Zombies Lead to Floating Cities

[clanglee]

What about solid buildings with no doors or windows on the ground level. Retractable staircases or ladders to give entrance on the second or 3rd floors. And maybe retractable walkways between each house. But as mentioned before, if you have the time and safety to build all that, you probably wouldn't need them. Besides, it's all moot anyway. We can all just move in here. It's prefurbished!!

[Zombie Snack]

after all the nuclear power plants melt down and all the nuclear fallout contaminates the planet...why bother with building any new city's..everyone will die anyways....unless you suspend reality and expect the power to stay on forever and all the nuclear power plants to operate and run thereselves.

[krakenslayer]

after all the nuclear power plants melt down and all the nuclear fallout contaminates the planet...why bother with building any new city's..everyone will die anyways....unless you suspend reality and expect the power to stay on forever and all the nuclear power plants to operate and run thereselves. That's an interesting point, and I don't think it's ever been discussed much. However, I doubt in reality that would happen. Nuclear power plants have safety controls, etc. that cause them to shut down in the absence of operators. What's more, modern nuclear reactors are - unlike Chernobyl-type reactors - encased in about 3-meter-thick steel-reinforced concrete shells. So even if there was a core damage incident, its far less likely that any radioactive or toxic materials would be able to escape into the surrounding environment. It's also a common misconception that a nuclear meltdown results in a nuclear explosion. I'm not saying you believe that, but many people do. An atomic blast resulting from a nuclear meltdown is virtually impossible. The Chernobyl event, for example, was nothing more than a sudden steam explosion that blew the core open to the sky, releasing radioactive material. However, government workers, squatters, and some local residents who refused to leave, all live within the peripheral "zone of alienation" and are not all dead or six-armed mutants.

[Philly_SWAT]

I had always wondered about the nuclear plant angle. Do you, or anyone else, know exactly what would/should happen to a plant if all the operators were dead/abandoned their posts? In other words, the steps of the safety shutdown?

[krakenslayer]

I don't know the ins-and-outs of it, to be honest, but it's like a modern kettle, I suppose - it doesn't just keep boiling away if no one is there to take it off the burner. The result of a nuclear power plant being abandoned would almost certainly not be a meltdown, but rather a power outage. I know this because I did a project on nuclear power back when I was in primary (grade) school However, according to Wikipedia, when a reactor is shut down, it continues to accumulate heat for a while because of the radioactive decay within the isotopes. This means if it's shut down too late for the core to start to cool before reaching critical, it can still go into meltdown. But the core would have to be overheating to begin with, before the operators left. Even if this happened, there's still a better than evens chance the concrete shell will contain the fallout. I don't doubt that this might possibly happen at one or two of the world's hundreds of nuclear power plants, but it's really the least of people's worries.

[Neil]

Yup, it's true. Something I've thought about for awhile. In keeping with the "lock yourself in the attic" tradition, I predict the rise of an elevated world when the dead start walking. Since the zombies can't climb, wouldn't it make sense to conclude that the living folk would then start moving upward? They'd build first elevated homes (like the ones you see in flood areas - "on stilts"), then need to connect them. This leads to walkways high in the air, above the zombie hordes. Once that's done, they'd take it further, with stronger reinforcement: elevated roads. Then huge "plates" atop gigantic pillars, which support large buildings. At the end, the result would be all the same items that are found in the real world today, just all constructed on huge steel-and-concrete plates, built high up in the air. Never again will we see the ground. Zombies would rule below, but they can't get to the living. Hatches are built. Instead of burials, the dead in the new society would simply be dumped down one of the hatches, to flop amongst the zombies. What do you think about that? ...actually, I think I just solved the mystery of The Jetsons. So that's why they never showed the ground! It was post-zombie outbreak. Ummm... And food? Difficult to grow stuff up in the air...

[Trin]

@clanglee - That picture is hysterical. And fire escapes already serve as retractable ladders. They'd surely become the primary entrance/exit to a building once the ground floor entrances were bricked off. In the inner city this kind of thing makes perfect sense. Build a bridge between buildings and effectively double your living space. Add to the idea trucks that had doors welded shut and the only access was through hatches in the roof. You park underneath your second story ladder and get in/out through the roof of the truck. You could drive from building to building easily where the span was too large for bridges. @deadpunk - The idea of your height above ground becoming a status thing is already in place. As evidenced by the penthouse being the highest floor of any building. As the Jeffersons would say, "Moving on up to a deluxe apartment in the sky." Regarding nuclear shutdown. I've tried to research this a half dozen times. History channels "Life Without People" did a short bit on power plant shutdown procedures in the absence of people. They said the power plants would continue to operate for quite a while without people before automatic shutdowns would occur. They were ambiguous about things after that. I read one interesting study that contended that the real problem would be that the power plants are not equipped to handle a massive drop in the demand for electricity. The plant itself might shut down okay given inattention. But the thing might explode due to the sheer buildup of electricity in the system as systems shut off around the cities and no one cranks back the power output accordingly. I'd LOVE a definitive answer to this. Because the nuclear meltdown topic affects way more than just a zombie situation. Mass disease. Climatic events. Lots of stuff might wipe out an area's people leaving a power plant operational.

[Eyebiter]

Since the zombies can't climb, wouldn't it make sense to conclude that the living folk would then start moving upward? Zombies can't climb? Since when? What about the roof sequence at the end of Dawn of the Dead 1978? The undead were able to climb from the mall to the helicopter pad on the roof.

[krakenslayer]

Zombies can't climb? Since when? What about the roof sequence at the end of Dawn of the Dead 1978? The undead were able to climb from the mall to the helicopter pad on the roof. They can walk up steps (or stepladders) but I doubt they could climb a vertical ladder or a rope. Make it a retractable ladder if you're worried about one of them getting lucky on the climb . ---------- Post added at 04:40 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:39 PM ---------- Is that Megaton?

[clanglee]

They can walk up steps (or stepladders) but I doubt they could climb a vertical ladder or a rope. Make it a retractable ladder if you're worried about one of them getting lucky on the climb . ---------- Post added at 04:40 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:39 PM ---------- Is that Megaton? It looks like Megaton doesn't it?

[Rancid Carcass]

Ummm... And food? Difficult to grow stuff up in the air... Hanging baskets? On the nuclear issue. I think that there would be a point during the crisis when the government would realize that we are losing it and order the nuclear plants to be shutdown before it’s too late to do so. Actually just thinking about it, there would probably be a period where key pieces of civilian infrastructure, like road and rail networks, would be systematically shutdown in the hope of preserving something from which civilization might rebuild from. Perhaps coal fired power stations would be left running to give people power for as long as possible until the grid goes down.

[Zombie Snack]

It could happen that with out any operators that over time, something would happen, the water levels in the cooling systems could diminish, leading to a complete failure, I have seen a few programs that have discussed an apocolyptic situation/worse case scenerio and the effects on the nuclear power infastructure. Some say the reactors would shut down and the fallout would be minimal but in other scenerios the heating up would start almost immediately, it was chernoybl many times over, Most do not paint a pretty picture. I'm afraid Nuclear fallout would get us all. The water that cools is circulated water and if no one is running the water department the water stops circulating and heats up.

[rongravy]

They can walk up steps (or stepladders) but I doubt they could climb a vertical ladder or a rope. Wasn't the ladder a vertical one in Dawn at the end? I don't think they could climb it either. They could grasp rungs with their filthy mitts but couldn't coordinate the feet to go along with it. Maybe on a few rungs... but one rung would get him and he'd have to start over. Imagine the ones underneath him, like a domino effect. I like barricading yourself off in a building, as long as you have a way out or a catwalk to another building handy that you can drop to stop too many pursuers. Also, it'd be nice to have one strong door at ground level to sneak out and dent a few rotting brainpans in with a nice nailspiked bat. When no one's looking of course...

[krakenslayer]

It could happen that with out any operators that over time, something would happen, the water levels in the cooling systems could diminish, leading to a complete failure, I have seen a few programs that have discussed an apocolyptic situation/worse case scenerio and the effects on the nuclear power infastructure. Some say the reactors would shut down and the fallout would be minimal but in other scenerios the heating up would start almost immediately, it was chernoybl many times over, Most do not paint a pretty picture. I'm afraid Nuclear fallout would get us all. The water that cools is circulated water and if no one is running the water department the water stops circulating and heats up. Even if this is true, there are still hundreds of people who refused to be evacuated living within the 30 km alienation zone and have been since the incident. It wouldn't be the end.

[Wyldwraith]

Umm, If you look at the publicly available resources of post-9/11 security policies, you'll see that comprehensive and difficult-to-subvert automatic shutdowns of nuclear facilities has become a major priority for D.H.S. As for the notion of the cores overheating because there's no circulating water: A quick primer in the nature of nuclear power plant operation reveals that if you're not concerned about getting the plant back up and running in a relatively brief period of time there are multiple safeguards in place to prevent exactly the scenario you describe. In fact, many of the refitted power plants have means of burying the core completely under tons of quick-setting inert materials. I mean, a core buried under fifty tons of concrete that creates a 10-feet-deep plug on all sides is no danger to anyone. Of much greater concern are the rapidly-spreading fires that will be caused by the violently shorting out substations during a hard shutdown. Or even before that, like a previous poster mentioned, about the system not being designed to handle its electrical output not being used. Short of an earthquake or some even more extreme catastrophe like a meteor striking a power plant or subterranean eruption beneath the foundation, I simply don't believe a Chernobyle-style nuclear catastrophe could happen at an America power plant simply due to neglect. Now, if some lunatics decided to take advantage of there not being any meaningful security due to the zombie epidemic, and had the know-how to perpetrate some nuclear terrorism, THAT would be feasible. Maybe some sort of humanity-hating apocalyptic cult trying to ensure the extinction of mankind..who knows?