Flying In To A Black Hole

I've been doing a little reading, and I believe the following adequately summarizes the likely visuals and clues as your spaceship approaches and fall into a black hole:

Black Holes cannot currently be directly observed, since they swallow up the light and radiation we would use to see them. It would be possible to detect distortions where light is bent by some unseen object of great mass. Determining whether such a distortion was from a genuine black hole, as opposed to distortion caused by a Massive Compact Halo Object or other hypothetical form of Dark Matter would probably be difficult and dangerous. As such, a Black Hole might serve as a navigational hazard in a role-playing game.

In most settings, we can assume there will be some way of detecting and avoiding a black hole. Established space lanes and commonly traveled routes will avoid black holes and suspected black holes. The ships' computer might analyze visual data from the sensors, compare them to star charts, and compute likely gravitational distortions in the vicinity. With superscience or applied phlebotinum you might be able to build a sensor that accurately detects the warping of spacetime that occurs near a black hole.

So, black holes should really only be a danger to vessels exploring remote areas of space, or to ships that for whatever reason have lost their navigational sensors, computers, or star charts. For the sake of drama, though, we'll assume you've somehow bumbled upon a black hole without warning. It's not going to look like a big area of darkness as you might expect, at least not until you get very close. Instead, light from objects far beyond it will be bent, so you'll actually see behind the black hole. Objects on the other side of it will be distorted, but if they're just distant stars the distortions might not be immediately obvious. At near ranges to the event horizon, you'd be able to notice the big black spot, but the relativistic speeds used by most fictional space propulsion systems may well mean you have very little time to react.

At the Event Horizon, light is in orbit. As you cross that horizon, if you look perpendicular to your motion, you'll see light that has circled around. If the Schwarzschild Radius is small enough, you may actually see yourself in the distance, or even a chain of yourselves, as light runs circuits around similar to what happens on a hypersphere. Of course, if the black hole is large, the diameter of the event horizon may be so long that you and your spacecraft are tiny specks. One dramatic element the GM could narrate in would be the ship's automated proximity alarm going off, as the computer suddenly detects several other ships. This phenomena would alert you to the fact that you'd reached the Event Horizon, but it'd be too late to escape unless you have an FTL Stardrive. Unless you can travel Faster Than Light, the best you could do at this point is establish an orbit of the black hole. Again, the likely speed your craft was traveling at, and the relatively narrow band of the event horizon, means you're not likely to be in the orbital plane for long.

As your orbit decays and you fall into the black hole, things start getting distorted. This is going to be a nightmare, but at least you won't be staring a multiples of yourself any more. You'll be stretched in the direction of the black hole, and squished in the directions perpendicular to that. The parts of you closer to the singularity will feel much greater gravity, and start falling inward faster than the parts of you that are further from it. This stretching is called "spaghettification", but it'll actually look more like what happens when you stretch a broken rubber band. As you get longer, your midsection gets thinner.

Objects closer to, or further from, the singularity would get dimmer, and the light coming from those directions would have a reddish tone. This is the result of red shift, the phenomenon of the light taking longer to reach you. Looking perpendicular to your velocity, everything would be brighter, and have a slight bluish tone. This is the result of blue shift, the phenomenon of light taking less time to reach you. Your view would become distorted to include more of the plane perpendicular to the radius of the black hole, and our binocular vision would have serious trouble interpreting the distorted space. It would appear that the universe had been flattened into a plane perpendicular to your motion. These distortions would eventually become so strong that you would die, and then be crushed into the singularity. You'd be ripped apart on one axis, and crushed on the others.

Time would dilated as you accelerate into the black hole, but you'd be unable to notice. If your spacecraft were very large, you might be able to notice things ahead of you slowing down and stretching. It probably depends on the size of your ship, the size of the black hole, and the speed of your approach.

An outside observer watching your approach on the Schwarzschild Radius would see a very interesting display, though. First, you'd start to fade - this is the redshift effect again, as light coming from you takes longer to travel the distance to them. You'd appear to stretch. Your travel toward the center of the black hole would speed up, but the dilation of time would mess up their perception of it, and your other motions would seem to slow down. Eventually, as you cross the event horizon, you'd vanish from sight completely, as the light bouncing off of you would get stuck on that side of the Event Horizon.

Caveat: I do not have any scientific credentials, so it's certainly possible that I may have misunderstood something in the sources I read. It's not like your players can say "that's not what happened the last time I fell into a black hole" though, so it's probably accurate enough for gaming. At least, accurate enough if your players aren't professional astrophysicists.

1. Wikipedia article on black holes

2. CNN article on falling into a black hole

3. Non-Fiction Book: Hyperspace by Michio Kaku

Read more about Black Holes at Arcana Wiki.

Fourth-Dimensional Lifeforms

I just finished a big page on 4th-Dimensional Lifeforms over at ArcanaWiki, and I'm kind of proud of it. It took a little bit of library research, and a lot of brainstorming / extrapolating. I'm definitely going to have to work a 4th-dimensional monster into a game sometime soon, or maybe run a one-shot based on Flatland.

One reason why I did this reading and made the page was because Trail of Cthulhu mentions that the Titans / Great Old Ones may be higher-dimensional beings, and I wanted to know what implications that would have.

I'm putting the text of the ArcanaWiki page here, as a back-up. However, the formatting is a lot nicer over at ArcanaWiki, and the links will work there (whereas here, the links just look like random capitalization mid-sentence) so it's definitely the better place to peruse this. Go There Now. Thank you.

---

Fourth-Dimensional Lifeform


This page is about creatures or intelligent beings native to the Fourth Dimension, particularly the spatial interpretation. Read that page too, as the basics it gives you on how the next dimension up works may prove helpful in explaining why the Fourth-Dimensional Lifeform can do what it can.

We Live In A Fishbowl. Let's hope the cat doesn't notice us.

That is to say, our three-dimensional universe occupies only a tiny sliver, infinitely thin, within the greater fourth-dimensional context. For the sake of this page (and the fun implications for gaming), we'll assume that there are life-forms that exist naturally in four-dimensions. We may be beneath their notice, thinner and less pesty than the tiniest ant in comparison to them. Or, they may turn their microscopes upon us, and mess with our reality. We may be more noticeable than we imagine as well, being as obvious to them as man-sized paper-thin silhouettes pressed between two mile-wide planes of glass would be to us.

So one day, they may take note and decide to intrude on our reality. If we're lucky, they may be smart and compassionate. Alternately, they might regard us the way a cat does a goldfish in a bowl.

Either way, by virtue of being fourth-dimensional, it's going to have some creepy powers over us.


SuperSenses

The fourth-dimensional lifeform has a better vantage point. At the very least, it can rotate around our little slice of reality in the same way a cat can maneuver around the outside of a fishbowl to get a better look at the helpless little swimmer. Now give that cat X-Ray Vision, and you'll begin to approximate the way in which a 4D critter will be able to spy on us. It can see around corners. It can look through walls. It can see what's in your belly. [1][3] [4]

Even if it's got no greater intelligence than a germ, it's likely to sense us before we detect it.

Out-Maneuvering

It has the ability to move via the fourth dimension, to step out of 3-D space, and then re-enter it somewhere else.

If there's a 4D thing coming after you, don't rely on walls or obstacles to protect you. You can run, but you can't hide, and you can't take shelter. Three-dimensional prey trying to flee from a fourth-dimensional predator is going to have a very hard time.

This isn't quite the same as Teleportation, but it may feel like it. It will have a few restrictions on the 4D movement that might save you:

• It won't be as fast as teleportation. It can pop in and out of our reality pretty quickly, but still has to move through the 4th Dimension to get to the vantage point from which it will step back into our reality. On open terrain, or sliding down an embankment, you'll be able to keep pace with it - unless it's also a speed-based predator back home, or has a fourth-dimensional motorcycle, or some similar speed boost.
• The main advantage it has is the ability to sidestep three-dimensional obstacles and hazards. While it wouldn't be able to materialize inside solid matter, but it would be able to step out of our reality, move beyond where a 3D wall is, then reenter our reality on the other side.
• If fourth-dimensional space is made up of infinite sheets of tightly-packed parallel 3D universes, then this movement may be slowed significantly. It may have to move through hundreds of parallel worlds to find one without the wall that you just "took shelter" behind. As it moves through these parallel worlds, it may become distracted or choose to dine on a parallel you instead of returning to our universe.
• If, on the other hand, 4D space is as empty as our 3D universe, then there may be a large void between us and the next nearest 3D world. in that case a shift out of our reality and back again is like leaning or sidestepping to it, much easier than using the door or climbing a cliff. It could choose to move 50 feet to the door, a foot through it, and then 50 feet back to where you are. But why not just lean an inch perpendicular to our plane, then a foot parallel to our plane, and an inch back perpendicular to just suddenly appear between you and the wall?

Should you try to stand your ground and fight it, it won't be easy. It has the ability to remove itself from the 3-D frame of reference. Probably pretty easy, as instinctive as a dodge. A bullet may be fast enough to hit it, but if it understands the significance of you drawing a gun, it'll just vanish and watch from outside our plane until you let your guard down. See Fair Escape.

There is some small chance that if you can get it into a freefall, it won't be able to move into or out of our reality. Maybe. Assuming the freefall extends to it's whole body, the majority of which will already be outside our reality. Not really the sort of thing you want to test by jumping out of an airplane without a parachute while a monster from beyond is chasing you.

Variable Size and Mass, possibly even Shape-Shifting

To us, the fourth dimensional being will have variable size, and thus variable mass. The 4D character won't perceive any change, it's just a matter of how much of it's body extends into the 3D frame of reference. There's a number of tricks this allows:

• By reaching just a couple limbs or digits into our reality, it may give the impression of being more than one creature. We see half a dozen wormlike creatures intruding into our reality, but they're actually just its fingers.
  
• What you're seeing, by the way, is just a 3D cross-section of the creatures body. Or maybe even a cross section of its' clothing. Depending on the size of the thing in the fourth dimension, it may be able to radically change it's appearance and coloration, which you'd perceive as a limited form of shapeshifting. It may or may not be aware of what is visible to you, depending on how clearly the boundaries of our three dimensional space are demarcated from its point of view.
• Assuming it's intelligent and has knowledge of its own anatomy, it can keep its vital organs outside our reality, making a critical hit impossible. Our weapons may pass right through it from our point of view, looking like a mighty cleave, while making only a shallow wound as far as the creature is concerned.
• It was pointed out that it can see inside us. It can probably reach inside us as well. It may get automatic critical hits.
• Even an unintelligent 4D beast might be lucky enough to have the metaphysical blubber to be Immune To Bullets, especially if it's body extends a great distance in the fourth spatial dimension.
• If tool-using, it may only extend weapons or probes into our reality. Especially if it hunts 3D prey, what we encounter might in truth be no more than the point of a spear or fishhook.
• Likewise, it can "shrink down" to an unnoticeable size (from our point of view) for stealth purposes. It may have enough energy to exert great force even when manifesting only a tiny presence in our reality. Or, it may be limited to only having the force derived from the portion of it's mass that is in our frame of reference. The GM has some flexibility here: either it gets tiny but is weakened (so it will choose to manifest as largely as is practical), or it has a tiny stealth mode (like pushing with just your fingertip) where it can pull all kinds of poltergeist nonsense.

Plucked from our own Dimensions.

The 4th Dimensional being may have the ability to yank us out of our frame of reference and out into the greater reality. This could yank us into parallel worlds, or just a big void outside our universe. An angry 4D Being might maroon us in a radically different environment. Our senses won't be adapted to it, and we'll have a hard time figuring out what we're looking at.

It may even throw things at us, knocking us out our frame of reference. Or it could anchor us, leaving us rooted between worlds or fixed in space. And what if it just exhales steadily into our 3D space? Can it blow us loose without ever setting foot in our reality? Can it scramble our organs with a trans-dimensional bronx cheer?

Let's say the 4D being is kind enough to put us back. There's still some ways this could mess you up.

• It can pluck people and things out of our dimensional plane, flip them, and put them back. If it did this to you, your left-right symmetry would be reversed. Your face would look just a little different ("Is that a new hairdo?"), your heart would now be on the right side of your chest, and your handedness would change.
  
• Whether or not the flipping of the right and left hemispheres of your brain has other effects is pretty much up to the GM. You could ignore it, or it could justify some major personality alterations.
• Rather than a full flip, it's possible it might be able to just tilt you out of sync with our reality. You'd be facing handicaps that were inversely related to the fourth dimensional beings advantages. You might be split between multiple worlds, each cross-section facing a different parallel reality.

Fun With Forces.

The fourth dimensional being may be able to bend or ignore various forces and properties of the natural world. It may resist gravity, electromagnetism, and/or the strong nuclear force or weak nuclear forces. For an explanation of why, see Riemann's Bookworms.

If light is is a fourth-dimensional vibration, then it's possible the 4D being might appear as if it were made of light, or it might emit light with every motion it makes. This would be consistent with theories that it takes a lot of energy to breach dimensions. While I mentioned the ease with which a 4D critter can move into and out of our reality, there is the high likelihood doing so will take enormous amounts of energy. It's 4th Dimensional nature may give it that power, or it could be an extreme effort for it to interact with our reality.

If light is instead cast from some higher dimension, or cast from a different source withing the 4th Dimension, then we can assume a 4D object will cast a 3D shadow over three-dimensional space. In fact one way scientists attempt to visualize 4D objects is by contemplating their 3D shadows.

Time Travel

Because of how vanishing and reappearing dodges 3D understanding of Causality, it may seem that the 4D creature is a Time Traveler, moving into the future when it's actually just stepping outside our reality. Relativity and Spacetime are full of weirdness like that.

It's also possible to have a creature that moves freely in the Temporal Dimension instead of (or in addition to) a spatial dimension. Such a creature would combine the advantages listed above with genuine Time Travel, for a truly superior foe that kills you before you're even aware of it.

One other notion involves parallel universes and branching time. Let's assume the model of temporal physics where every action or decision creates multiple parallel worlds, one for each possible outcome. The Fourth-Dimensional Lifeform may drift between them freely, and it's actions may create such alternate worlds. In fact, it may have an infinite food supply made up of a single person (or a specific animal) that it likes to eat. Each time it snatches up that meal, it creates another world just like that one, except where the favorite meal hasn't been taken yet. If you think about it, our world could be just the latest variation on another - one that's identical except it's version of you is now a missing persons report. Meanwhile, just out of phase with our reality, the thing that eats only you is napping. Should it awake and grow hungry, it will hunt and devour you. Doing so will create a new reality, where a duplicate you exists, who's read this paragraph, and laughed it off, and another world with a duplicate you who read this paragraph and started trying to figure out how to fight back against the fourth-dimensional horror. Which you do you want to be?


Psychological Impact

Trying to anticipate the actions of a fourth-dimensional foe will be mind-bogglingly difficult, testing the limits of even a battle-hardened warrior with a degree in astrophysics. It's enough to drive you batty. See Alien Geometries and Go Mad From The Revelation for more ideas on how unnerving it would be to be hunted by a time-traveling dimension-hopping Eldritch Abomination.

Always A Bigger Fish

For added fun, there may be Fifth Dimensional creatures that can do to the 4D beasty all the nasty things it can do to us.

Sources
Wikipedia on the Fourth Dimension
Wikipedia on Spacetime
Hyperspace by Michio Kaku
Flatland: A Romance Of Many Dimensions by Edwin Abbott Abbott
Some of the works of H. P. Lovecraft, in particular From Beyond, depict creatures that might be Fourth Dimensional

Since very few resources exist that give serious thought to what the ramifications would be of a 4th Dimensional predator, I've had to extrapolate a bit. I feel pretty confident that I didn't mess anything up, but I should mention that I don't have a degree in physics. The parts I extrapolated are mostly couched in terms like "it may be possible", or "if light works this way", so that I don't pass off my own conjectures as certainty or scientific theory. Things I've read as bonafide scientific theory are phrased (above) more like "it can" or "you can't", more definitive than my own speculation, even in cases of theoretical things that haven't been proven yet. In other words, if a scientist tells you something on this page is just wrong, be inclined to believe them over me. If they claim something is wrong that I foot-noted, it may be time for someone (me? you? them?) to read up on the subject. Luckily, Hyperspace and Flatland are both quite enjoyable reads as well as being highly informative.

The version on ArcanaWiki has citations embedded indicating which source contributed or corroborated which ideas.

Game and Story Use

• To make a Monster or Alien really creepy or, well, alien, make it fourth dimensional.
• In Trail of Cthulhu, it is suggested that the Eldritch Abominations, or at least the really nasty ones, are fourth (or higher) dimensional beings. Not all of Great Cthulhu is shaped like a cross between an octopus and a dragon, just the part of him that passes through three-dimensional space is. See also Alien Geometries.
• Shadow People might be the sentient shadows of greater 4-D creatures that look down upon our reality, but never enter it.
• Alien Greys might be 4th Dimensional. It could explain UFOs that vary in size or vanish suddenly. They'd be able to abduct you without a trace, and you'd be powerless to move against them. See We Live In A Petri-Dish.

Coming up for air amidst all the zombies

I just spent the past several hours rounding out the Arcanawiki page on Zombies and various sub pages of zombie categories, types, and tropes, along with inspiration, ideas, and GMing advice on how to utilize them. If I never get bit by another zombie, it'll be too soon.


Update: That made me curious how many pages I'd made over at Arcana Wiki. I know my productivity has been up, and I've been writing a lot lately, but it's meant less here (and at my other blog).

Take a look at this list:
Romero Zombies N 19 May 2009 - 15:03:55
Rage Zombies N 19 May 2009 - 15:02:48
Voodoo Zombies N 19 May 2009 - 15:01:13
Zombie Pirates N 19 May 2009 - 15:00:12
Zombie Pirate N 19 May 2009 - 14:44:07
Voodoo Zombie N 19 May 2009 - 14:24:27
Zombie Legion N 19 May 2009 - 13:56:53
Rage Zombie N 19 May 2009 - 13:20:53
Romero Zombie N 19 May 2009 - 12:39:17
Zombie Gait N 19 May 2009 - 12:00:00
Zombie Infectee N 19 May 2009 - 11:39:23
Punishment N 19 May 2009 - 10:31:13
Bilboe N 19 May 2009 - 09:21:43
Pirates N 18 May 2009 - 16:17:48
Pirate N 18 May 2009 - 16:02:52
Piracy N 18 May 2009 - 14:56:53
Golden Age Of Piracy N 18 May 2009 - 14:39:34
Criminals N 18 May 2009 - 13:53:33
Social Bandit N 18 May 2009 - 13:51:40
Criminal N 18 May 2009 - 12:58:33
Cats N 18 May 2009 - 12:39:17
Wild West N 18 May 2009 - 11:55:19
The Old West N 18 May 2009 - 11:54:06
Bloody Benders N 18 May 2009 - 11:45:19
Polychlorinated biphenyl N 15 May 2009 - 10:39:20
Pan Prior N 14 May 2009 - 15:05:09
Kenya N 14 May 2009 - 14:21:54
Olorgesailie N 14 May 2009 - 14:18:49
Characterization N 14 May 2009 - 12:56:28
Accent Tropes N 14 May 2009 - 11:34:54
Bootlegging N 13 May 2009 - 15:27:35
Miombo Woodland N 13 May 2009 - 14:23:52
League Of Extraordinary Whatevers N 13 May 2009 - 13:49:01
Homer N 13 May 2009 - 12:38:56
Disaster looms with rising sea levels: islands N 12 May 2009 - 16:28:53
Guns And Gunplay Tropes N 12 May 2009 - 14:41:18
Evil Weapon N 12 May 2009 - 12:47:10
Artifact Of Doom N 12 May 2009 - 09:40:18
The Net (substance) N 11 May 2009 - 16:17:31
Alchemy N 11 May 2009 - 15:35:48
Conspiracy Theories N 11 May 2009 - 14:12:35
Coded Myth N 11 May 2009 - 14:08:08
Isaac Newton N 11 May 2009 - 12:33:26
Angel Of Death N 11 May 2009 - 10:32:13
Red Right Hand N 11 May 2009 - 09:58:05
Prehistoric Insect N 9 May 2009 - 21:15:42
Plastic Continent N 8 May 2009 - 12:18:54
Chinese Laborer N 7 May 2009 - 15:47:18
Cryptid N 7 May 2009 - 10:02:15
Kardashev Scale N 6 May 2009 - 16:38:16
Seacouver N 6 May 2009 - 14:15:36
adventure town N 6 May 2009 - 12:28:53
Dungeon Forest N 6 May 2009 - 12:20:55
Nan Madol N 6 May 2009 - 11:01:02
Ice Age N 6 May 2009 - 10:02:52
Artifacts N 6 May 2009 - 09:15:25
Role Playing Game N 4 May 2009 - 16:43:09
Somali Pirates N 4 May 2009 - 15:12:14
DUKW N 4 May 2009 - 15:08:11
EMP/SFM N 4 May 2009 - 14:22:22
Seattle Center N 4 May 2009 - 13:42:11
Space Needle N 4 May 2009 - 11:33:58
Washington N 4 May 2009 - 10:54:22
El Rey N 4 May 2009 - 09:30:23
Experience Music Project And Science Fiction Museum And Hall Of Fame N 2 May 2009 - 08:49:25
Public Domain Artifact N 1 May 2009 - 14:40:09
Phantom Time Hypothesis N 1 May 2009 - 13:45:15
Speculative Fiction Trope N 1 May 2009 - 11:25:07
Magic A Is Magic A N 1 May 2009 - 11:19:13
McGuffin N 1 May 2009 - 10:01:09
Tropes N 1 May 2009 - 09:14:59
Redirect to Trope.
Big Bad N 30 Apr 2009 - 20:49:23
Astrophysics N 28 Apr 2009 - 17:12:30
con artist N 28 Apr 2009 - 16:43:37
con men N 28 Apr 2009 - 16:42:00
World War Two N 28 Apr 2009 - 16:34:40
WW2 N 28 Apr 2009 - 16:33:17
WWII N 28 Apr 2009 - 16:29:10
Testing my redirect template for the first time.
Redirect N 28 Apr 2009 - 16:26:41
Dragons N 28 Apr 2009 - 16:08:00
Redirecting to Dragon
time traveler N 28 Apr 2009 - 16:01:31
Redirecting to Time Travelers.
Scaled Composites White Knight N 28 Apr 2009 - 15:38:08
Scaled Composites SpaceShipOne N 28 Apr 2009 - 15:27:48
Atmospheric Reentry N 28 Apr 2009 - 14:43:39
Space Is Cold N 28 Apr 2009 - 13:53:47
Temperature Of Outer Space N 28 Apr 2009 - 13:15:25
Space Exposure N 28 Apr 2009 - 12:27:57
Space Does Not Work That Way N 28 Apr 2009 - 10:47:25
Cyber Punk N 28 Apr 2009 - 10:21:09
You Cant Fight Fate N 27 Apr 2009 - 15:11:20
Vehicle N 27 Apr 2009 - 14:23:04
Genre Savvy N 24 Apr 2009 - 13:21:17
Temporal Physics Professor N 24 Apr 2009 - 08:46:06
Mythological Characters N 23 Apr 2009 - 18:47:59
Me Squad N 23 Apr 2009 - 16:44:19
Instant Guitar Lesson N 23 Apr 2009 - 15:47:13
Changed My Jumper N 23 Apr 2009 - 15:06:59
Future Google N 22 Apr 2009 - 17:43:18
Veteran Chrononaut N 22 Apr 2009 - 17:10:33
Bewildered Time Novice N 22 Apr 2009 - 16:04:53
Popfinition N 22 Apr 2009 - 15:22:09
Zeerust N 22 Apr 2009 - 14:23:42
Jimmy Carter N 22 Apr 2009 - 12:35:43
President Jimmy Carter's Sighting Of a UFO N 22 Apr 2009 - 10:57:49
Legend N 21 Apr 2009 - 13:10:28
Unidentified Flying Object N 21 Apr 2009 - 11:11:26
The Road To Area 51 N 20 Apr 2009 - 16:30:36
Raven Rock Mountain Complex N 20 Apr 2009 - 15:33:54
Post Apocalyptic Decay N 18 Apr 2009 - 20:52:31
Dragon N 18 Apr 2009 - 08:57:03
The Dragon N 18 Apr 2009 - 08:28:21
Sci Fi Writers Have No Sense Of Scale N 17 Apr 2009 - 15:17:46
Verisimilitude N 17 Apr 2009 - 08:43:32
Future Slang N 17 Apr 2009 - 08:07:10
Starfish Aliens N 16 Apr 2009 - 17:43:40
2010s N 16 Apr 2009 - 17:05:53
1896 N 16 Apr 2009 - 16:37:11
Seattle N 16 Apr 2009 - 16:06:38
Julius Beethoven Da Vinci N 16 Apr 2009 - 11:54:24
2012 N 16 Apr 2009 - 11:11:17
Mesoamerican Long Count Calendar N 16 Apr 2009 - 10:46:41
Mayincatec N 16 Apr 2009 - 10:00:30
Ancient Astronauts N 16 Apr 2009 - 09:08:15
Campbell Country N 16 Apr 2009 - 08:16:16
Glim Dropper N 13 Apr 2009 - 08:06:34
Pyramid Scheme N 13 Apr 2009 - 07:36:45
Intangible Time Travel N 12 Apr 2009 - 10:05:50
Mad Scientist N 9 Apr 2009 - 08:25:03
Manslaughter N 8 Apr 2009 - 16:35:20
Homicide N 8 Apr 2009 - 16:22:16
Murder N 8 Apr 2009 - 16:16:22
Godwins Law Of Time Travel N 8 Apr 2009 - 16:06:13
Tongs N 8 Apr 2009 - 15:45:20
Triads N 8 Apr 2009 - 15:30:23
Los Zetas N 8 Apr 2009 - 15:10:53
Drug Cartel N 8 Apr 2009 - 14:45:49
Anachronism Stew N 8 Apr 2009 - 13:25:29
A Little Something We Call Rock And Roll N 8 Apr 2009 - 12:49:31
Crimes N 8 Apr 2009 - 12:22:12
La Cosa Nostra N 8 Apr 2009 - 11:52:32
Mafia N 8 Apr 2009 - 11:21:41
r/K selection theory N 8 Apr 2009 - 08:44:04
How We Got Here N 7 Apr 2009 - 16:54:15
DarkMarket N 7 Apr 2009 - 13:57:21
With Great Power Comes Great Insanity N 7 Apr 2009 - 12:41:27
The Unpronounceable N 7 Apr 2009 - 09:16:10
Antikythera Mechanism N 6 Apr 2009 - 16:33:31
Out Of Place Artifact N 6 Apr 2009 - 15:07:46
Ultimate Evil N 6 Apr 2009 - 10:27:09
Sealed Evil In A Can N 5 Apr 2009 - 08:38:35
Cant Take Anything With You N 4 Apr 2009 - 19:33:39
Sharpened Spikes at Green Lake N 4 Apr 2009 - 16:34:12
Time Abyss N 3 Apr 2009 - 16:08:54
Chinese Launderer N 3 Apr 2009 - 15:53:46
Random Crimes N 1 Apr 2009 - 17:02:05
Town With A Dark Secret N 1 Apr 2009 - 16:24:00
Mind Rape N 1 Apr 2009 - 16:06:35
Melon Drop N 1 Apr 2009 - 11:53:19
Kid Sidekick N 1 Apr 2009 - 11:35:26
Alternate History N 1 Apr 2009 - 11:19:25
Mister Sandman Sequence N 1 Apr 2009 - 10:36:56
The Barber N 1 Apr 2009 - 09:52:50
Determined Homesteader N 1 Apr 2009 - 09:25:47
Rancher N 1 Apr 2009 - 09:11:58
Railroad Baron N 1 Apr 2009 - 08:42:17
Carhenge N 1 Apr 2009 - 08:19:12
Cattle Baron N 31 Mar 2009 - 16:22:39
The Pioneer N 31 Mar 2009 - 16:14:48
Mountain Man N 31 Mar 2009 - 16:03:15
Hunter Trapper N 31 Mar 2009 - 15:54:29
Camp Cook N 31 Mar 2009 - 15:41:51
Fastest Gun In The West N 31 Mar 2009 - 15:30:44
Posse N 31 Mar 2009 - 15:14:21
The Clueless Deputy N 31 Mar 2009 - 14:56:14
The Sheriff N 31 Mar 2009 - 14:33:08
Town Marshal N 31 Mar 2009 - 13:56:43
Hanging Judge N 30 Mar 2009 - 13:16:16
Circuit Judge N 30 Mar 2009 - 13:05:34
Young Gun N 30 Mar 2009 - 12:46:47
The Wannabe N 30 Mar 2009 - 12:24:14
Outlaw N 30 Mar 2009 - 12:03:37
The Rustler N 30 Mar 2009 - 11:30:57
The Drifter N 30 Mar 2009 - 11:08:04
Cowboy N 30 Mar 2009 - 10:31:24
The Gunslinger N 30 Mar 2009 - 08:12:21
Born In The Wrong Century N 27 Mar 2009 - 14:35:20
Medicine Man N 27 Mar 2009 - 11:47:09
Magical Native American N 27 Mar 2009 - 11:22:41
US Marshal N 26 Mar 2009 - 16:43:13
Prospector N 26 Mar 2009 - 16:21:53
Forty Niner N 26 Mar 2009 - 15:51:55
Motif Of Harmful Sensation N 26 Mar 2009 - 11:42:30
Deadlands N 25 Mar 2009 - 16:13:50
Wayback Trip N 25 Mar 2009 - 13:03:44
Time And Relative Dimensions In Space N 25 Mar 2009 - 12:39:13
The Western N 25 Mar 2009 - 11:31:29
The Wild West N 25 Mar 2009 - 11:07:33
The Man They Couldn't Hang N 25 Mar 2009 - 10:50:34
Big Bad Evil Guy N 25 Mar 2009 - 10:20:42
Go Mad From The Revelation N 25 Mar 2009 - 09:11:07
Gangs Of Old New York N 24 Mar 2009 - 13:27:48
Eldritch Abomination N 24 Mar 2009 - 10:06:14
Mental Time Travel N 24 Mar 2009 - 09:01:19
Remittance Man N 24 Mar 2009 - 08:00:42
Wasteland Elder N 24 Mar 2009 - 07:49:19
Glamour Failure N 23 Mar 2009 - 14:51:47
The Puppet Masters N 23 Mar 2009 - 13:42:41
Meek Townsman N 23 Mar 2009 - 13:06:44
Retired Gunfighter N 23 Mar 2009 - 12:36:41
Bucket Of Ears N 23 Mar 2009 - 11:57:31
Mirror Monologue N 23 Mar 2009 - 11:31:04
Coin Rolling Scam N 23 Mar 2009 - 10:58:47
Beethoven Was An Alien Spy N 23 Mar 2009 - 10:17:32
Pinkertons Agent N 23 Mar 2009 - 09:38:58
The Fill In The Blank Kid N 20 Mar 2009 - 17:11:36
Psychic Surgery N 20 Mar 2009 - 16:09:03
Alien Geometries N 20 Mar 2009 - 12:40:24
Ignorant Leveler N 20 Mar 2009 - 11:12:34
Time Travelers N 20 Mar 2009 - 10:23:05
Time Travel Tense Trouble N 20 Mar 2009 - 09:38:07
Soiled Dove N 20 Mar 2009 - 08:36:00
Rubber Band History N 19 Mar 2009 - 17:00:54
Out Of Time Out Of Mind N 19 Mar 2009 - 15:47:48
Timey Wimey Ball N 19 Mar 2009 - 15:25:14
Wild Stallion Rule N 19 Mar 2009 - 14:53:24
Pancho Villa N 19 Mar 2009 - 13:10:28
Bandito N 19 Mar 2009 - 12:51:10
Delayed Ripple Effect N 19 Mar 2009 - 11:43:15
My Own Grampa N 19 Mar 2009 - 11:23:26
The Dark Times N 19 Mar 2009 - 11:07:51
Lovecraft Country N 19 Mar 2009 - 10:11:04
Future Me Scares Me N 17 Mar 2009 - 17:28:43
Ontological Paradox N 17 Mar 2009 - 17:11:38
Autoinfanticide N 17 Mar 2009 - 16:32:07
Grandfather Paradox N 17 Mar 2009 - 15:50:42
Boom Stick N 17 Mar 2009 - 13:54:47
This Is My Boomstick N 17 Mar 2009 - 13:18:04
Fish Out Of Temporal Water N 17 Mar 2009 - 12:53:40
Lagrange Points N 16 Mar 2009 - 14:39:25
Novikov Self Consistency Principle N 16 Mar 2009 - 14:00:22
Movement of the Earth N 16 Mar 2009 - 13:28:14
Our Time Travel Is Different N 16 Mar 2009 - 12:58:35
Arc Number N 16 Mar 2009 - 12:06:23
Arc Words N 16 Mar 2009 - 11:49:44
Shill N 16 Mar 2009 - 10:31:19
Con Man N 16 Mar 2009 - 10:18:39
Badger Game N 16 Mar 2009 - 09:06:48
Big Screen Tv In The Back Of The Truck Scam N 16 Mar 2009 - 08:48:54
Thai Gem Scam N 16 Mar 2009 - 08:36:36
Pig In A Poke N 15 Mar 2009 - 15:57:30
1883 No Cents Liberty Head Nickel N 15 Mar 2009 - 13:51:19
Goldbricking N 15 Mar 2009 - 13:30:59
Internet Dating Scams N 15 Mar 2009 - 13:15:41
Romance Fraud N 15 Mar 2009 - 13:02:39
Spanish Prisoner N 14 Mar 2009 - 13:35:23
Wire Game N 14 Mar 2009 - 11:03:25
Televised Infomercial Scam N 14 Mar 2009 - 09:21:12
Money Box Scheme N 14 Mar 2009 - 08:43:52
Salting The Mine N 14 Mar 2009 - 08:25:01
confidence game N 13 Mar 2009 - 10:22:58
In Spite Of A Nail N 12 Mar 2009 - 15:32:44
For Want Of A Nail N 12 Mar 2009 - 15:18:09
Temporal Paradox N 12 Mar 2009 - 15:07:19
Time Paradox N 12 Mar 2009 - 15:03:42
Clock Roaches N 12 Mar 2009 - 14:33:35
Butterfly Of Doom N 12 Mar 2009 - 14:09:22
Ontological Inertia N 12 Mar 2009 - 13:46:57
Hitlers Time Travel Exemption Act N 12 Mar 2009 - 12:57:08
Continuum N 12 Mar 2009 - 12:12:03
Troy N 11 Mar 2009 - 17:05:29
1809 N 11 Mar 2009 - 12:39:00
Theodore Gericault N 11 Mar 2009 - 11:55:15
Gyrojet Weapons N 11 Mar 2009 - 09:09:07
LeMat Revolver N 10 Mar 2009 - 15:24:40

Now, admittedly, a number of those (especially ones from mid-march) are basically mirrors of pages at the TV Tropes Wiki (but even those involved coming up with a bunch of ideas on how to use them in an RPG), or redirect pages (especially near the top of the list). Just the same, I'm kinda pleased with myself. That list doesn't include any of my many edits and revisions, just new pages I made.

Post Apocalyptic Decay

I recently watched Life After People. It's a TV special (and soon to be a weekly series) about what would happen to our cities, technology, pets and environment if humanity suddenly died off or vanished. It captured the imagination nicely, and I started google-searching and wikipedia-hunting for other works on similar topics. (See also: World Without Us and Aftermath: Population Zero.

Before I knew it, I'd written over 3700 words on how to use these concepts and timeline in a roleplaying game, including a hybrid timeline drawing from the wikipedia pages on all of those sources. I put it up at Arcana Wiki. I think I'll mirror it here as well, since that was one of the original goals of this blog - to preserve gaming materials I'd put up on wikis and forums elsewhere.

This post is going to be pretty long. The version at Arcana Wiki will have better formating, and is probably the better read as a result. I probably won't take the time to fix the formatting here unless my original gets deleted at Arcana Wiki. Someone else there might have the good sense to edit me, eventually, since I tend to get a little verbose.

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Post Apocalyptic Decay

This page describes the affects on our planet, it's environment, and human technology and endeavor in an After The End scenario. Assume mankind is wiped out by some contagious and lethal supergerm, or taken away in The Rapture. What happens to our planet, our cities, and any scattered pockets of survivors?


Just how our world is altered will depend on what the nature of the Apocalypse is. The decisions you make for your campaign will color this information. If it's World War III, you'll have to worry about nuclear winter. If it's alien invasion, or a global pandemic, those will have consequences and aftershocks to affect this as well.

Just as important is on how long after the disappearance of man the campaign is set. The impact of time will be pretty radical, and is the bulk of what's detailed below.

Another important element is where the setting is on earth - coastal areas and rainforests will see the fastest degradation of man's monuments, and dry desert areas will preserve things the best. This is mostly addressed in the text that follows, but if setting a game in a very wet or very arid location, you'll want to adjust timeframes slightly.

The text below mentions survivors, since we're using this for gaming and at least the PCs are still alive. In order for these predictions to be accurate, though, far more than 99% of the population would have to be gone. Communities of even a few hundred survivors should have no trouble maintaining dwellings and some measure of technology. If more people survive in your world, then these descriptions may only apply to areas that are abandoned (for whatever reason).
A Few Hours Later
Psychological Trauma

This soon after the death or vanishing of humanity, the main focus is on the creepy ghost-town affect, and the mystery of what happened to the human race. PCs are probably among a scattered handful of those left on the earth, and they'll probably scramble to determine the fate of family and friends, scout for survivors, etc. Games with psychology and sanity rules should be smacking the players pretty hard.
Power Outages

Most Fossil-Fuel power plants shut down once their immediate supply of fuel is exhausted, within a few hours after mankind is gone. This causes local blackouts, which cascade across the power grid. Only places supplied by nuclear, hydroelectric, or wind power stay lit, and some of those blackout as power is drawn away from further down the wires.
Vehicular Dangers

If mankind left instantly, due to rapture or a disease that kills in minutes, then moving vehicles provide a challenge. Empty cars swerve and crash. They idle and pollute until their fuel supplies run out. Planes continue flying on autopilot until their jetfuel runs out, then they drop from the sky over a period of several hours. Trains collide or derail.
A Few Days Later

The ghost-town affect is still an omnipresent theme at this stage of the campaign. The initial shock may have passed, but survivors may still be facing denial, and are likely to seek out broadcasting towers and long-range radios to send messages that they hope will reach other survivors.

Vehicles are no longer a danger (or running), but the other issues that manifested within hours of mankind's fate grow more pronounced.

Blackouts spread further on the power grid.

Many subway systems and urban tunnels would flood as no one is around to activate the pumps that keep them dry.
Animals

House pets trapped in homes would begin to starve, though they'll have water leaking out of defrosting freezers. Pets capable of getting outside would escape and fend for themselves. Those bred for cute appearance, with short legs and small mouths, would face serious disadvantages. Given this situation most players will be likely to take pity on them and spend time opening doors or breaking windows so pets can escape.

Electric fences on zoo pens are no longer functional, and starving animals will eventually make a break for it. In the early stages they'll stay contained, or feast on each other, and not be a threat to PCs who don't actually go to the zoo.
Corpses

If mankind died, instead of disappeared, the bodies will begin to stink and rot. Scavengers will pick at the bodies, and most human corpses will be crawling with insects. These sights should lead to more psychological trauma in games that support such things.

In the big cities, there's just too many corpses for the PCs to bury them all. The stench of rotting meat will be awful. Smart survivors will grab supplies on day one, and drive to less densely populated areas for at least the first few weeks.
Toxins and Radiation

Nuclear reactors automatically enter safe mode and are rendered harmless. However, the on-site storage for spent power rods no longer has the water circulation needed to cool it. It boils away, and releases clouds of radioactive gas. This results in radioactive rain, and thus groundwater contamination downwind from power plants.

Similar problems happen within toxins (instead of radiation) at many factories. If the smelting furnaces, chemical extractors, etc were running when mankind vanished, safety measures and waste containment would likely fail. Industrial sites could see an accumulation toxic sludge, harmful vapors, or explosive compounds.
A Few Weeks Later

Mice, rats, roaches and gulls will see a temporary upswell in population as food is briefly plentiful and easy to acquire. They take over the supermarkets and dumps.
Produce rots, followed by things that had been refrigerated or frozen. The insects and rodents eat into boxed and bagged foods.
If humans died, the insects that feed on them will also have population spikes, but eventually be forced to compete for dwindling resources as the corpses are cleaned.

Those dogs that don't starve will begin to gather into packs, and a pecking order will develop.
Supplies

At this point, PCs will be unlikely to have any guilt over raiding abandoned stores and houses for supplies.
Canned goods are still a plentiful source of food for PCs, but the trip to the grocery store to retrieve them will be a very unpleasant experience thanks to rotting food and vermin infestation.
Clothing, camping supplies, jewelry, firearms, etc, are also readily available. The buildings are still sound, and these sorts of stores probably won't feature nearly the level of infestation that plagues the supermarkets.
Farms

Most of the cows will have died from starvation or udder infections. Only free range cattle will be likely to survive. In rural areas predators and scavengers (including domesticated dogs) will feed on dead penned up cattle.

Domesticated chickens probably won't survive either, as their survival skills have been bred out of them, and predators are many. Those kept in tiny cages in factory farms will starve or peck each other to death.
A Few Months Later

The survivors will have largely grown used to the ghost town effect by this point. Increased presence of animal life, however, is one of the big themes of a campaign set in this timeframe.
Animals

Rats and mice start abandoning homes and supermarkets, and range further out for food. Hawks, and coyotes come to prey on the tail end of the rodent explosion. Animals have definitely noticed the absence of man at this point, and wildlife will infiltrate the suburbs. Those housecats that didn't get trapped in a house and starve will have plenty to feed on, and will quickly adapt to the new conditions.

Cockroaches, having exhausted the actual food in our buildings, will eat paper, cardboard, and glue. PCs who realize this may struggle to protect libraries from insect invaders.

Large zoo predators will range further out, as the supply of their natural prey is exhausted. PCs may be prepared to deal with packs of dogs, swarms of insects, and rodent infestations, …but a tiger?
Supplies

Canned food is still good, and exists in sufficient quantities in large cities to sustain the PCs for some time. Accessing it is not nearly as much of a problem as it once was, as the supermarkets are no longer swarming with vermin.
A Few Years Later

The PCs are used to the ghost town affect by now. However, aging and disuse will cause buildings creak and groan, and that, plus animal intruders, may cause unstable NPC survivor to grow paranoid. The buildings themselves will remain stable for now. If you don't mind stairs, skyscrapers and other tall buildings are a good place to stay - the corpses are no longer fresh, the plants and animals haven't gotten very far up the buildings, and they provide shelter from the elements.

The last of the Hydroelectric Power Plants fail around the one year mark, and the nighttime world returns to a level of darkness the likes of which it hasn't seen in centuries.
Animals

Wild animals would move into the cities in large numbers. The PCs are probably used to this by now. Unless survivors are numerous or very active (or live in tall buildings), wild animals will never be far away. The migratory patterns of land animals may resume, as there are no more busy highways to interrupt them.

Most of the vermin who had major population spikes in mans immediate wake will now have reduced numbers, as food supplies have dwindled and predator populations increased.
Overgrowth

A new visual to spring on the players is how plantlife has expanded into urban terrain. Plants will sprout within the cracks in streets, sidewalks, and buildings. Within five years, most urban areas will be covered with grasses, vines and saplings. Ivy crawls up the walls unchecked. Roads will disappear beneath the clover. Non-native plants that were formerly tended by gardeners will have either died off or spread out of control, depending on how well they deal with the local climate.
A Few Decades Later

Former garden vegetables now resemble wild strains, and are less palatable. Survivors who've hunkered down and engaged in controlled agriculture as opposed to nomadic hunting and gathering won't face this particular problem.
Buildings

Predominantly wooden houses have burnt and rotted away, unless they are being actively maintained by PCs or NPCs. The roofs will collapse before the walls, and trees may grow within them after the roofs are gone. Unchecked by man, termites will prosper and consume residential areas, so even houses maintained by PCs might start to have issues.

Brick and masonry buildings are weakened by salts and plants, but many still stand, and any maintained by PCs should be fine.

Buildings in arid climates fare the best, those in coastal or rainforest areas deteriorate quickly. Lowland and coastal cities are swallowed up by (or washed out to) the sea as locks and dams fail due to disrepair.

As the window sealants succumb to the weather, windows in skyscrapers crack and fall to the ground far below. Walking between the skyscrapers is hazardous due to the falling glass, though the concrete and steel buildings themselves are still stable. Steel structures show stress and corrosion, but still stand.

Suspension bridges, however, will give out. It only takes a few corroded cables to start a chain reaction that collapses them.
Animals

Thanks to neutering practices while mankind was around, many of the large dock packs will fail to sustain their numbers. Larger domesticated dogs will likely be accepted into wolf packs, and may interbreed with wolves. Even if the crossbreeding doesn't happen, wolf territory and numbers will expand dramatically in the absence of humans.

As the windows of skyscrapers crack and fall, pigeons and other birds will nest within the building frames.
Vehicles

Most automobiles will have rusted out and been overgrown. Tires have deflated, but are still intact. Within 75 years most cars aren't even recognizable unless you dig through the overgrowth - only their tires and plastic components will be the least bit salvageable.

Coral reefs will form around abandoned ships in harbors and beaches. While ships washing up on individual beaches is rare when you look at the short term, after several decades they'll start to accumulate. There are still plenty of ghost ships adrift on the sea at this point.
Toxins and Radiation

Rains have dispersed the radioactive clouds the Nuclear Power Plants emitted, and buried or scattered the particles. Life will return to the areas around the powerplants and factories, and only the most concentrated pollutants will keep plants and animals away. By this point you might not realize there's something toxic nearby until you're almost standing in it.

Satellites fall from the sky over time, looking like shooting stars. Only a few reach the ground to start fires. Some will have nuclear reactors, and without anyone monitoring their safety failures, the debris may contaminate large areas.
A Century Later
Remains of Technology

Houses have vanished in areas at all prone to hurricanes or flooding. Wood support beams will have rotted, and the waters will wear away at bricks and mortar. The next big storm washes away even the bits that can't degrade.

Tin cans are corroding and degraded. Should you find a can that's appears to be intact, the food inside it is probably unsafe by now. Aluminum cans are faded, but not corroded.

Abandoned tires finally start to decompose. All that's left of cars is just the most durable plastic pieces, and corroded bits of metal. Even cars maintained by the initial survivors will be non-functional now. Unless enough people survived with the knowledge and resource to make new ones, they are lost.

Books that weren't personally saved by human Survivors are completely lost. Weather penetrated the library roofs, rain molded the books, and vermin ate the pages. Much of technology, science, and philosophy will have to be discovered all over again. PCs hoping to preserve the knowledge of man will need to gather the books in an arid climate, dry them out, and seal them in aluminum, plastic, or pottery.
Plants and Animals

Vines grow up into the steel and concrete skyscrapers, turning them into multistoried ecosystems. Rodents and birds move into them when the plants do. Feral cats become the ultimate predator in this environment, capable of climbing and skulking through the layers.

Most animal species reproduce quickly enough to have repopulated themselves to levels approaching those before the industrial revolution.

Human survivors have certainly reproduced, but mankind has longer gestation and slower onset of maturity than most of the animal kingdom, so it'll be a while before we hit our old levels again.

The sea is once again teeming with life as it did before commercial fishing. The oldest of individual fishes will reach sizes they rarely (or never) did when man was hunting them.
Another Century Or Two After That

Assuming the PCs didn't get themselves killed off before establishing a community of survivors and future generations, they could be the new founding fathers.
Plants and Animals

Elephant populations expand dramatically in regions where they'd previously been endangered by Ivory Poachers. They fear no predators now.

Winters are colder than they were when humans were around. There's less pollution, fewer fires, and no cities to hold in the warmth.

Rodents, birds and cats are displaced (or killed) as the skyscrapers collapse.
Buildings

All that remains of houses is the plastic, aluminum, and stainless steel items that were within them. Pots and pans, faded toys and utensils, parts of appliances can be found amid the undergrowth. Suburbs have reverted to forest.

Subways and tunnels in urban areas, which had flooded long ago, cave in. This collapses many skyscrapers before the time they would have normally become unstable on their own.

Other large steel structures collapse from corrosion and disuse over the centuries. Proximity to water is a large factor in how fast they degrade. When one of these buildings comes down, it'll be a sight to behold (and very dangerous to those near it). Concrete buildings slowly succumb to moisture as well, as the rusting rebar reinforcements breaks them from within.
Other Debris

The last of the ghost ships has washed ashore or sunk. Ocean beaches are littered with rusting hulls.

Metal casings on atomic bombs corrode away, leaving radioactive cores exposed.

Aluminum cans slowly degrade over the course of 200-500 years of exposure. Plastic may break into smaller pieces as it weathers, but does not chemically break down.
Other substances likely to survive beyond this point are ceramics, bronze, and radioactive isotopes.
A Millenium Later

The survivors have had long enough to reproduce and relearn lost technologies, if they didn't learn their lessons they could rebuild quickly enough to do this all over again.

Modern cities disappear entirely, buildings having long ago collapsed. Their wreckage has now been been broken apart by the roots of the trees now growing atop their wreckage. Plastic items remain, but are broken by roots an buried under layers of new topsoil.

A new ice age expands, further obfuscating and damaging whatever stone walls and well-constructed artifacts may have miraculously survived to this point.

Only a handful of man-made structures can still be detected: Hoover Dam, Mount Rushmore, The Pyramids, the Great Wall of China. The rock ones might stay recognizable for hundreds of thousands of years. Perfect for a Planet of the Apes Ending, though Lady Liberty herself has long since corroded and collapsed.
Much, Much Later

Chemical pollutants in the soil, present since the start of the industrial revolution, are finally cleansed away after tens of thousands of years.

Exposed nuclear bomb cores are far less dangerous, having met their half life several times over, though they're still detectable against the background radiation. Depleted Uranium still hasn't reached it's half-life, though, and it's tough enough to survive the passage of ice ages.

Bits of plastic remain for millions of years - it doesn't photodegrade, it just breaks into smaller pieces. Styrofoam likewise has in indefinite lifespan, it might never break down. Individual styrofoam beads and tiny flakes of plastic will be found in the soil and on beaches for ages to come.
4 to 5 Billion Years Later

The sun swells as it nears death, raising the temperature of the planet beyond what multicellular life can endure. Microbial extremophiles survive for a million years beyond that. Eventually, though, the expansion of the sun sets the earth ablaze, and all is swallowed in fire.
Not On This Earth

It's possible the PCs aren't on the earth when the apocalypse happens. What evidence will be found as they approach and try to land?
Returning from Space

The final radio and television signals of Humanity degrade into the background radiation after they travel a light year or two, rather than the waves continuing across the cosmos infinitely as had once been thought. If the setting had manned deep space probes out before whatever calamity befell the earth, those missions might have expected there was a good chance they'd lose contact with earth during the voyage. Radio silence won't be disturbing to them until they get back within a light year of earth. They'll certainly be confused or scared when they return to find humanity mysteriously gone and their landing pads overgrown. Genre Savvy characters might hit on the planet of the apes angle pretty quickly.

If they approach on the night side of the planet, the lack of lights on cities will be very noticeable, and very disturbing. Radio break up could just be solar interference or equipment malfunction, but a dark planet means something really bad has happened back home.
Meanwhile, On The Moon

Items left on the Moon will stick around for millions of years, even those that would have been unrecognizable after a year on earth. There's no atmosphere, moisture, or bacteria on the moon to break them down. Long after man has passed, aliens exploring this region could learn of us by finding things left in our various lunar landings. Unless that changes somehow, things on the moon should be perfectly preserved until the Earth or the moon are destroyed.

Sources / Bibliography
1. Books: World Without Us by Alan Weisman
2. World Without Us website
3. Wikipedia summary of World Without Us
4. TV: Life After People on the History Channel
5. Wikipedia summary of Life After People
6. TV: Aftermath: Population Zero on the National Geographic Channel
7. Wikipedia summary of Aftermath: Population Zero


Game and Story Use
* Hopefully very useful for an After The End campaign.
o The first third of the page could provide a few ideas for any Twenty Minutes Into The Future game that features some sort of disaster.
* May be helpful for setting Alternate History or Lost Civilizations in your campaign setting. Turns out, as long as a civilization didn't develop plastics, aluminum, radioactive isotopes, or advanced chemistry, it can vanish without a trace a few hundred years after societal collapse. Atlantis, Hyborea, Mu, Pre-Desert Sahara, or some unknown culture in Antarctica could have hit an almost Wild West level of technology without leaving signs of it's passage. Much more advanced than that, though, and we'd be swimming in Out Of Place Artifacts.
* You could give a Planet Of The Apes Ending to a fantasy setting. After several months of play with only very subtle hints the players are likely to miss (describing bits of broken plastic as gems or magic eggs or whatever), have the PCs pursue the orcish bandits (or whatever) back into their hills and find Mount Rushmore or the Hoover Dam or just a superdungeon, that turns out to be Site R. The players would get it, even if their characters didn't.
* How about a sci-fi version of Roanoke Colony, where the PCs arrive to find a formerly-prosperous colony world empty? They have to figure out why it went dark, and how recently, so that they can know if this is a threat to other colonies.

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After all that, I find myself wanting to play some Gamma World.

Arcane things in Moderation

So, a few weeks ago, I gushed about Arcana Wiki. Since then, I've been spending a lot of time there, making pages on a huge number of topics. So much so, that they just made me one of the moderators.

I had to reply with an email that basically said "Thanks, but since I've got family flying in to town tonight, I expect I won't have time to do much moderating or posting for the next week and a half."

Speaking of which, my folks are flying in to town tonight, and I probably won't be doing any gaming for a week and a half, so don't surprised if this blog also sits idle during that time.

Theodore Gericault

I've name dropped Theodore Gericault in my Trail of Cthulhu campaign. Probably, it's just a verisimilitude-rich nugget of background flavor, but you never know. It came up that the recently murdered Mayor in my setting had previously purchased some unknown works by Gericault.

And yet, for no reason in particular, I wrote up a bit on Gericault over at Arcana Wiki.

More Arcana Wiki Meme

I couldn't believe Arcana Wiki lacked a page on Memes, so I added one. I've felt for a long time that they've got some spectacular gaming potential, and I used them a little in my Scion campaign. It was fun dreaming up ways to color Memes in an RPG:

• Memes could, within the context of an RPG, turn out to be a form of alien life, supernatural creature, or wizardry. It's not just a catchy pop song, it's a mind-warping horror from another world!
• Given a critical threshold of believers, a meme could develop into a Mythago or Egregore.
• A particularly virulent meme could result in a rapid transformation of a society. Consider Dutch Tulipomania in 1637, or the rise of Nazi Germany. In RPG terms, a society "attacked" by a meme could "reverse alignment" in just a few weeks.

That's some heady stuff, and not necessarily easy to work into just any old game.

So, I added a couple of concrete noun pages while I was at it: a page on LeMat Revolvers, and a page on Gyrojets. The wiki's gun page was just a stub, and needed some content. While I'm no firearms expert, those oddball historical guns were something I knew a touch about (and more importantly, I knew what sources to reference for more data) so I could summarize them easily.

My writing about the LeMat last night inspired someone else to put up a page on the Buntline Special, which is an even cooler western firearm that I'd all but forgotten about. I'd forgotten how much fun contributing to a wiki can be.

pimping the Arcana Wiki meme

Yesterday, I started posting to the Arcana Wiki. It's a fledgling wiki, less than a year old, but it's got some serious potential. It's similar to Wikipedia or the TV Tropes Wiki, except specifically aimed at gaming and gamers. Thus far, the articles tend to be much briefer than either of those longer-established wikis.

What makes Arcana Wiki cool is that each (or at least most) articles end with a "Game and Story Use" section, where various plot hooks and character concepts are provided, to explore ways in which the topic of that entry could be used in an RPG. It's not just an encyclopedia, it more like a big group brainstorm of neat things you could do in a role-playing game. Most pages start with the accepted facts on a topic, and then wrap up with conspiracy theories, what if's, ways you could twist it in an RPG, plotlines this topic would suggest, etc. With gamers being the intended audience, it can devote pages to subjects that would only get a skeptical gloss-over (or be vulnerable to constant flame-wars over how to edit it) on wikipedia.

I plan on contributing to Arcana Wiki quite frequently, and you might consider doing so, to. Come on, you know ya wanna. It'll be fun.

(Even if you don't contribute, you're still welcome to steal ideas from it, as that's clearly the point of the endeavor.)