Non OTU: Best City for the Apocalypse?

[savage]

T2k, Dinosaurs and Cadillacs, Twilight 2k, Morrow Project, or other games

Within the next 20 years, on Earth:
Washington DC, Moscow, Beijing, Berlin are gone. The world slides into collapse. Every city has been hit.

Modern society is collapsing for any number of reasons:
A zombie plague, massive pandemic, limited tactical nuclear war, limited alien invasion, uplifted race rebellion, AI gone amuck, asteroid collisions, an Ice Age, resource collapse or any other reason you can think of.

Things to remember:
- 1 million plus population in the early 21st century
- Mass depopulation of the Earth (pick the scenario)
- up to 20 years after the fall (you've been there a while and survived) - but if you want to describe a place during the fall or earlier go ahead.

What city(s) would you choose for a specific apocalypse?

One could choose islands with lower populations or mountain locations. Those are the common choices because we think a big wall will keep us safe. Those towns will be foraging, raiding parties everywhere. Town wars... farms without alignment are toast.

Your one of the leaders, hiding in plain sight. People are flocking to your area...maybe. You find yourself in a city somewhere in the world. Perhaps you moved there for business, or have a vacation rental for the summer. Or you live there or relocated there for any reason you choose? Your an accepted citizen not an invader. A leader perhaps.

Which city is the best for holding out against the catastrophe? Which City slides into the collapse and may still hold the opportunity to rebuild? Which do you choose? Here is a list of Disaster films, choose wisely and define a scenario.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_disaster_films

Which City do you CHOOSE? And Why?
Best Cities 20 years after the Apocalypse? Why? Scenario?
New York (Planet of the Apes, )
San Francisco (Dawn of the Planet of the Apes)
Miami
Los Angeles (Earthquake, ID, Last Man on...)
Honolulu
Tokyo, Japan (Godzilla)
Atlanta (The Walking Dead)
Chicago (Transformers...)
Buenos Aires, Argentina
Tampa Bay
Sydney, Australia (Road Warrior)
London (28 Weeks Later)
Hong Kong, China (Armageddon)
Houston
Paris
Munich
St Petersburg, Russia
Jerusalem, Israel (World War Z)
Rome, Italy
Another city over 1 million people today (early 21st century)



I had 3:
Honolulu (remote, agriculture, fishing, naval base) - zombie apocalypse, virus strain, uplift race failure,
Tampa Bay (multiple peninsulas/islands, military base, extensive medical resources, agriculture, and fishing) - same as above
Orlando (Other) (lots of agriculture, hotels to hold up in and turn into communities, the Gaylord is enormous, Cape Canaveral is close with some military assets, freeways are barriers) and a lot of resources. - Virus, uplift failed, limited nuclear war, maybe asteroid hit.

Pick your city, pick your disaster, describe why you like the city for rebuilding the world. Have fun! Don't run to a town and not play! Put together a scenario explaining the situation.

 

[whartung]

Off the cuff, none of them.

But it depends on the nature and speed of said apocalypse.

 

[Blue Ghost]

Y2k?

... someplace in the midwest ... maybe in Canada. Someplace with lots or parkland and access to fresh water. I don't know ... Calgary? Vancouver?

 

[flykiller]

But it depends on the nature and speed of said apocalypse.

yeah. but the best approach is to look at why cities first formed and grew in the first place - water, farmland, and converging trade routes. places like new orleans, sacramento, and portland come to mind. short-term they could be pretty bad, but cities will start over in the same places they began for the same reasons.

 

[savage]

The poll is now available. Moving to the wilds is not an easy option. Your in a city! What disaster would you choose? What City are you in? Provide the scenario.
Perhaps your immune or survivor instinct kicked in.

 

[savage]

I recently saw Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, and World War Z. In DotPotA San Francisco is trying to pull itself out of a pandemic. A rather well written disaster the residence make a few crucial mistakes. In WWZ, Jerusalem stands as a safe location against the zombie apocalypse but yet again the residence make crucial mistakes.


20 years later after the initial disaster, I'd choose the following:
Honolulu/ Tampa Central to a region, has access to military assets and agriculture. A great location for opening up trade. Yet remote enough to avoid basic attacks.

Others might be Orlando or Denver:
In WWZ, Orlando becomes a safe location. Denver has the mountains and plaines making defense easier.

 

[flykiller]

san fran, hands down. big harbor, defensible location, decent climate, lots of farmland and forests nearby, lots of water, huge waterfowl flocks year-round, fishing, ineffective gun control meaning lots of guns and ammo laying around.

la, absolutely not, nothing but irrigated desert. miami no way, no agriculture. atlanta no way, too hard to work in the summer. etc.

can't say anything about the non-american cities.

In WWZ, Jerusalem stands as a safe location against the zombie apocalypse but yet again the residence make crucial mistakes.

they didn't make any mistakes. sometimes you just lose. (had a hard time accepting that the "tenth man" could find the money to build a hundred foot cement wall around an entire city, and then build it, in a few weeks time, let alone persuade anyone else to go along with it. more likely they would have said "oh we can't do that, let's spend the money on a much smaller retreat that saves just the important people - such as, well ... ourselves!, shazam, how about that?")

didn't see dawn, didn't care to watch a righteous ape revolution.

 

[whartung]

Well, then I'll simply say Los Angeles.

Why? It has the best climate around. Anything will grow here, year around. We have water (water to support 15M people, no. But post apocalypse, that won't be the problem). We have most every imaginable terrain nearby -- the sea for food, the mountains for lumber, the desert for scavenged solar panels. We're also pretty much immune from any reasonable sea level rise.

We have complete industry and infrastructure here. We've probably manufactured everything at some point in LA. There is a huge amount of technology scattered about the southland. So, lots of scavenging and bootstrapping capability here.

None of the major cities in the US are sustainable in an apocalyptic event, so from that point of view, it really doesn't matter what city you pick.

Once whatever rioting and violence that follows the catastrophe settles down, LA will be a great place to rebuild.

 

[flykiller]

It has the best climate around.

"how about this weather? it never rains!" a bit hard on the tomato plants though ....

the mountains for lumber

yeah man, the los angeles national forest is nearby! what, you've never heard of it? that's because it consists of nothing but sage brush. you pass the signs, "now entering the los angeles national forest" and think, ok, maybe it's over the next hill ... maybe the next hill ... somewhere around here ... and then you pass a sign saying, "now leaving the los angeles national forest" and you're looking back thinking, "what?" ....

the desert for scavenged solar panels.

good point. maybe you could use electric golf carts to go get them and bring them back. watch out for the paiute indians though, they may object ....

We have complete industry and infrastructure here.

you did. most of it is in china now, bought for scrap and melted down to make iphones ....

None of the major cities in the US are sustainable in an apocalyptic event

(oh, now we're down to "it doesn't matter"!)

true enough. which is why the primary consideration is not the city infrastructure itself, but the location. la is desert and not much else.

 

[McPerth]

yeah. but the best approach is to look at why cities first formed and grew in the first place - water, farmland, and converging trade routes. places like new orleans, sacramento, and portland come to mind. short-term they could be pretty bad, but cities will start over in the same places they began for the same reasons.

(bold is mine)

Maybe we think on different disasters, but the first thing I thought about was just the opposite, an isolated place, that use to be more self suficient and where any disaster is likely to be lessened or delayed in arrival...

 

[flykiller]

an isolated place, that use to be more self suficient and where any disaster is likely to be lessened or delayed in arrival...

isolated places are NOT self-sufficient. they are tenable only because they are supported by a multitude of products produced by the cities. if la and san fran and portland and seattle were to disappear then places like idaho and wyoming would rapidly dwindle down towards populations of zero. the minimum possible social structure, the tribal village, is tenable only if you are willing to live in a mud or grass hut and tolerate 50% infant mortality, a limited diet, and twelve hour work days devoted to survival - and only if located in a highly fertile area. there is a reason why primitive tribes are so sensitive about land issues and fight genocidal wars over land boundaries.

the only advantage offered by "isolated places" is the minimal contact with hordes of people suddenly cut off from their normal source of supplies and rendered lawless and desperate in their quest for survival. that's not to make light of such an advantage, as it might be a decisive issue in a sudden event. but this situation will be quite short in duration, perhaps a year at most. then it will be time to return to the places where survival is easiest, and that will be on the sites of many modern major cities.

and that's not to say an isolated retreat out in the middle of nowhere will be safe from lawlessness. the single most effective strategy for individual survival in such times will be banditry, robbery, and home invasion of "secure retreats". a rogue national guard unit with mortars will simply roll over the most secure and defended "survivalist" retreat in a day or two, and then take all their stuff and move on. and even if a retreat is successful, one of the members may decide he's better off without all the other deadweight baggage ....

it's a hard scenario.

 

[aramis]

isolated places are NOT self-sufficient. they are tenable only because they are supported by a multitude of products produced by the cities.

Bull.

Lots of isolated places in Oregon and Alaska where a small community can be self sufficient (at TL1-2), but which are isolated and largely uninhbited because there's no way to get trade into/out of the isolated valley safely and reliably.

For example, Alsea, Oregon, population about 6,000, is a wide spot in the valley which Hwy 34 runs through; it's a remnant logging town, with outlying farms sufficient to feed it. There are uninhabited valleys within 5 miles that have good streams, lots of wood, plenty of game, and which would be far harder to get to than the coast, despite being closer. Clear some trees, form terraces, and farm the * out of it... Plenty of rain, good sun. My folk's property - several miles outside of town - could easily be farmed to support the family (my grandfather used to grow his own veggies, and raised poultry), and at present has only "accidental" crops planted... Pears, Apples, Peaches, 7 kinds of berries. Deer come through often; racoons, possums, and mountain lions on the property regularly. Fish in the summer. Birds year round.

 

[flykiller]

isolated places are NOT self-sufficient. they are tenable only because they are supported by a multitude of products produced by the cities.

Bull.

nice list of nature's bounty. really, it is.

take a look at your shoes. how long will they last? your pants and shirts? heavy jacket? can you make replacements with local resources? can you treat an infected cut with local resources? if you lose your axe head or break your saw (used to be a real pioneer disaster, that), can you forge new ones? can you make a flint axe head? if you break or lose your glasses, can you ... well, I can't imagine what you would do. used to be a tremendous problem, hunters would get old and far-sighted, no longer able to hunt AND useless around the village.

and let's not mention ammunition. can you make a bow and use it successfully? or kill a rabbit with a spear? "come closer you <blankety blank blank blank blank blank> bunny ...."

how about dental floss and tooth brushes? death from dental cavity used to be common.

and what is your land's carrying capacity? 'cause you can bet everybody else has filed away in the back of their mind just how great your place is, and in an end-of-the-world event you can expect lots and lots of strangers to be driving up in RV's, landing in private planes, and docking in private boats, all of them heavily armed (before they bring ANYthing else) and looking to share your bounty ....

 

[flykiller]

good heavens, TWO votes for unnamed locations? where-away, gentlemen?

 

[jcrocker]

I know someone who works for the public library here in Winnipeg. They got an email from a man in Texas who was writing about a survival scenario where the characters hunker down in rural Manitoba, and was hoping to find some locals to fact-check for him.

The region he'd picked is called the Interlake. It's between two big lakes and a bunch of little ones, so water isn't a problem. There are small towns for supplies, lots of farm country, lots of little woods for firewood, some bigger trees further out. There's fishing on the lakes, and while yes it can hit -40 in the depths of winter, unless the zombies are gargling antifreeze, that's a plus. It's also about an hour's drive north of Winnipeg, which is as big a center as there is in the province, all your urban stuff would be there.

 

[Blue Ghost]

Foster City, California.

 

[flykiller]

Interlake - It's also about an hour's drive north of Winnipeg, which is as big a center as there is in the province, all your urban stuff would be there.

well, including all the urban zombies. the point of a retreat is to get away from that.

(that's one problem I have with this "retreat" idea - "run away but stay close" defeats the purpose of either)

Foster City

that ... looks promising. watch out for 50bmg et al, I know it's illegal in california but there'll be a few and they'll have clear shots across all that water.

 

[Jame]

I'm nowhere near any of those. Well, NYC, but that's still like 400 miles away.
Hopefully there won't be an apocalypse as I'd get killed by some jerk while still learning how to survive on my own.

 

[flykiller]

I'd get killed by some jerk while still learning how to survive on my own.

by no means would you be the only one.

 

[McPerth]

isolated places are NOT self-sufficient. they are tenable only because they are supported by a multitude of products produced by the cities. if la and san fran and portland and seattle were to disappear then places like idaho and wyoming would rapidly dwindle down towards populations of zero. the minimum possible social structure, the tribal village, is tenable only if you are willing to live in a mud or grass hut and tolerate 50% infant mortality, a limited diet, and twelve hour work days devoted to survival - and only if located in a highly fertile area. there is a reason why primitive tribes are so sensitive about land issues and fight genocidal wars over land boundaries.

the only advantage offered by "isolated places" is the minimal contact with hordes of people suddenly cut off from their normal source of supplies and rendered lawless and desperate in their quest for survival. that's not to make light of such an advantage, as it might be a decisive issue in a sudden event. but this situation will be quite short in duration, perhaps a year at most. then it will be time to return to the places where survival is easiest, and that will be on the sites of many modern major cities.

and that's not to say an isolated retreat out in the middle of nowhere will be safe from lawlessness. the single most effective strategy for individual survival in such times will be banditry, robbery, and home invasion of "secure retreats". a rogue national guard unit with mortars will simply roll over the most secure and defended "survivalist" retreat in a day or two, and then take all their stuff and move on. and even if a retreat is successful, one of the members may decide he's better off without all the other deadweight baggage ....

Your reasoning just confirms me that we think on different kinds of disasters.

No place is fully self suficient, but cities are even less than isolated places, and the more trading the city is, the more dependent on outside ressources.

In a generalized disaster scenario, cities will not produce anything, so those products produced by cities would not exist anymore once the stocks were depleted. And cities would probably become infection focus (due to corpses and such) and more ressource deprived (this depending on the specific kind of disaster, if it destroys them or just the people) than more isolated places.

it's a hard scenario.

We agree here

nice list of nature's bounty. really, it is.

take a look at your shoes. how long will they last? your pants and shirts? heavy jacket? can you make replacements with local resources? can you treat an infected cut with local resources? if you lose your axe head or break your saw (used to be a real pioneer disaster, that), can you forge new ones? can you make a flint axe head? if you break or lose your glasses, can you ... well, I can't imagine what you would do. used to be a tremendous problem, hunters would get old and far-sighted, no longer able to hunt AND useless around the village.

and let's not mention ammunition. can you make a bow and use it successfully? or kill a rabbit with a spear? "come closer you <blankety blank blank blank blank blank> bunny ...."

how about dental floss and tooth brushes? death from dental cavity used to be common.

and what is your land's carrying capacity? 'cause you can bet everybody else has filed away in the back of their mind just how great your place is, and in an end-of-the-world event you can expect lots and lots of strangers to be driving up in RV's, landing in private planes, and docking in private boats, all of them heavily armed (before they bring ANYthing else) and looking to share your bounty ....

And now take a look on your computer, or your water sink. How long do you think they will work once power fails? can you replace the power with something else to get them back on line?

Add same will happen to any manufacturing capacity the city has, and to any transport means, so no food/fuel/whatever you need will reach the city once stocks are depleted, if the disaster is great and whidepread enough (that is the scenario I undersant the OP depicted).

In a small town, your're more likely to have alternatives, even if you have to go shoeless and farm the land manually or with oxes/horses instead agrimotors...

But the OP asks about cities, not towns, and I keep believeing that an isolated one is more likely to depend on local ressources and so be less vulnerable to a global catastrophe.