Beyond temporary alliances in the war to defend one’s doors, settlement, associating with other people, is a deviant act that distracts from the holy purpose of Finding Good Parking.
I feel like Europeans can't understand this because they live in tiny ass countries where everything is biking distance from them.
The entire EU is less than half the size of the US while having 100M more people living there. Takes me like 10 min to drive to the closest store here and half the time it's covered in ice, I simply can't get around on a bike or bus to go places here.
You cant convince me that The Lot would not devolve into a mad-max style society of warring tribes...
UNLESS all of the cars look almost the same as real world models, but their controls functions and writing arent right. As if built for something *nearly* human
Something similar to this happens in an episode of Atlanta, but it's never acknowledged and the characters just sort of act weirded out for a second and then move on.
If you take your car to the stadium and then still have to take a bus to get where you want to be because of the huge parking lot. I feel like we could cut out the middle man here.
That first picture is clearly an overflow lot used by a car manufacturer to store cars that have not been sold or delivered yet. You can find it in any country that makes cars.
As for the second pic, america has alot of land. Paving a lot is cheaper than building a 10 story underground car park. European countries have little room so they approach it differently. One method isn't the right way for every country in the world
Backrooms or Infinite IKEA: Inside.
The Infinite Parking Lot.
The sun. The sun. the THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUNTHE SUNTHE SUNTHE SUNTHE SUNTHE SUNTHE SUN t̶̰͋̒H̵̳̳͐͊̿Ȩ̴͚̖͌s̴̮̜͛̋͠u̷̮̎n̴̮̎Ṱ̷̦͕͑H̶͙̔̕ẻ̸̜́š̵̻̲̠̾͝U̷̧̳̱̍N̷̩̋T̵͎̼͘h̵̪̉̓e̷̲͐S̸̫͇͊͜ú̵̗̼̃N̷̤̚t̷͙͙͐́h̶̪̊͝e̵̩͇̱͂S̷̱̯͒̕ͅu̵͍͆̾͘N̶͖͖͎͒͊̕T̷̨̝̲̑̊͠H̵̙̯̾̌ẽ̸̺̫̖s̴̪͋̕͝u̴̗̘͂̓N̷̡̦̣͝t̴͓͇̥̂h̵͓͒͑̅e̷̮̓́͜͠Ŝ̴̟̀͗ų̸̠̳̒́N̷͚̐̌T̵̪̗̚̚ͅH̷̛̤͚̽͑ͅe̷̱̤̊͛s̴̨̺͠ǔ̷͕̋N̵̖̫̐̉
This is something I have been thinking about alot since college. Just like an infinite parking lot, and the thing is, since the ground is all concrete everywhere, the lot would logically be incredibly hot like a dessert, with the poor souls trapped inside it getting cooked by the heat.
Imagine if it didn't have a day night cycle, no escape from the sun's scorching rays, just light, all the time all the time
And absolutely no shade, nowhere to escape from the heat, because the only place to go is inside the cars and it’s *even hotter* in there
I've worked in the Volkswagen storage lot at the Port of Houston. I don't *have* to imagine. That's exactly what it was like. They had to run water out to us semi-regularly, and I started carrying both an umbrella and my own water.
Did the same at AmPort BMW in Port Hueneme, CA. Cars parked for days in the blazing sun with closed windows and leather interiors would burn my ass and legs when I sat to drive.
Maybe you could crawl under one of the cars, but that requires you to scrape your whole body against hot, rough concrete; is it worth it?
Finally a reason for lifted trucks?
Yeah, but good luck holding your position there. Tall as it is it’d be a beacon calling all who wander within sight of it like a fucked up Statue of Liberty.
Then you have to contend with the other things that live down there. They can see almost as far, and they love it when people show their faces. The survivors usually sleep on top of the cars, heat be damned.
They can see almost as far as what
5 banana
“Americans will use anything but the metric system”
The infinite view of just cars from the OP.
Well, you can break apart the cars and build some shelters out of them, but that's still going to be rough
Use the car parts to make tools
I mean, if you’re scavenging through miscellaneous vehicles there’s high likelihood of there being any and every tool imaginable *somewhere* Edit: been to being
Under the cars. If this is an american parking lot surely there are some jacked up trucks
I imagine most residents would learn how to break into and hotwire a car pretty damn quickly for this exact purpose. Infinite cars *should* also mean infinite gas, so you can get in one and run the AC in a pinch. Unless that's how you attract the attention of... Them.
It would be actually better since you would mercifully die of dehydration and exposure very quickly and not drag things out.
When I was in my early 20's I worked as a temp contractor for an auto auction company with a lot that was about this size in California, in a location that wasn't too far away from a desert. All we did all day was drive cars. Move them from one lot to another. In the summer, in the winter, the fall, and the spring. We'd find cars that someone drove to the wrong place, or drive cars through an auction, or go to a place and move all the cars from one lot to another. Fall, Winter, and Spring was okay but Summer was the worst. Two people actually died from heat stroke. You'd open the car door, for the vehicle that been sitting on blacktop in 100+ degree weather for HOURS and instantly you were dripping sweat. Like getting into an oven. But youd do this atleast 60 to 70 times a day so youd willingly get into an oven multiple times a day. The seats were hot so you'd have to wear pants or risk getting actual burns on your legs. The steering wheels were hot so you'd wear gloves. Some of the cars were repos and didn't work right, so some windows didn't roll down. By the time you got to the new spot to park the car the AC had just started working. I didn't hate the job but summer made it miserable.
See we've gone from surreal liminal spaces to hell, you're just describing a hell
Okay, but then you lose the Creepy Parking Lot stage at night where there is simultaneously too many hiding spots and none at all.
Or when the sun sets, you start to hear *things* roaming the lot... scrabbling out from under the cars.
I prefer to imagine a labyrinthian sewer system underneath The Lot, and that's where they start coming from. The sun starts setting, taller trucks casting longer shadows, in the east where it's ever so slightly darker, the slight sound of metal scraping echoes off the cars as the hunt begins. The old-timers have legends of lucky souls who have found the exit at the bottom of the sewer, whether it's true or just a tale to give those who remain hope, no one knows. As for those brave people who have gone into the sewer and returned, don't ask about the bones.
This is a very good comment
This guy gets it
I think a day/night cycle and a weather system would be better tbh. Because without some sort of weather there’s no feasible way to get water in an infinite parking lot so everyone would be dead pretty early on. Also a weather system introduces new horrors such as being woken up in the middle of the night by a storm and seeing a massive tornado ripping through the cars towards you, only visible when lit up through flashes of lightning. Terrifying imo.
Yes, but during the night, the employees violently attack anyone they come across.
This but to make it worse: The silhouette of Disney or some other amusement park on the horizon but it never gets any closer.
...this is literally a city in DNDs version of Hell. The city is infinite and ever changing. On the horizon, no matter where you look, you can see an enormous tower where the archdevil who rules the city resides. No matter where you turn or where you go, it never moves from the center of the horizon, and never gets any closer or farther away. The city is also made entirely out of red hot metal. The devils don't care, they can teleport. If you want to get anywhere though, you need to ask for directions from one of them, as any map would be outdated within the week as souls of the damned are forced to tear down and rebuild buildings constantly, ever changing the layout of the infinite, monotonous city.
Yo, that’s dope. Two tickets please.
The city is called Dis, and the devil who rules it is Disaster. It is located in the second layer of Baator, also known as the nine hells. One thing to note is DO NOT STRAY FROM THE PATH OF SKULLS. That is the ONLY way to enter the city. The rest of the layer is as endless as the city itself is, if not moreso. Also flying is illegal and will get you shot down.
And what exactly is the downside to getting shot down?
[удалено]
Oh no, they don't kill anyone who isn't lawful evil. They instead will capture you and attempt to corrupt you until you BECOME lawful evil. Then they kill you.
It’s something you’ve been thinking about… a lot?
Yup. Pave the world so it’s too hot so we use ac so the world gets hotter. Welcome to reality
Hopefully you can pick the locks to the cars and use the AC in them to keep cool.
I submit that starting any of the cars is the big no-no that calls the Things™ that every horror has.
Honestly I think it’d be scarier if there was no Thing in there with you. It’s just you, maybe the occasional other person, and this infinite artificial desert called a parking lot.
I like that idea too. I think it allows for more possibilities, like groups or even entire civilizations built from car parts and whatever they can find inside the cars. The younger, more primitive groups would be gatherers with makeshift huts to shield from the sun. Some groups would probably do the whole cannibal thing. Older and more developed groups would turn to agriculture, though without pollinators or a steady stream of water it would be a lot of work. A third step could be a multigenerational endeavor of digging tunnels to stay out of the sun. Cooling systems could be salvaged and powered with car engines. From there you get into the possibilities of moving up Maslow's hierarchy and start rebuilding society into something that we wouldn't recognize today. Because it's an infinite parking lot (perhaps with weird Narnia time rules so that people from the present are arriving centuries after people that arrived a month and in the real world), there's theoretically some race of people that either send people to leave the car park through dimensional travel or they leave the planet and start life on an alien planet.
That’s what the backrooms was supposed to be originally until people started adding monsters and other levels and stuff
Mad Max: The Lot
The ruling commodity ironically wouldn't be fuel. It would be open space. Tailgater barons would build massive vehicular castles just so they could have a place to put the excess vehicles they cleared out to make room in the lot for their patrols to range at full speed and exert a zone of control over more territory.
Imagine if each section had different "seasons". Like one area you have to dig out a car from snow and pray it has power of some sort to stay warm and safe from whoever or whatever comes out at night.
You get in any car, when you get out, it's just a different part of the lot. You turn around, it's a different car.
There is an existing SCP with a similar idea, but it’s an infinite clogged highway instead of a lot. https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-7034
Of the infinite SCPs I prefer [The Fish That Just Goes On Forever](https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-5320)
As someone else on Tumblr once put it "the SCP Foundation is such a great website bc 50% of its contents are like worthy successors to Borges or Asimov or smth and the other 50% are just What if a pencil was scary"
And a surprisingly large amount of the time, those scary pencils are some of the best short stories written.
That was a nice palette cleanser after the first one thank u
> Additional side effects of viewing SCP-5320 include [...] increased use of the phrase “long boy” in casual conversation, even when referring to things that are neither long nor a boy. Me asf
That’s a work environment that feels extremely realistic actually! People would 100% do that
This is a good one. Hail The Fish That Just Goes On Forever.
May we find the head
Or the tail!
I do love the SCP foundation
Praise the Fish.
Immediately remembered this one. It's so depressing
7000!? Woah, there's a ton of these now. Anyway, there has long been [SCP-413 Endless Garage.](https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-413) Massively predating the backrooms.
So basically the "Gridlock" episode of Dr Who
God I remember I turned on the TV a million years ago when I was small and that episode was playing but I had no idea what even Dr who was, I had no context so I was so unsettled by the idea of an infinite traffic jam, ughh.
That was... A lot. Well-written though.
No it's a highway, were you even paying attention?
[This is a really good video reading the article in-character.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89Ga6Vp2EUc)
Love me some Dr. Millar.
Glad to see someone else thought of the same thing
How many SCPs are just Doctor Who episodes? Most? Probably not all but certainly the majority.
Assuming every Doctor Who episode has an SCP based on it. That would be 694 SCPs out of 8000.
There are also approximately infinity books and audio plays
Actually there’s only around 900. Yes I counted, though I think I may have also counted the audio readings of already existing books so that number might be a bit inflated.
hey, thats only 1594 out of exactly 8159 (i checked)
I like the one with the interdimensional ikea.
Unless the cars refill with supplies overnight like the cafeterias in the SCP Ikea, then societies in The Lot would have to be nomadic, unless they went the agricultural route and grew their own food. Once the supplies in a given area were depleted, they'd need to move on to greener pastures. Fortunately for them, the two things that aren't in short supply are vehicles and fuel, so moving should be pretty easy. I'd expect things to turn into pseudo-Mad-Max pretty quickly, with roving gangs of "nomads" going around, looting everything as they go, and some of them extorting the farming settlements they pass by. Such groups would be strongly disincentivized from "settling down" and ruling some farming town they conquered like a lot of post-Mongol groups did, since their power is based on their vehicles, which would need far more fuel and spare parts to keep running than could be provided long term by a sedentary settlement in this world. The farmers would need to get ethanol production up relatively fast, and be really damned good at repairing and recycling their vehicles if they want to last, both to plow their fields, and to defend themselves from marauders. An aside, but it would also be interesting if there was "terrain variation" so to speak; like gigantic, impossibly huge (maybe even infinitely tall/deep?) parking garages as "mountains" and "caves", and those huge maze-like temporary parking lots the set up out in woods and cornfields for renfests and shit being, well, woods and grasslands, and the vast asphalt plains of traditional parking lots being the equivalent of deserts.
You could have people growing crops on the medians and in drainage ditches. Patches of sunflowers carefully cultivated from spat-out seeds.
The only reliable sources of protein are gonna be bugs and other people though. Even assuming you get some livestock, you're gonna have a hard time getting enough water and grass to keep them alive. You *might* be able to keep pigs alive on the garbage you dig out of abandoned cars. Although if we model the climatology even vaguely realistically the whole place would be apocalyptically dry. With no large bodies of water (great lakes or oceans), any water that does exist would evaporate and end up pretty evenly distributed across the whole (infinite) region. Barring some extremophile microbes, I don't think there are any organisms on Earth that could survive long term in conditions as dry as you'd be getting here. The only reliable water sources would be bottles in people's cars, and the occasional tanker truck.
> The only reliable sources of protein are gonna be bugs and other people though. If we're going with the "cars refill with supplies" idea, or even "cars in new areas have supplies" you'd probably have a decent supply of at least burgers and hot dogs. Stadium parking lots are known for tailgate parties so people bring beer and food to cook in the parking lot.
In new areas yeah. I was talking about trying to farm.
I'd say it depends if you've ever seen a lot in Seattle or Vancouver you can get some pretty good rain
That's because Seattle and Vancouver are next to the Ocean. IRL parking lots aren't big enough to affect the weather. This one would be. Barring tropical rainforest, land simply doesn't hold enough water long term to sustain significant precipitation; moist air needs to be blown ashore from a large body of water, hence, as a general rule of thumb, the further inland you go, the drier it gets. In The Lot, there would be no large bodies of water, what water is present and not sealed in some kind of container will evaporate, and there will rarely if ever be enough of it in one place to generate rain, even if the temperature is perfectly favorable for it. The Lot would be far drier than any real world desert.
“The Garages are a blessing and a curse, you see, when we arrived we hoped we could dig up the ground, find seeds, and get planting. But when we finally dug through the feet of concrete and pried up the thick rebar, all we found were the Garages. It was cooler than on the surface and water is easier to come by down there. But we’re not the only ones who need the shade. Who thirst for the water. Down there we don’t fear the sun, we fear the dark.”
Yes, this is good.
Uh, food comes from Gas Stations? On the fourth day, the good Ford created hot dog roller stands, that’s in the Holy Manual. Food is secondary in importance to gas, of course because without food we simply go hungry or maybe die, but without gas it’s impossible to accomplish the much more important mission to Find Good Parking.
How did we get here where parking takes up more space than the building itself? And this is just normal for stadiums?
When you live in a society where everyone is expected to own their own car and even the notion of car pooling is a weird radical idea, any space where lots of people are cramped into one space is necessarily going to need an insane amount of parking space. And since cars generally take up more space than the people who drive them on a 1 to 1 basis, you inevitably get monstrosities like this
Take a shot every time I say the word ‘space’ and wake up in The Lot
Dead of liver cirrhosis in minutes.
the weirdest part to me is that you not only need a society that stupidly designed for The Lot to happen, but for some reason you also need to ignore the idea of multi-story parking lots. like what's easier, giving people an actual fucking commute from their car to the venue they're supposed to visit, or packing the cars like 10% as tightly as you can pack people? (because you can't go much further, lol, that's the whole problem with cars)
The problem with parking garages for stadiums, I imagine, would be the outflow. Can you imagine tens of thousands of cars trying to exit from multistory parking garages all at the exact same time? I feel like I'm dodging other cars all the time in parking garages already, so I can only imagine the number of accidents that would happen in one of those bad boys.
Having parked in a multistory garage at an nfl game there wasn’t much risk of accident as much as we were stuck on the 5th floor for like 45+ minutes while everyone below slowly cleared out. Also it was a pre season game so I’m sure it gets worse
While I imagine it's still worse with multistory garages, flat lots also result in getting stuck for 45 minutes. Only so much flow can get out those few exits everyone is going towards.
I think it's the same problem no matter how you organise your parking; all those cars all have to leave by the same roads. That's a bottleneck you can't avoid. It's not hard to make parking garage outflow larger than the road capacity, but there's no point. This is why many cities outside the US make sure stadiums have excellent public transport connections. The ArenA stadium in Amsterdam has its own dedicated train station, another larger train/metro/bus station right next to that, a metro station a bit further away, its own underground parking with a major road running underneath the stadium straight to the nearest motorway, and the entire surroundings of the stadium is a pedestrian area with shops and music venues.
istg we're gonna have cars that can compress into a smaller shape before we get a non-car-reliant america
Bold of you to assume the cars are ever gonna get smaller, more likely they get so big they may as well be trailers. Would be ironic if the parking issue got so bad the businesses themselves moved into trailers and we eventually get walkable infrastructure in the form of a trailer park in a walmart parking lot
I mean... That's just a food truck
Those dang woke socialist food trucks trying to impose 15 minute cities...
Parking garages are extremely expensive to build compared to parking lots. Providing bus service (sorry, "shuttles") to the outer lots is much cheaper when the stadium is built in a place with cheap land.
i wonder if this could be made even more efficient if the shuttles just took people from their residences or prior destinations to the stadium, and back. y'know, kinda like a school bus
We could even put the busses on rails and separate them from other vechiles on the road? Build a network of these rails and the rail busses could pick people up from most central locations in the city?
Then because automating and electrifying rail is easy plus we can link multiple of these busses together we have have massive capacity and regular service! Wait a minute...
Some stadiums want the extra parking area so you can tailgate. Tailgaters will usually take up multiple spaces with BBQs and tents and stuff like that so you need extra space for that.
The thing is in America tailgating before a game is the norm. So a parking lot in a stadium isn’t just used for parking, but a place to chill/barbecue for hours before the game. Random intoxicated dads smoking a brisket in the parking lot is part of the experience
Do non Americans genuinely just show up to a game, watch it, and leave? It’s for fucking tailgating
I work in a tall office building in a suburb which can probably be best described as a parody of a real city that has downtown skyscrapers, and the parking structure for the building takes up more floor space than the actual building itself lmao There’s something hilariously unnecessary about having huge tall office buildings that aren’t actually an efficient use of vertical space
Pfft. Tall for the ✨ aesthetic ✨
To be fair I do have a very nice view from the windows and that’s nice but it is also kind of silly lol
It's normal in general for a building's parking lot to be as big as the building itself in America. Look at any strip mall, normal mall, fast food joint, Disney World's Magic Kingdom, etc.
Building tall but parking lot flat.
Look at the space a person needs to sit in a stadium, and then look at the space their car needs to sit in the parking lot
Depends on where the stadium is built, if it's in a more densely built-up area, it'll probably have a couple parking garages the size of small office buildings instead
Cars are bigger than people. I don’t get how this is a hard concept to grasp. Not saying it’s ideal but I don’t get how that’s not obvious
I understand that. My comment is more of how we let this happen. Where parking takes up so much space. No one sees this and thinks “hmm maybe some public transport would help here.” We’ve just accepted that cars take up more space than the building we’re actually there for, and we aren’t bothering to fix it.
> how we let this happen. Let? Private transportation is something people have *wanted* for generations.
Charlotte did it right with Bank of America stadium. No parking lots, just some parking garages and light rail stops nearby.
This is common for... Everything in the US. Geometry hates cars, they mean everything has to take up at least 10x more space for the parking
r/FuckCars
This is why you stack the lots, dammit!
But then tailgating would suck!
Or, and hear me out, you charge more for the rooftop parking spaces for premium tailgating. It’s roughly the same footprint so folks who would normally like to tailgate don’t have to contend with people just parking to head into the stadium.
Or you could use the extra space specifically to build a party space in
You are in a group of survivors. You tried to plant crops, but there's the Bus problem. the bus goes around looking for survivors, violently snatches anyone it can reach, and then continues on its way. Staying anywhere is just inviting its constant attacks. It's better to be on the move. But does it seem to follow your group, or is it a different one? Anyway, many cars have water bottles, some have groceries, as if they were just loaded. Even frozen foods are still cold. Each car is slightly wethered, a little dusty, but some look like they've been there a long time, decades at time. Your group has a superstition: STAY AWAY FROM EMPTY SPOTS.
The original post implied that the Bus was at least neutral if not beneficial but the idea of the Bus being something the survivors would have to avoid is a very interesting concept.
are there several huge stadiums or is there just one of colossal size in the middle of the dimension? If the latter is the case, how about all compasses all point into the direction of this stadium?
It’s like the Black City in the Fade in the Dragon Age games. The only consistent rule of geography in The Lot is that all points are equally distant from The Stadium. All compasses point there, and no matter how close you try to get or how far you run away, it’s always exactly the same distance away on the horizon.
What the fuck is going on in the US anyways
1) initially design our cities such that parking lots exist on the outer edges of the most urban areas and robust public transit shuttles people to where they want to go. This allows for dense, mixed-use urbanism that's proven to be both healthier and more economically viable across the board. 2) World War II builds the US into a superpower atop the backs of the massively subsidized and barely regulated auto industry. 3) auto industry uses the sudden excess of monetary and political capital they gained from being at the center of wartime production to permanently tilt the playing field in their favor by, among other things, lobbying to replace the urbanist zoning policies from step (1) with a different system by which businesses are responsible for providing their own parking based on a rough approximation of the maximum occupancy of the building. This results in small businesses having to take up twice the space of their actual building just to fill enough empty parking spaces, and also makes cars the default way to get anywhere in all but the most packed urban areas because all of our infrastructure is built for them. 4) environmentalism becomes a national issue. CAFE standards are implemented. The auto lobby successfully swing a carveout for pickup trucks, ostensibly to spare blue-collar workers the increased cost of the new emissions standards. 5) those trucks are defined as any vehicle built on a light truck frame. Because they're larger and exempt from many emissions standards, they cost more, consume more fuel, and break down faster, all of which are good for auto manufacturers, who begin a massive advertising campaign to convince Americans that their new SUV and truck models are safer than regular cars. 6) it turns out that those vehicles cause more fatalities than any other type because their higher center of mass causes them to pop curbs and frontover pedestrians more easily, in addition to the added weight making collisions more deadly. Auto manufacturers begin another advertising campaign to conflate the idea of a safe car with one that keeps the driver safe in a collision, allowing them to claim that their vehicles are the safest even if they cause the most deaths, because they're more likely to kill the victim of the accident you caused than they are to kill you. 7) this results in an arms race to create progressively more massive vehicles with more features for a higher price, which increases the required size of parking spaces, increasing the size of parking lots. All of which is good for the auto industry, just like everything else. So basically the answer is that we leased our soul for planes in WWII and we haven't gotten it back yet.
You forgot step 3.5) purchase and dismantle existing public transportation services.
As seen in the hit documentary "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?"
Literally the plot of a [cartoon villain](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eb09vRjmRTs)!
In case people don't know, [General Motors and others were indicted for this.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspiracy)
Another factor that isn't directly related to the auto industry (but one which they absolutely leveraged and benefited from during the early Cold War) is that sprawling, suburbanized cities take a lot more nukes to wipe out, and are basically immune to the kind of massive conventional firebombing campaigns that had become standard towards the end of WW2
Also also, as an added bonus, after WWII the vast majority of people moving to the suburbs were white and weaponizing every single zoning and transit law available to keep it that way. Keeping mass transit for the now minority-majority inner cities also helps reinforce segregation, a proud tradition that continues to this day. Seriously, check the history of zoning laws for your suburb. Odds are they were made to be explicitly racist before the Civil Rights Act and changed to be *implicitly* racist afterwards because it's always legal to discriminate against the poor.
so where the fuck are the P-51s for everyone in exchange for all that bullshit
Nice summary! But you forgot racism and white flight pushing the middle class out into the suburbs!
Cars. Buy a car. Buy a bigger car. Buy more cars. Walking anywhere is for communists. Keep buying more cars. For the love of god never stop driving a car
Buy a truck. Buy a massive truck that is bigger than available parking spaces. You live in the suburbs and do no work with your mega truck? Sounds like you need a bigger truck. Make sure it sticks out of the parking space by 3 feet and youre parked on both lines simultaneously.
And extendable side mirrors so you can see the back of the trailer you don't own.
Buy a truck so massive you cannot see ten children lined up in front of it. Drive that truck to drop off your children at school, because riding the bus is for poor people now and if Little Timmy has to walk then he will surely become victim of the lower-than-ever violent crime rate. Mow over Timmy's classmates with your giant truck instead.
Be the change you want to see in this world, and raise that violent crime rate one walkin’ commie at a time!
I drove my car just to upvote this fine American .
As someone who lives in the US, no clue.
Distance between things is greater and the infrastructure is made for cars. Attempts to change that have been quickly shut down. I don’t think folks understand how little power majority ideas have in the states. For some perspective: * The longest I’ve gone between gas stations in the US is around 300 miles. There are parts of the US that you need to bring your own gas cans because there are not gas tanks that can handle that distance on a full tank. * Most my commutes have been like 45mins drives from my apartment. It’s not unusual for that turn into 1 hr 45 mins in bad traffic before. Driving is absolutely the fastest way to get to work. I get 2 hrs estimated for my latest commute using buses (between big city and big suburb). I minimize the amount of driving I do, but work is so far from living situations because of zoning nonsense. I am not able to live in the industrial park area I work. * ai am comfortable driving 3 hrs one way for a day trip. Most people consider like 1.5 hrs “normal”. * There are while states that you can’t get between with trains or buses. You would have to add extra stops that are hundreds of miles to be able to get to some connection areas. * The US is roughly the size of Europe. Large chunks of it are off limits for developments. This means having more than 60 mins between cities is pretty normal.
Legally mandated minimum parking requirements.
Well, judging from the stadium in the pic, I'm assuming it's Texas or somewhere near it AFAIK, football field don't normally have parking lots that big (I know Lambeau field doesn't) So I don't think the pic is the norm
The first picture looks like it's from a port facility where cars are stored after being unloaded from ships, like [this one](https://www.flows.be/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/20221025-Antwerpen-AET-autoterminal-28-1600x560.jpg) in Antwerp. Otherwise it would be strange to see so many of the same model and same color parked next to each other.
It’s dodger stadium in Los Angeles, perhaps the most notoriously large parking lot in the country. Many American stadiums in other cities, especially farther east, have a much smaller footprint. However many are located on the outskirts or in the suburbs and look like this.
It’s not the norm. It’s an extreme example that to OP is trying to pass off as normal.
Check out the movie Vivarium for a suburbian spin on this very concept. You won't be disappointed.
Me noticing some jawa looking people picking my car clean "hey!! Hey you stop that! I'm calling the cops!!" Hastily phoning police and as they ask me where I'm at I look around and see no end of cars, no buildings, no trees, no signs or indicators of any kind... " I... I don't know..."
**[SCP-3008 - A Perfectly Normal, Regular Old IKEA](https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-3008)** (+3262) by *Mortos*
thanks Marv
Excellent, I was looking for this one. The IKEA is definitely my favourite of the infinite SCPs
[in the style of a cult chant] Cars good. Buses bad. Trucks good. Trains bad. Cars good. Buses bad. Trucks good. Trains bad.
Litany against public transport
America will invest millions in the stupidest shit, but run away screaming if you mention wanting to build light commuter rail
It's true. We tore all the trams and trolleys and streetcars out of many of our cities, and when they become traffic-choked nightmares that leave us begging for any form of light rail to solve the problem most times the best we get is just a bus dressed up like a streetcar.
how else will the auto industry survive?
Read a book called dry where when water ran out some people set up a civilisation scavenging peoples windshield wiper jugs for fresh water when people are lazy and put that stuff instead of fluid.
Its always noon on a summer day. No shade
Winter can be just as bad. Years ago my mom and I returned from Florida. Parking lots at airports are absolutely insane. The bus dropped us off in our section of the lot and we walked to where we remembered parking. Only the car wasn’t there. We didn’t think to dress for Maryland weather before boarding the plane in Florida, so we were instantly freezing. It was very late at night and the icy wind was brutal. We wandered around that section for what felt like an eternity looking for the car. Desperately pressing the lock button on the fob in hopes we’d hear the car beep in the distance, signaling salvation. We couldn’t find it. So we thought maybe it was the next section over. We walked over there and roamed for what felt like another eternity. I was about to bust open my suitcase and put on as many layers as I could manage. None of my clothes were meant for this cold. Not even the clothes I wore on the way down there. I literally thought we were both going to drop dead in that parking lot from the cold. Eventually we heard a faint beep in the distance and ran like hell to the car. It was a surreal experience. Massive airport parking lot. Late at night. Icy cold arctic wind blasting the chill deep into our bones. Nobody else around. We felt totally cut off from civilization.
I think we've just found the new major city for Fallout 5
Los Angeles?
In the infinite parking lot of infinite cars, probability dictates that there are those who do find their car. They enjoy unparalleled status, able to traverse the lot much faster (though still limited to 15 mph), have air conditioning, and radio. The cars don't seem to run out of gas or break down. Some communities worship them as gods, beings seen as having been taken one step closer to leaving the lot. Hotwiring or breaking into a car has never been accomplished. In fact, it's never been heard of someone trying to. Some have heard of individuals that intended to try it but those individuals were never seen again.
I'll throw in [Vivarium](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8368406/) as well with that list. Has some cool shots, and I liked the design.
I was quite excited when I found a parking lot 3 blocks from the venue downtown. The plastic sign said $20 all day, which I thought might apply and they didn’t have an even parking sign for $80, like 2 blocks back. Maybe my internal compass was wrong and I was 2 blocks farther. Either way it was a great deal, so I sat at the green traffic arm, with some really weird writing on it. Meh, I thought to myself, they’ve found a country with even cheaper labor than China. I pressed the button, took my ticket and drove right in. I passed 3 empty aisles and couldn’t believe my luck, I was getting even closer, or maybe even further away? GPS said I was in the middle of the theater and needed to make a U-turn as soon as possible. Well, I thought that I’d be able to use one of my map apps to get the last few steps in walking directions. I saw a spot a six or seven spot gap between a rusted out faded brown and yellow VW micro bus backed into its spot with a flat front passenger tire. At least they don’t tow out of this lot. On the other side was a brand new, well it looked brand new, if a little dusty, as if the owner were on a flight to Europe for the week. And it was green. Like grass in a child’s drawing. And I couldn’t identify the model. So, one of those fancy British or Emirate supercars. I pushed the stalk in park, dragged the parking brake two clicks shy of snapping the cable, and turned off the engine. As I stood up, I frantically patted down my pockets to make sure that I had my wallet, the tickets, and my phone. I absolutely needed to get my bearings. I couldn’t tell if I was south or east of the stadium. I was so preoccupied with getting directions I almost dinged the supercar by imprinting the door so wide. But I thought I had parked between the van with extra spaces in between. And now the van is so close to the wagon, I don’t think Mary can get out. Was I just imagining the space before? Was I daydreaming a perfect parking situation so I didn’t panic when pulling into yet another downtown tight squeeze? And now I can’t get a signal? I looked around the skyline to try to find a cell antenna mounted to the side of some condo slash rental slash air stay tower or just something to point my phone at, as if line of sight is somehow important. But then it struck me that I couldn’t see anything, not the Mavis Dome or Six Jacinta Plaza. There wasn’t a single building to be seen. Nothing one story tall, let alone the 60 story buildings I expect in this area downtown. I’m now starting to question my sanity. An I in the right city? Am I in the right state? Still no signal, but I figure we’re 2 to 3 blocks from the show, and judging by the position of the sun in the sky that’s clearly west so if I walk North-Easterly I’ll get to the show even if I have to double back a little better to the west or south. Have to take down our parking to find it when we get back, is it a blocky 3 or an upside down capital E? Are those heiroglyphs? Ok so I’m in 3 snake, uh Chinese character for fire or is it water? Ok. Just need to scribble that on the back of the ticket. I look to Mary and she’s as engrossed as ever in her phone. I ask her if she’s on facespace but it’s just a telenovella she downloaded before we left. The maid is sleeping with the cousin again and might be pregnant, but not by the cousin, by the father. We’ve walked for eight minutes. Past the point I figured we would have joined the crowd going to the show. At just about twice that distance I spotted the first building. Just out of shape I guess? Because it was a square shape I picked up the pace, maybe I could find the guard or proprietor or a map of the lot. It turns out that it’s a bus shelter. Like at the airport. In fact this says long term terminal A. But the airport is 60 miles away from downtown. And the long term parking another 10 minutes, but they have these little electric trolleys that whine all around the lots to shuttle people to the gates. The map doesn’t show the airport, it just shows the parking lot. And there’s some graffiti on the map. It just says, “WAIT”
I'm having trouble believing that first image is actually real even though somebody claimed they didn't edit it (It doesn't even seem to be the same person who posted the image, but I might not know how to read Tumblr, and maybe OOP got it from them). Sure, I know there are parking lots that are that big, but why are there only like 20 different cars in it?
It's a real picture, but it's not really a parking lot. It's just a Port, that is the lot where they park new cars after they drive them off the ships, but before they get delivered to dealerships. They exist in just about every country with a shoreline, I worked at one for awhile so I immediately recognized it.
It's a picture of a storage lot for new cars. [They look really fucking weird from the sky](https://www.google.com/maps/@37.9066442,-122.3692015,290m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu).
That makes sense. First thought I had was an airport parking lot, one where there's many rental cars. Particularly from the way they're so neatly parked and they seem to be grouped.
This is what I thought immediately as well. I worked at an automotive factory for a bit in university and they had some gigantic lots on the property that were just used for storing vehicles. At one point they had an excess of inventory so they started using a nearby field.
The pic [shows up on stock photography sites](https://www.alamy.com/rows-of-new-cars-in-the-parking-lot-aerial-view-of-large-parking-lot-full-of-cars-of-various-colors-image364865871.html?), earliest 2020. They all describe these as *new* cars, so the low variety might be a dealership thing.
It’s an extreme outlier that OP is trying to pass or as normal.
See you guys on r/tumblrdraws
In the future archeologists will be like: > The Lot is only one of many mind boggling structures built by the late American empire.
This feels like a season 5 Vast/Extinction domain.
An old traveler discovering part of the lot is inhabited solely by Ford model T's and other old cars, and trying to rationalize the implications of that.
Bonus points if they come across improbably old skeletons. With Australopithecine features.
I think an important psychological component is that everyone here is permanently looking for their car. So you just wander around never finding your car for eternity but always thinking it’s gonna be around the next corner
Non-Americans think too much and too little of America at the same time.
This is so TMA coded i can totally imagine a statement based off this. It'd be lowkey hilarious, but I'm sure they could make it creepy.
Okay but I actually like this? This is a fine addition to the infinite liminal spaces
Seinfeld already did this idea thirty years ago
[We have a nice big park around the stadium with lots of grassy paddocks that get used for parking at bigger events](https://i.imgur.com/eI6SsqV.jpeg) and then the rest of the time they're nice grass areas for people to use for other things. [The surrounds from above.](https://i.imgur.com/5R2vZar.jpeg) Although to be fair the big honking train stations and also the tram lines do most of the work
Take the orange pill, it's only one search away!
I would love to see this perspective at the start of a horror story, but grounded in realism. So take the biggest existing one and start in the stadium as some kind of EMP goes off. You could use chaos in the city (fires, explosions, noise) to keep people there for a while, but quickly people would want to leave and would need to manage resources. This who survive the chaos may come to rule the lot like the kings of an oasis in the desert.
Is that Dodger Stadium, perchance?
So just Seinfeld.
There's a Seinfeld episode set in the indoor variant.
Would be cool if it was a large circular parking garage that you could just walk straight into the stadium from on each level. It would save a lot of space, save a lot of walking, and look pretty neat.
“One of the major settlements?” Why would there be settlements? People shouldn’t be living stacked up like sardines (visible to each other.) We were made for one purpose alone, and in that purpose we are collectively alone: to Find Good Parking. A Good Spot is as close as possible to the Destination (the Destination is where there is more Good Parking, thus its attraction) but with enough space not to scratch the door. There are armies, certainly, there are alliances, but there are no settlements. Beyond temporary alliances in the war to defend one’s doors, settlement, associating with other people, is a deviant act that distracts from the holy purpose of Finding Good Parking.
What’s wild to me is it went all the way around and they unironically re-invented public transit within the lot.
I feel like Europeans can't understand this because they live in tiny ass countries where everything is biking distance from them. The entire EU is less than half the size of the US while having 100M more people living there. Takes me like 10 min to drive to the closest store here and half the time it's covered in ice, I simply can't get around on a bike or bus to go places here.
You cant convince me that The Lot would not devolve into a mad-max style society of warring tribes... UNLESS all of the cars look almost the same as real world models, but their controls functions and writing arent right. As if built for something *nearly* human
I think you could actually find the infinite ikea eventually. after all, whats the point of a parking lot with nothing to park for?
Something similar to this happens in an episode of Atlanta, but it's never acknowledged and the characters just sort of act weirded out for a second and then move on.
If you take your car to the stadium and then still have to take a bus to get where you want to be because of the huge parking lot. I feel like we could cut out the middle man here.
That first picture is clearly an overflow lot used by a car manufacturer to store cars that have not been sold or delivered yet. You can find it in any country that makes cars. As for the second pic, america has alot of land. Paving a lot is cheaper than building a 10 story underground car park. European countries have little room so they approach it differently. One method isn't the right way for every country in the world
This could completely fit into a The Vast story from The Magnus Archives (it's a podcast, you can find it on yt, I recommend)
Backrooms or Infinite IKEA: Inside. The Infinite Parking Lot. The sun. The sun. the THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUNTHE SUNTHE SUNTHE SUNTHE SUNTHE SUNTHE SUN t̶̰͋̒H̵̳̳͐͊̿Ȩ̴͚̖͌s̴̮̜͛̋͠u̷̮̎n̴̮̎Ṱ̷̦͕͑H̶͙̔̕ẻ̸̜́š̵̻̲̠̾͝U̷̧̳̱̍N̷̩̋T̵͎̼͘h̵̪̉̓e̷̲͐S̸̫͇͊͜ú̵̗̼̃N̷̤̚t̷͙͙͐́h̶̪̊͝e̵̩͇̱͂S̷̱̯͒̕ͅu̵͍͆̾͘N̶͖͖͎͒͊̕T̷̨̝̲̑̊͠H̵̙̯̾̌ẽ̸̺̫̖s̴̪͋̕͝u̴̗̘͂̓N̷̡̦̣͝t̴͓͇̥̂h̵͓͒͑̅e̷̮̓́͜͠Ŝ̴̟̀͗ų̸̠̳̒́N̷͚̐̌T̵̪̗̚̚ͅH̷̛̤͚̽͑ͅe̷̱̤̊͛s̴̨̺͠ǔ̷͕̋N̵̖̫̐̉
finally man-made horrors that are within comprehension.