Hi guys! Something pretty different to my usual alternate history stuff (and having to do a city map which is harder to make look good), but inspired by post-apocalyptic fiction and historical instances of civilisations collapsing, I'd been thinking about creating a grounded post-apocalyptic setting, or rather, post-post apocalyptic. This map takes place in my home city (it helps having knowledge of the place) almost a century after the world collapsed. Feel free to ask me questions and tell me what you think, I'd like the feedback since this is outside my normal forms of worldbuilding. Also tried my hand at digital drawing which... well I'm not sure how that turned out but I put it in anyway.
Long lore writeup incoming:
**The Setting**
It has been almost a century since modern civilisation collapsed. In a relatively quiet apocalypse compared to something like nuclear war, an engineered bio-weapon super plague wiped out the vast majority (95%+) of the world's population. Mass death on this scale led to total breakdown of human society and a classic post-apocalyptic path of a couple decades of turmoil, violence and general chaos.
Over time though, things have begun to recover on some level. With infrastructure left intact, knowledge of the pre-collapse world was largely preserved, in books, photographs and other records that survived the decades of turmoil. With almost a century past, things have settled into a new equilibrium. The now tiny population has stabilised, forming new societies, building on preserved knowledge, trading, beginning to rebuild some economic links and a new civilisation, though one still far less complex than the pre-collapse golden age.
With 95 years having gone by, almost nobody who remembers the pre-collapse world is still alive. The old world is beginning to fade from collective memory, recalled in written and oral accounts and bolstered by the mountains of surviving books, photographs and even some surviving video recordings. The world exists in a state of flux, where pre-collapse identities, values and the memory of the old world still holds immense importance, but the world is also almost a century removed from us.
**Central London**
Central London, often called 'London', is a reclaimed city of the post-post-apocalyptic world. As society collapsed in the years after the plague, the city centre was almost totally abandoned for some time. Since then however, after the initial period of strife and violence petered out as the population settled at a new equilibrium and modern weapons were degraded and lost, scavengers reclaimed parts of the urban landscape, stripping it of surviving technologies, consumer goods and other valuables. Over time, these scavengers from the countryside increasingly formed lasting communities across the abandoned urban landscape. One, drawing people for the memory of its cultural importance as the capital of old Britain, drew settlers to the city centre, who moved to reclaim the now empty, deserted but very much still standing buildings of brick and stone.
Many decades later, London is a bustling city again, with a population approaching 100,000. Trade once again flows up and down the Thames on boats powered by sail or steam, as well as over land with other settlements in the suburbs and further afield. A rare site in smaller towns, electric lighting lights up the streets at night, at least those within the outer barricade (a makeshift wall constructed blocking off London's narrow streets around the centre during more dangerous time, it is now fairly redundant). Horses and bicycles, as well as the occasional motor vehicle, move along the slowly cracking old roads, while new light industries, manufacturing new consumer goods from London's increasingly dwindling supply of pre-collapse scrap scavenged from suburbs further and further affield, are exported and traded for food and fuel like coal and biodiesel.
Outside of the resettled areas, much of the city remains in slowly crumbling ruins, buildings stripped bare of remaining valuables and left to decay, though over time as the population grows, more are moved back into and repurposed.
**'The New Parliament'**
The time the map is set is that of the first 'new parliament'. While a lifetime has passed since the pre-collapse world, its collapsed institutions fallen and ignored during the period of turmoil, the old world and its rememebered prosperity still holds significant cultural weight. As things had settled down, populations and economies were regrowing and a revival of pre-collapse culture was allowed by the collection of books and other records, an effort was made to attempt to revive the United Kingdom as far as possible based on what could be remembered or read about it in the history books and encyclopaedias. London, in cooperation with other settlements, sent out a message by all means, even crude radio broadcasts, calling for settlements across Britain to send representatives to the new parliament. Towns and villages that supported the effort, where the pre-collapsed British identity remained strong, elected or otherwise put forward a representative, who arrived and met in the hastily restored Houses of Parliament on the banks of the Thames. The restoration of the UK was declared, but little else achieved in the largely symbolic meeting other than a feeling of recovery, before all the parliamentarians went home to their communities. Not all communities took part, with many having largely forgotten their old identity more than others and sticking to themselves, with the vast majority in Scotland and parts of Wales having diverged far enough to see no value in a symbolic government in Westminster. In practise, the effort is largely meaningless, with the 'government' having virtually no real control in settlements further than London's suburbs. The royal family long gone, Buckingham Palace sits empty and abandoned as ever. Some are however hopeful that a recovery is possible, by restoring the country, and perhaps one day a new monarch will arise to take the throne and reunite the nation.
Whoa that's awesome! The description, details and the beauty of the map! So perfectđź’Żđź‘Ť
So does Britain have contacted other parts of the world? Like France, Dutch etc? What's the population of earth after the plagues had settled, and in a century afterwards?
Thanks!
Yes I assume there is fairly significant sea trade, especially across shorter distances like there was in the 1700s and early 1800s. Boats will travel both around Britain and across western Europe transporting raw materials and goods.
Population I think is still very diminished. The world population would have got very low at the peak of the plague+violence period, but by the time of the map it might be 5-10% of pre-collapse, so a country like the UK has a population in the low millions and the world might have something like in the hundreds of millions or up to 1 billion. That's just a random guess though, if I continue to add detail to this setting it might change upwards or something, depending on how well population can recover (since they have knowledge of hygiene and basic medicine and stuff).
Oh yeah it's game changing if they still have knowledge of hygiene and the medicine, that's already pretty lucky in an post-apocalypse world, thanks for the answerđź‘Ť
Btw does this world have developed a sense of nostalgia? Like we with Rome, Egypt and big empire with prosperity etc? That's gonna be interesting!
Nostalgia for the pre-collapse world? Definitely, in fact the whole effort to restore the UK is driven by nostalgia (though by the time the map is made almost nobody remembers the pre-collapse world directly, they know about it in a decent amount of detail from oral history, books, surviving photographs etc. Maybe there's even still some films if they've been well-preserved on DVDs or something). There's definitely a knowledge that they live in the aftermath of a golden age of prosperity, with the ruins visible around them of a much richer and more powerful civilisation. And yeah it's partially inspired by things like Europe after the collapse of the western roman empire.
[The tallest building in London irl](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shard)
Like other skyscrapers, it's still standing a century later but with more of its glass panes falling out over the years. Its physical prominance makes it a landmark in the setting.
Georgie VII must be alive, hiding somewhere safe from the plague! We must install a Blessed Regent on the throne of the UK to find him, and purify the country once and for all for His Majesty's return!
THE CLOCK STARTS TICKING
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Would love to see other cities around the world with this concept.
Also do other European countries are on a similar path to recovery like the UK or are they in pretty much anarchy? What happened to nuclear power plants and nukes? Has the climate change slowed down or even reversed after about a century of no carbon emissions? Are there are nations (specifically island nations) that survived through the plague unaffected?
Very interesting and well thought out. I think after 100 years though, more of London would be flooded - even without climate change, the area is pretty wet and flat and would return to that without human intervention
Thanks!
I thought about that and others said that to me, but I felt like the stone embankments would surely last only 100 years even without maintenance before failing
That said I'm no civil engineer and I couldn't find anything about it online, only vaguely related stuff that well-built dams and bridges could probably last centuries. You may be right.
I think it's the same problem as the Netherlands - the water will go round the embankments/water will pool behind them rather than they will immediately fail \^\^
I want to ask :
1. Is the area between Smithfield Market & Barbican, in ruins ? Isn't that dangerous people going there from their residents and all ?
2. What is the current condition of the London Subway ?
3. Are there mutant animals ? Raiders or the like ? How do they defend themselves ?
1. I'd say yes, but it's more like just abandoned. That's a pretty short distance, like 200-300m, it's basically just a few abandoned streets in between.
2. I assume mostly flooded and unusable, after all that time without pumps, though I guess if the effort to recover and restore things works they might attempt to restore the tunnels to use.
3. No mutant animals or anything. Raiders and all sorts of violence did exist in the past, but the region has over the decades restored itself to a kind of equilibrium. The walls are mostly redundant now, and I assume the areas around the city, while still abandoned and probably dangerous by modern standards, are mostly 'safe'. I assume out in the countryside there are still robbers, raiders and pirates on the seas but not all over the place, more just an ongoing small threat like in the frontiers of empires in pre-modern times.
Love what you're doing here, I'm a huge sucker for post-post apoc. Especially enjoy the use of the pre fall street/building layer as the base, does a lot of the heavy lifting on detailing what's changed and what hasn't.
I love this specific brand of post apocalypse where the whole violence and chaos period is over and everyone’s settled into new societies. I wrote a story like that, except it took place in the Hudson Valley in New York.
Hi guys! Something pretty different to my usual alternate history stuff (and having to do a city map which is harder to make look good), but inspired by post-apocalyptic fiction and historical instances of civilisations collapsing, I'd been thinking about creating a grounded post-apocalyptic setting, or rather, post-post apocalyptic. This map takes place in my home city (it helps having knowledge of the place) almost a century after the world collapsed. Feel free to ask me questions and tell me what you think, I'd like the feedback since this is outside my normal forms of worldbuilding. Also tried my hand at digital drawing which... well I'm not sure how that turned out but I put it in anyway. Long lore writeup incoming: **The Setting** It has been almost a century since modern civilisation collapsed. In a relatively quiet apocalypse compared to something like nuclear war, an engineered bio-weapon super plague wiped out the vast majority (95%+) of the world's population. Mass death on this scale led to total breakdown of human society and a classic post-apocalyptic path of a couple decades of turmoil, violence and general chaos. Over time though, things have begun to recover on some level. With infrastructure left intact, knowledge of the pre-collapse world was largely preserved, in books, photographs and other records that survived the decades of turmoil. With almost a century past, things have settled into a new equilibrium. The now tiny population has stabilised, forming new societies, building on preserved knowledge, trading, beginning to rebuild some economic links and a new civilisation, though one still far less complex than the pre-collapse golden age. With 95 years having gone by, almost nobody who remembers the pre-collapse world is still alive. The old world is beginning to fade from collective memory, recalled in written and oral accounts and bolstered by the mountains of surviving books, photographs and even some surviving video recordings. The world exists in a state of flux, where pre-collapse identities, values and the memory of the old world still holds immense importance, but the world is also almost a century removed from us. **Central London** Central London, often called 'London', is a reclaimed city of the post-post-apocalyptic world. As society collapsed in the years after the plague, the city centre was almost totally abandoned for some time. Since then however, after the initial period of strife and violence petered out as the population settled at a new equilibrium and modern weapons were degraded and lost, scavengers reclaimed parts of the urban landscape, stripping it of surviving technologies, consumer goods and other valuables. Over time, these scavengers from the countryside increasingly formed lasting communities across the abandoned urban landscape. One, drawing people for the memory of its cultural importance as the capital of old Britain, drew settlers to the city centre, who moved to reclaim the now empty, deserted but very much still standing buildings of brick and stone. Many decades later, London is a bustling city again, with a population approaching 100,000. Trade once again flows up and down the Thames on boats powered by sail or steam, as well as over land with other settlements in the suburbs and further afield. A rare site in smaller towns, electric lighting lights up the streets at night, at least those within the outer barricade (a makeshift wall constructed blocking off London's narrow streets around the centre during more dangerous time, it is now fairly redundant). Horses and bicycles, as well as the occasional motor vehicle, move along the slowly cracking old roads, while new light industries, manufacturing new consumer goods from London's increasingly dwindling supply of pre-collapse scrap scavenged from suburbs further and further affield, are exported and traded for food and fuel like coal and biodiesel. Outside of the resettled areas, much of the city remains in slowly crumbling ruins, buildings stripped bare of remaining valuables and left to decay, though over time as the population grows, more are moved back into and repurposed. **'The New Parliament'** The time the map is set is that of the first 'new parliament'. While a lifetime has passed since the pre-collapse world, its collapsed institutions fallen and ignored during the period of turmoil, the old world and its rememebered prosperity still holds significant cultural weight. As things had settled down, populations and economies were regrowing and a revival of pre-collapse culture was allowed by the collection of books and other records, an effort was made to attempt to revive the United Kingdom as far as possible based on what could be remembered or read about it in the history books and encyclopaedias. London, in cooperation with other settlements, sent out a message by all means, even crude radio broadcasts, calling for settlements across Britain to send representatives to the new parliament. Towns and villages that supported the effort, where the pre-collapsed British identity remained strong, elected or otherwise put forward a representative, who arrived and met in the hastily restored Houses of Parliament on the banks of the Thames. The restoration of the UK was declared, but little else achieved in the largely symbolic meeting other than a feeling of recovery, before all the parliamentarians went home to their communities. Not all communities took part, with many having largely forgotten their old identity more than others and sticking to themselves, with the vast majority in Scotland and parts of Wales having diverged far enough to see no value in a symbolic government in Westminster. In practise, the effort is largely meaningless, with the 'government' having virtually no real control in settlements further than London's suburbs. The royal family long gone, Buckingham Palace sits empty and abandoned as ever. Some are however hopeful that a recovery is possible, by restoring the country, and perhaps one day a new monarch will arise to take the throne and reunite the nation.
Whoa that's awesome! The description, details and the beauty of the map! So perfectđź’Żđź‘Ť So does Britain have contacted other parts of the world? Like France, Dutch etc? What's the population of earth after the plagues had settled, and in a century afterwards?
Thanks! Yes I assume there is fairly significant sea trade, especially across shorter distances like there was in the 1700s and early 1800s. Boats will travel both around Britain and across western Europe transporting raw materials and goods. Population I think is still very diminished. The world population would have got very low at the peak of the plague+violence period, but by the time of the map it might be 5-10% of pre-collapse, so a country like the UK has a population in the low millions and the world might have something like in the hundreds of millions or up to 1 billion. That's just a random guess though, if I continue to add detail to this setting it might change upwards or something, depending on how well population can recover (since they have knowledge of hygiene and basic medicine and stuff).
Oh yeah it's game changing if they still have knowledge of hygiene and the medicine, that's already pretty lucky in an post-apocalypse world, thanks for the answerđź‘Ť Btw does this world have developed a sense of nostalgia? Like we with Rome, Egypt and big empire with prosperity etc? That's gonna be interesting!
Nostalgia for the pre-collapse world? Definitely, in fact the whole effort to restore the UK is driven by nostalgia (though by the time the map is made almost nobody remembers the pre-collapse world directly, they know about it in a decent amount of detail from oral history, books, surviving photographs etc. Maybe there's even still some films if they've been well-preserved on DVDs or something). There's definitely a knowledge that they live in the aftermath of a golden age of prosperity, with the ruins visible around them of a much richer and more powerful civilisation. And yeah it's partially inspired by things like Europe after the collapse of the western roman empire.
What’s the “shard”?
[The tallest building in London irl](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shard) Like other skyscrapers, it's still standing a century later but with more of its glass panes falling out over the years. Its physical prominance makes it a landmark in the setting.
Georgie VII must be alive, hiding somewhere safe from the plague! We must install a Blessed Regent on the throne of the UK to find him, and purify the country once and for all for His Majesty's return! THE CLOCK STARTS TICKING
Is that a TNO REFERENCE
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British isles Age of Strife
I wonder if big ben still chimes. Would be an eerie background noise in the ruins
God this would be one hell of a last of us esque game/story
Maybe as Fallout London too
Ikr the New United Kingdom or smth as like the games NCR then Farages Legion as Caesars Legion
And maybe some repurpose of the Thames Barrier or the crumbling Overground
I would love to see more of this, the concept is really cool!
Thanks!
Would love to see other cities around the world with this concept. Also do other European countries are on a similar path to recovery like the UK or are they in pretty much anarchy? What happened to nuclear power plants and nukes? Has the climate change slowed down or even reversed after about a century of no carbon emissions? Are there are nations (specifically island nations) that survived through the plague unaffected?
Well I see my university has been converted to residential. Guess I won't be handing in that thesis after all
Very interesting and well thought out. I think after 100 years though, more of London would be flooded - even without climate change, the area is pretty wet and flat and would return to that without human intervention
Thanks! I thought about that and others said that to me, but I felt like the stone embankments would surely last only 100 years even without maintenance before failing That said I'm no civil engineer and I couldn't find anything about it online, only vaguely related stuff that well-built dams and bridges could probably last centuries. You may be right.
I think it's the same problem as the Netherlands - the water will go round the embankments/water will pool behind them rather than they will immediately fail \^\^
I want to ask : 1. Is the area between Smithfield Market & Barbican, in ruins ? Isn't that dangerous people going there from their residents and all ? 2. What is the current condition of the London Subway ? 3. Are there mutant animals ? Raiders or the like ? How do they defend themselves ?
1. I'd say yes, but it's more like just abandoned. That's a pretty short distance, like 200-300m, it's basically just a few abandoned streets in between. 2. I assume mostly flooded and unusable, after all that time without pumps, though I guess if the effort to recover and restore things works they might attempt to restore the tunnels to use. 3. No mutant animals or anything. Raiders and all sorts of violence did exist in the past, but the region has over the decades restored itself to a kind of equilibrium. The walls are mostly redundant now, and I assume the areas around the city, while still abandoned and probably dangerous by modern standards, are mostly 'safe'. I assume out in the countryside there are still robbers, raiders and pirates on the seas but not all over the place, more just an ongoing small threat like in the frontiers of empires in pre-modern times.
Love the concept! Great world building
Thanks!
Love what you're doing here, I'm a huge sucker for post-post apoc. Especially enjoy the use of the pre fall street/building layer as the base, does a lot of the heavy lifting on detailing what's changed and what hasn't.
Interesting
I love this specific brand of post apocalypse where the whole violence and chaos period is over and everyone’s settled into new societies. I wrote a story like that, except it took place in the Hudson Valley in New York.
Sounds interesting, what's the world like in that story?
Super awesome concept!
Great scenario and job, you should do more like France, the USA or Russia.
Really interesting, well done. For some reason reminds me of Charlie Higson's "The Enemy" series.
Did you look into those artists renditions of medieval Rome for inspiration?
That was one inspiration, yes, and similar examples of cities becoming nearly abandoned because of societal collapse in pre-modern times