Line #22 Main/RuinsOfTheModernAge


1	[[quoteright:350:[[VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIII https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/ruins_9670.png]]]]
2	[[caption-width-right:350:Yeah, school's definitely out today.]]
3
4	Want to make something set in the future? What better way than making it look like our current era has passed? Have all the trappings of our modern time fall into disuse and litter the landscape, [[ReclaimedByNature possibly with nature beginning to reclaim it]]. This is used to great effect in many AfterTheEnd pieces; the StandardPostApocalypticSetting is prominently filled with landscapes of crumbling, rusting buildings, while the swamped-out ruins of cities are a common sight in a FloodedFutureWorld, either half-flooded and covered in jungles of weeds and epiphytes or fully underwater and tenanted by sealife.
5
6	Related to SceneryGorn and RagnarokProofing. See also MonumentalDamageResistance. For further down the line see TechnoWreckage.
7	----
8	!!Examples:
9
10	[[foldercontrol]]
11
12	[[folder:Anime & Manga]]
13	* ''Anime/TheBigO'' features a number of sequences, including one aquatic one [[spoiler:through Grand Central Terminal]], that reveal that Paradigm City: [[spoiler:is built on the ruins of New York]].
14	* ''Anime/CowboyBebop'': Every time there's an episode that takes place on Earth. In "[[Recap/CowboyBebopSession18SpeakLikeAChild Speak Like a Child]]", Spike and Jet trudge through an abandoned museum in search of a rare Beta video tape player.
15	* ''Manga/FistOfTheNorthStar'' takes place in a post-apocalyptic future after a nuclear war. The main characters often traverse or fight in ruins of modern cities, with rows of skyscrapers collapsed, toppled over and partially covered by the sand being a frequent sight.
16	* ''Anime/GodzillaPlanetOfTheMonsters'': The landing party find the overgrown ruins of cities [[RagnarokProof even though]] [[TimeDilation 20,000 years have passed since they left Earth]]. Then they realise the structures are actually fungi which fossilized in the shape of the buildings they once covered.
17	* ''Literature/ScrappedPrincess'': At one point, the three main characters pass through the decrepit remains of a skyscraper. All that's left is the cement skeleton, but one of them remarks on how unnatural the "rock formations" look.
18	* ''Anime/SoundOfTheSky'': No Man's Land and the battlefield of Binnenland seen in flashbacks are full of tumble-down skyscrapers and ravaged cities. Even though there are glimpses of super-advanced LostTechnology in the show, the urban landscape come across as [[TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture current day]].
19	* ''Manga/TsubasaReservoirChronicle'': Acid Tokyo is a future version of Tokyo where unceasing acid rain has made decades look like centuries and the place has begun to become a desert. By extension, [[spoiler: Clow Country]] is also this, although there has been has been enough time that only one building remains immediately visible above the sand, and its weathered enough to be unrecognizable.
20	* ''Anime/HighlanderTheSearchForVengeance'' is placed AfterTheEnd as we get to see flooded sports stadiums and multistory car parks that are being used as hideouts as they're the only thing above the water level. Also [[BigApplesauce New York]] has seen better days.
21	* ''Literature/SundayWithoutGod'' takes place in a world where fifteen years prior, people stopped being able to give birth, so the population has diminished considerably, and thus Ai and her friends come across the occasional ruined and abandoned modern building in their travels.
22	[[/folder]]
23
24	[[folder:Arts]]
25	* [[http://www.dezeen.com/2008/06/22/flooded-london-by-squintopera-2/ The Flooded London series of images]] by Squint/Opera, which also depict a CosyCatastrophe.
26	* Artist tokyogenso has done some truly spectacular illustrations of ruined Tokyo, hosted [[http://safebooru.org/index.php?page=post&s=list&tags=tokyogenso here]] on the SFW Safebooru (as well as the originals on his [[http://www.pixiv.net/member_illust.php?id=170125 pixiv account]]).
27	[[/folder]]
28
29	[[folder:Comic Books]]
30	* ''ComicBook/{{Kamandi}}'' was full of decaying modern cities, including the first issue cover which homaged/ripped off the Statue of Liberty from ''Film/PlanetOfTheApes1968''.
31	* ''ComicBook/{{Killraven}}:'' The Martians make terrible landlords. They may occupy New York City, but they don't really bother to maintain the place. A recurring theme of the series is Killraven and his gang stumbling on the latest ruined city as they travel across America and having no idea what they're looking at.
32	* ''ComicBook/{{Kingdom}}'' shows off the ruins of Sydney.
33	* ''ComicBook/MorningGlories'': We're treated to a double-page splash of [[spoiler:the ruins of Morning Glory Academy itself, when Future Jade takes Hunter to them in #27. When he asks, shocked, what happened, she replies with "War. Destruction. Death. You know -- human being stuff," heavily implying that the future as it currently stands is [[AfterTheEnd not exactly sunshine and roses]].]]
34	* ''ComicBook/{{Valerian}}'': "City of Moving Waters" takes place in a flooded post-apocalyptic New York City. Most of the city's landmarks are still around.
35	[[/folder]]
36
37	[[folder:Fan Works]]
38	* ''Fanfic/StalkerZero'': The Zone is littered with disused buildings, vehicles and structures. None of them date from any earlier than the 1970s.
39	[[/folder]]
40
41	[[folder:Films -- Animation]]
42	* ''Anime/PatemaInverted'': In the final scene, Age/Eiji asks Patema to take him with her so they can explore the ruins of [[spoiler: the surface world]]. Which is strewn with collapsed skyscrapers that've been overgrown with vines, set beneath [[spoiler: an AlienSky]].
43	* ''Anime/SonicTheHedgehogTheMovie'':
44	** The island where Sonic and Tails live is covered in a pile of wrecked, rusted and vegetation-covered machines such as a passenger airplane, a train, and communications towers.
45	** The "ancient relics" on the outskirts of Robotropolis in the Land of Darkness are recognizably those of modern architecture, covered in vines and with derelict cars lining the streets. When Sonic and Tails climb a skyscraper, the skyline is recognizably that of Manhattan, complete with the Empire State Building and one of the Twin Towers. Impressively, the streetlights still work.
46	* ''WesternAnimation/WallE'': Earth has been reduced to one big pop-culture garbage heap.
47	[[/folder]]
48
49	[[folder:Films -- Live-Action]]
50	* ''Film/TwelveMonkeys'': At the start, James Cole GotVolunteered to leave the UndergroundCity in a HazmatSuit to collect samples from the ruins of Philadelphia. This serves to establish the post-pandemic world he lives in before he time-travels to the past.
51	* ''Film/TwentyYearsAfter'' has tons of dilapidated and abandoned structures and vehicles as well as few people left.
52	* ''Film/AIArtificialIntelligence'': The ending takes place in a flooded Manhattan where all the skyscrapers are collapsed, in the process of collapsing, or in really bad shape overall.
53	* ''Film/AlienResurrection'': In the extended ending, the final shot after the survivors arrive on 24th century Earth is a view of the grim, desolate apocalyptic ruins of Paris, with the half-fallen Eiffel Tower identifiable.
54	* ''Film/ArmyOfDarkness'': The alternate ending has Ash accidentally traveling from medieval England into a post-apocalyptic era. A wide landscape shot reveals this via the ruined face of Big Ben.
55	* ''Film/BattlefieldEarth'' shows them in ruins, to the point that the humans think that [[AllHailTheGreatGodMickey mascot statues on a golf course were gods]].
56	* ''Film/TheBookOfEli'': In the not-too-distant future, some 30 years after the final war, a solitary man walks across the wasteland that was once America.
57	* ''Film/TheColony2013'': Both the futuristic weather machines and the modern cities' skylines, river-spanning bridges and wrecked vehicles are still visible on the Earth's surface, preserved in the ice and cold.
58	* ''Film/IAmLegend'' (the film adaptation) is set in New York City three years after the ZombieApocalypse. ''Film/TheOmegaMan'', an earlier adaptation of the same book, features suburban post-apocalyptic UsefulNotes/LosAngeles. WordOfGod is that the setting was deliberately moved to New York in order to show just how empty it is. After all, New York is ''never'' empty. L.A. looks empty at 3PM. It's also worth noting that the filmmakers consulted extensively with experts to determine just how the city would fare during the intervening years, what would fail and what wouldn't, and how badly different systems and structures would decay. At least one nonfiction book was published as a result of this research.
59	* ''Film/LogansRun'': The world outside the domed City is all ruins, including an overgrown Washington, D.C..
60	* ''Film/PlanetOfTheApes1968'': At the end, Taylor discovers the ruins of the Statue of Liberty. He realizes that humanity destroyed itself, sent the planet back to the Stone Age, and allowed the apes to conquer.
61	-->"You maniacs! You blew it up! Damn you! God ''damn'' you all to hell!"
62	* ''Film/TheLastWitchHunter'': The vision of the future that the Witch Queen shows to Kaulder is ruined New York, rusting and overgrown with vegetation.
63	* ''Film/TheTimeMachine2002'' has the protagonist visit a library TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture, and then visit the same library AfterTheEnd. The library has deteriorated quite a bit by the second visit, although the A.I. is still active. Also, WordOfGod is that the cliffs used by the Eloi to build their villages are remains of New York skyscrapers, [[RagnarokProofing apparently able to withstand 800,000 years of erosion and an Ice Age but covered in dirt]].
64	* ''Film/{{IO}}'': [[GenderBlenderName Sam]] lives on a mountaintop enclave and travels down into the [[ForbiddenZone Zone]] which is shrouded in a permanent fog of toxins which have made the Earth uninhabitable. She however finds the ruins quite beautiful, unlike Micah who is old enough to remember what the city was like Before and says they're full of ghosts.
65	* ''Film/{{Waterworld}}'': The bottom of the global ocean are littered with the ruins of modern cities that were flooded as the seas rose.
66	* ''Film/XMenDaysOfFuturePast'': A matter of decades after the present in the BadFuture, New York's skyline consists of bombed-out looking shells of buildings, the X-Mansion isn't much better, and the only place we see that seems largely untouched by the apocalypse is the monastery high in the Tibetan Alps.
67	[[/folder]]
68
69	[[folder:Literature]]
70	* ''Literature/BeyondThirty'': In 2137, Pan-American Navy Lieutenant Jefferson Turck and his companions travel through the LostWorld of Europe, and visit the ruins of many of Europe's great cities; destroyed 200 years earlier in a version of UsefulNotes/TheGreatWar that lasted much longer and was much more destructive.
71	* ''Literature/BookOfTheNewSun'': There are entire towns that make their living by digging up the refuse of the past. Then again, the novels are set so far into the future that these may not be the ruins of the ''modern'' age, but rather of some future age. (We are told that the mine tailings contain perfectly preserved corpses, which is probably beyond today's science.)
72	* ''Literature/ByTheWatersOfBabylon'': The son of a priest goes on a spiritual journey to the ruins of an American city [[spoiler:which was once New York]] -- they call this "the Place of the Gods". This came out in 1937 and was written in response to the Bombing of Guernica during the UsefulNotes/SpanishCivilWar, where the Luftwaffe destroyed around two-thirds of a Basque town. It's strongly implied that civilization was destroyed in a war with bombings and poison gas at the least.
73	* ''Literature/ClocksThatDontTick'': Seattle's streets are filthy, full of casual murder, and home to entrepreneurs selling false cures to the setting's myriad diseases. The buildings are crumbled, crumbling, or patched up with plywood and glue. According to one of the protagonists, the rest of the world didn't fare any better.
74	* ''Literature/TheDarkTower'': Much of the series has this aesthetic. Especially the city of Lud, which is an alternate-universe New York hundreds of years AfterTheEnd, populated by violent, fanatic gangs who scavenge the ancient technology and mostly use it to kill each other.
75	* ''Literature/DeathZone'', which take place about fifty years after ''Film/Stalker1979'', shows five such zones where ruins of former cities (including St. Petersburg) are isolated from the rest of the world by gravity barriers. The ruins are also present for several miles outside the zones, caused by the initial blasts that destroyed these cities and formed the anomalous zones. The people inside the zones have adapted their bodies using nano-implants, scrounge for supplies, and vie for control. Not only is the environment dangerous (various anomalies, poisonous air), but the area is covered with rogue nanotechnology that infects anything that comes into contact with it, machine and man alike, turning the unfortunates into metallic zombies.
76	* ''Literature/EarthAbides'': After a plague wipes out most of humanity, the protagonist watches the city of San Francisco deteriorate from nearly intact to fire- and earthquake-ravaged ruins over the course of several decades.
77	* ''Literature/EternityRoad'' by Creator/JackMcDevitt has this in its title -- we're remembered as the "Roadmakers" because our highways are the most prominent objects we left behind.
78	* ''Literature/{{Flood}}'' features underwater ruins as a global flood continually rises and drowns everything. People survive by diving down and scavenging usable materials.
79	%%* ''Literature/GoodOmens'' references this:
80	%%-->"walking like a man carrying a thermos flask of something that might cause, if he dropped it or even thought about dropping it, the sort of explosion that impels grey-beards to make statements like "And where this crater is now, once stood the city of Wah-Shing-Ton", in SF B-movies."
81	* ''Literature/GuardiansOfGahoole'': According to Word of God, the story's setting is an AfterTheEnd where humans are extinct, and St. Aggie's and other works of architecture left behind by the extinct Others are indeed this trope.
82	* ''Literature/HonorHarrington'': The city of Chicago is built upon the remains of [[UsefulNotes/{{Chicago}} the old Chicago]], nearly destroyed in the Final War [[EarthThatUsedToBeBetter that wiped out much of the population still on the homeworld]], about two millennia prior to the main story setting. The Eric Flint short story "From the Highlands" goes into this a bit, including the protagonists stumbling into the remains of the Art Institute. Also, a plot-important political rally takes place in the partially renovated remains of [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soldier_Field Soldier Field]]... deep underground.
83	* Creator/JohnWyndham:
84	** ''Literature/TheChrysalids'' has the remains of US cities as being still radioactive enough to still glow at night and kill passing sailors over a millennium after the 'Tribulation', where nuclear and mutagenic weapons were used in an all-out world war.
85	** ''Literature/TheDayOfTheTriffids'' and ''Literature/TheKrakenWakes'' feature the descent into ruin of civilisation, although more on a permanent scale in the former book, describing London being reclaimed by vegetation and buildings collapsing.
86	* ''Literature/KnownSpace'': The Beowulf Shaeffer stories mention crumbling roadways on Earth. They're crumbling not because of disaster, but quite the opposite -- they went obsolete once flying vehicles became ubiquitous. There's a section of roadway around Los Angeles preserved so that people can drive on it for sport.
87	* ''Literature/LilithsBrood'': {{Defied\|Trope}} by the alien Oankali who rescue a remnant of humanity AfterTheEnd. Before returning them to Earth, they deliberately raze and bury any old human settlement that survived the final nuclear war, in order to discourage them from [[InYourNatureToDestroyYourselves repeating their predecessors' mistakes]] and force them to form a new social order.
88	* ''Literature/LocksmithsCloset'': Much is set in this. After a while, going back and forth between the inhabited, functioning world of the present and the ruins of the future [[MindScrew starts to have a bad effect on Lock's mind]].
89	* "Literature/MissileGap", by Creator/CharlesStross: One of the first signs that something is terribly wrong is when [[spoiler:a Soviet exploration team, while surveying a continent one hundred and forty thousand miles from Earth, find the thousands-years-old ruins of perfect copies of American cities]].
90	* Horace Smith's 1818 poem "Ozymandias" (not to be confused with Percy Bysshe Shelley's poem of the same name) invokes the image of a [[FuturePrimitive hunter]], wandering "thro' the wilderness / Where London stood", who
91	--> meets some fragment huge, and stops to guess\
92	What powerful but unrecorded race\
93	Once dwelt in that annihilated place.
94	* ''Literature/TheRoad'': A man and a boy survive by scrounging materials from the ruined landscape AfterTheEnd, and pass by several abandoned cities.
95	* ''Literature/RoadsidePicnic'': "The Zone" is a region abandoned by almost all human population, and industrial facilities and whole city quarters have been left deserted and slowly crumbling (or inexplicably preserved by the strange properties of the Zone) for decades.
96	* ''Literature/StarCarrier'': In the back story, global warming caused water levels to rise, with many coastal cities across the world drowning, while others were only protected by sea walls. Then the Chinese performed their ColonyDrop in the Atlantic, causing most of those cities to be completely flooded. Now, these largely abandoned cities are called the Periphery. Only squatties live these, refusing the join the modern society. In particular, the ruins of [[BigApplesauce Manhattan]] are frequently referenced, as Trevor Gray, one of the point-of-view characters, lived most of his life in the ruins of the [=TriBeCa=] Tower[[note]]an {{arcology}} built in the Tribeca area of NYC in the mid-21st century[[/note]]. Another key character is from the Washington Swamps, the remains of the former D.C. area (the administrative District of Columbia has been moved to Columbus, Ohio, the new capital). Yet another character is from the ruins of Baltimore. Notably, the Statue of Liberty is mentioned to have largely survived being drowned several times, and Periphery restoration efforts are shown at the end of the third novel.
97	* ''Literature/TheTimeMachine'' by Creator/HGWells has a museum dedicated to the rotting ruins of the past. The museum itself had long been forgotten by the dull and complacent future children of humanity.
98	* ''Literature/TheTripods'' series has the main characters touring France, passing through a ruined Paris at one point.
99	* ''Literature/TheWheelOfTime'': This becomes very common at just about the point the reader starts thinking he's reading a standard fantasy tale. The Breaking of the World, followed by repeated wars and a slow depopulation, have left wrecked cities (along with the occasional ArtifactOfDoom) all over the world. Unexpectedly played for laughs when a mysterious museum artifact that "radiates pride and vanity" can be recognized by readers as a Mercedes hood ornament.
100	[[/folder]]
101
102	[[folder:Live-Action TV]]
103	* ''Series/The100'' averts this on the Earth's surface, as [[MonumentalDamageResistance (except for the Lincoln Memorial)]] the world has been almost completely reclaimed by wilderness. Stuff buried ''underneath'' the surface is a different story. MainCharacters seem to have a knack for stumbling across underground tunnels and bunkers full of pre-apocalypse artifacts.
104	* ''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aftermath:_Population_Zero Aftermath: Population Zero]]'' shows the ruined remains of the modern cities succumbing to nature's relentless advances, alongside several ancient ruins surviving for much longer.
105	* ''Series/{{Defiance}}'': The Votan terraformers end up leveling most cities and recognizable landmarks. The only thing left of the old St. Louis on the surface is the remains of the Gateway Arch. However, much of the old city remains beneath the surface in the mines, although, of course, no one lives there.
106	* ''Series/TheLastOfUs2023'': Like the video game it was adapted from, the story begins in a decaying enclave of Boston 20 years after the ZombieApocalypse, although later on it replaces Pittsburgh with Kansas City.
107	* ''Series/LifeAfterPeople'' shows the ruined remains of the modern cities succumbing to nature's relentless advances, alongside several ancient ruins surviving for much longer.
108	* ''Series/LogansRun'': In the pilot, as in [[Film/LogansRun the film]], Logan and Jessica discover the ruins of the Capitol Building in UsefulNotes/WashingtonDC shortly after leaving the City of Domes.
109	* ''Series/TheOuterLimits1995'':
110	** "[[Recap/TheOuterLimits1995S4E8RiteOfPassage Rite of Passage]]": Shal and Brav come across the ruins of an underground carpark which is littered with skeletons.
111	** "[[Recap/TheOuterLimits1995S4E21PromisedLand Promised Land]]": The Tsal-Khan family's farm is located on the outskirts of UsefulNotes/{{Seattle}}. When Ma'al visits the ruined city, the dilapidated but still standing Space Needle is seen prominently.
112	** "[[Recap/TheOuterLimits1995S4E23TheOriginOfSpecies The Origin of Species]]": This trope is combined with EarthAllAlong. Hope and the six students realize that they are on Earth in the future, some point after the 23rd Century, when they come across the half-collapsed Golden Gate Bridge.
113	* ''Series/PlanetOfTheApes'':
114	** "The Trap": Galen, Virdon and Burke visit the ruins of UsefulNotes/SanFrancisco. After an earthquake, Burke and Urko become trapped in a BART subway station.
115	** "The Legacy": Galen, Virdon and Burke discover the ruins of UsefulNotes/{{Oakland}}. The ruined city sets are reused from "The Trap".
116	* ''Series/{{Primeval}}'': PlayedStraight in the BadFuture in Series 3, where the only known trace of humanity besides the creatures they created is decaying city ruins standing amid clifftops surrounded by wilderness.
117	* ''Series/{{Revolution}}'': The family passed by many familiar locations now overgrown with plant life, as shown in "[[Recap/RevolutionS1E1Pilot Pilot]]". Also an AvertedTrope instance of RagnarokProofing.
118	* ''Series/{{Sliders}}'': "[[Recap/SlidersS05E16Dust Dust]]" has the group slide into a world where archaeologists are excavating AfterTheEnd American cities. The archaeologist who's digging San Francisco out of a desert dates the site as 16th century. When the protagonists look at some of the "artifacts", they see common things for a late-20th century city. The archaeologist doesn't even know what a parking meter is, and the sliders have to awkwardly try to explain the concept of "buying time". He thinks the concept is ridiculous. Oh, and they also find Quinn's old timer in the ruins, obviously nonfunctional after 400 years. And [[spoiler:Rembrandt is a deity to the locals, who show him the secret shrine they built from all his merchandise]].
119	* ''Series/StargateAtlantis'': In a variation, "[[Recap/StargateAtlantisS03E04Sateda Sateda]]" shows Ronon's titular home planet, where the architecture resembles that of present day Earth, which was devastated by a Wraith attack in 1998. The area in which the action takes place is full of partially destroyed buildings and littered with rubble.
120	* ''Series/{{Survivors}}'' is set in the then-present day and depict the aftermath of a ''virulent'' disease. Our works are sliding into ruin.
121	[[/folder]]
122
123	[[folder:Music]]
124	* Savoy Brown album ''Music/LookingIn'' has front and back covers featuring tiny humanoid/lizard people with medieval-style clothing looking at decayed human skulls overgrown with vegetation[[/folder]]
125	[[folder:Music Videos]]
126	* A half-submerged Statue of Liberty appears in the music video for "Knights of Cydonia" by Music/{{Muse}}, along with [[{{Troperiffic}} every other sci-fi and western trope in the universe]]. The video for "Sing For Absolution", also by Muse, featured a ruined and burnt-out AfterTheEnd future cityscape dominated by the ruins of Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament.
127	[[/folder]]
128
129	[[folder:Video Games]]
130	* ''VideoGame/BreathOfDeathVII'': Two major dungeons are ruins of modern-looking cities that are roamed by hostile undead creatures (including possessed cars). The second city even has traversable SinisterSubway and an AbsurdlySpaciousSewer.
131	* ''VideoGame/{{Celeste}}'': Chapter 1 has this aesthetic, though slightly subverted in that the Forsaken City was never actually inhabited to begin with; it's just that nobody wanted to move in once construction was finished, so it ended up being abandoned throughout its entire existence.
132	* ''VideoGame/ChronoTrigger'': While most of the ruins found in 2300 A.D. are [[TechnoWreckage futuristic]], the Lab/Site 16/32 areas look like ruins of a modern day city from the overworld and within, with burnt out cars, and the remains of stoplights.
133	* ''VideoGame/CommandAndConquerTiberianSun'': Most of the world's battlefields are cluttered with the [[GreenRocks Tiberium]]-choked ruins of major cities, and occasionally run-down bases from [[VideoGame/CommandAndConquerTiberianDawn the previous game.]] The Yellow Zones of ''[[VideoGame/CommandAndConquerTiberiumWars Tiberium Wars]]'' are no better, while the Red Zones are so far gone as to be [[HostileTerraforming hellish alien landscapes]].
134	* ''VideoGame/Crysis3'': New York City has been abandoned and quarantined within a huge dome, and the old buildings are now covered in moss and greenery as [[MegaCorp CELL soldiers]] and [[AliensAreBastards the Ceph]] roam the streets.
135	* ''Videogame/{{Destiny}}'': Just about every environment takes place at least partially in some version of these (save for the Dreadnaught and the Black Garden, which are... [[EldritchLocation something else entirely.]]) Most of the action on Earth takes place in the ruins of the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Russia, which was the site of massive colonization ship launches up until humanity was attacked by the Darkness; the site is now being looted by [[SpacePirates the Fallen]]. On the Moon, the remains of lunar colonies and facilities are scattered across the surface, where the Guardians are fighting [[ReligionOfEvil the Hive.]] On Venus, the remnants of a large university and research campus known as the Ishtar Collective is spread across the [[{{Terraforming}} terraformed]] landscape, mixed in with the older structures of [[ClockworkCreature the Vex.]] Finally, on Mars, an old human city known as Meridian Bay hides scientific secrets and research being fought over by humanity and [[SpaceRomans the Cabal]].
136	%%* ''VideoGame/EnslavedOdysseyToTheWest'': The early stages are set in a New York that is actually in ''better'' shape than it should be.%%So how is it an example?
137	* ''VideoGame/EtrianOdysseyI'': The fifth stratum shows up alongside the reveal that [[spoiler:the setting where it's hosted is EarthAllAlong, some indeterminate amount of time after the end]].
138	* ''VideoGame/{{Fallout}}'' takes place [[AfterTheEnd centuries after a nuclear apocalypse]], the Great War, in a world littered with the {{Zeerust}} ruins of pre-War America. While places of major importance like [[VideoGame/Fallout3 Washington D.C.]] were hit directly and nearly devastated completely, other places managed to stand against both the nukes and the test of time largely intact like [[VideoGame/Fallout4 Boston, Massachusetts]]. A stand-out case of this comes from Las Vegas in Nevada, which was specifically protected by the intuition of its benefactor Robert House, though it wasn't a perfect defense and Vegas still went through a time as an overgrown, savaged ruin before House reemerged and revived it to a degree of its former glory as [[VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas New Vegas]].
139	* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVII'' had a location that was an archaeological dig. One of the relics that's been partially unearthed is quite clearly an F-14 Tomcat, implying that the story takes place on Earth in the distant future. While this was possibly {{Jossed}} by WordOfGod's claim that ''VII'' is a distant sequel to ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyX'', there is, however, [[spoiler:still the "500 years later" coda that shows Midgar in ruins]].
140	* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIII'': In a section of Gran Pulse, especially in places like Oerba, are ruins that have been abandoned for over half a millenium, owing to the fact that most of the inhabitants were either Cie'th-ed or killed, and the last survivors were frozen for centuries elsewhere. The technology level looks like early 21st century, with subways, electric lights, and windmill generators.
141	%%* ''VideoGame/FragileDreamsFarewellRuinsOfTheMoon''
142	* ''VideoGame/HorizonZeroDawn'': The world is absolutely littered with the ruins of the "Old Ones", that is, people from TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture. Different tribes have different attitudes towards them; the Nora regard them with superstitious fear and consider them taboo whereas the Oseram mine them for raw materials and pieces of operable machinery.
143	* ''VideoGame/{{Kamiko}}'' is set in one of these; the last level in particular features both ruined modern-era buses and vending machines, as well as some futuristic-looking buildings and devices.
144	* ''VideoGame/KirbyAndTheForgottenLand'': The main setting is in another mysterious world where cities lie in ruin, overtaken by nature and populated by animals. Kirby can interact with various worn-out artifacts in this world, including cars, vending machines, traffic cones and many more.
145	* ''VideoGame/KrushKillNDestroy'' uses this trope. It is set AfterTheEnd, and two of the levels feature the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building half-submerged in the ground.
146	* ''VideoGame/TheLastOfUs'': The game is set twenty years after a fungal ZombieApocalypse devastated civilization. The opening chapters are set in a decaying Boston invaded by vegetation, while a later level is set in the ruins of Pittsburgh. [[VideoGame/TheLastOfUsPartII The sequel]] is mainly set in the damp and flooded literal urban jungle of what was once Seattle.
147	%%* ''VideoGame/MetalSaga''
148	* ''VideoGame/Metro2033'' and ''VideoGame/MetroLastLight'' prominently feature the post-nuclear war ruins of Moscow, in the form of both the human-inhabited Metro tunnels and the devastated, overgrown, radioactive, mutant-infested city on the surface. ''VideoGame/MetroExodus'' goes further by showing the ruins of Novosibirsk and later, through DownloadableContent, Vladivostok.
149	* ''VideoGame/{{Overgrowth}}'' has some hints towards this trope, but the developers insist on leaving it to the players' interpretations.
150	* ''VideoGame/{{RimWorld}}'' takes place on a frontier planet that obviously once supported an advanced civilization that has since collapsed. There are stretches of intact highways on the world map that make traveling easier, and just about every map tile has some manner of ruins on it: crumbling walls and overgrown landing pads, ancient monuments and sarcophagi, abandoned cars and wrecked tanks, engine blocks or metal lockers rusting in the grass, barely-functional lamps, or the shells of destroyed mechtoid war-forms that hint at what wiped out the previous civilization. Some of these can be spruced up and utilized by your colonists, others are best broken down for building materials, or need to be destroyed to make room for your own constructions. More rarely you can find intact structures containing still-operational [[HumanPopsicle cryptosleep caskets]], but they usually have an [[DugTooDeep "ancient danger"]] guarding them. Odder still are deposits of "compacted steel" or "compacted machinery" your colonists can mine like ore veins for steel and technical components, respectively, suggesting that there's a ''lot'' more ruins buried just beneath the planet's surface.
151	* ''VideoGame/SonicTheHedgehog2006'' has Crisis City, the ruins of Soleanna, when Sonic and Co. were forcibly warped to the future by Dr. Eggman and Mephiles.
152	* ''VideoGame/{{STALKER}}'': The games are set in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone in Northern Ukraine, including the ruins of the city of Pripyat. The rest of the world is just fine, though. [[spoiler:For the moment, at least.]]
153	* ''VideoGame/{{Submerged}}'' is set in a ruined, partially submerged modern city. The sequel, ''Hidden Depths'', also has some new inhabitants building BambooTechnology on the ruins.
154	* ''VideoGame/TokyoJungle'' has you take control of a feral animal in the ruins of an overgrown, post-apocalyptic Tokyo.
155	* ''VideoGame/XCOM2''
156	** Many of Earth's cities have been rebuilt into [[SpaceBrasilia shining, futuristic metropoles]] that the [[VichyEarth ADVENT Administration]] uses to [[GildedCage corral and control humanity]]. But on "wilderness" map types you can find old gas stations, rural homes and entire suburbs now half-rotten and overgrown by foliage.
157	** The "ruins" maps introduced in the ''War of the Chosen'' ExpansionPack are even worse: these are completely decayed urban areas consisting of apartment buildings, factories and businesses, all covered in dust and rust to the point of always being dark in them. To make it worse, they're all teeming with [[OurZombiesAreDifferent the Lost]], the result of the aliens' use of bio-weapons during [[VideoGame/XCOMEnemyUnknown the invasion twenty years ago]].
158	* ''VideoGame/XenobladeChronicles2'': The Land of Morytha, located beneath the Cloud Sea that everybody lives above. While the lands above the clouds are standard magitech empires, with 19th century architecture at best, the ruins of Morytha are full of crumbling concrete skyscrapers and asphalt streets. Also, the techno-zombie "[[FateWorseThanDeath survivors]]".
159	* ''[[VideoGame/AlienShooter Zombie Shooter]]'' uses this trope to an extent; several of the game's levels have a ''VideoGame/{{Fallout}}''-like look.
160	* ''Creator/YokoTaro'' ''really'' loves this trope:
161	** ''VideoGame/{{Drakengard}}'' and its sequels have towering empty skyscrapers forging the first bulwark of defenses in the capital cities, despite taking place in the ''eleventh century''. This is later revealed to be the shenanigans of TheOldGods, who were banished outside the universe long ago and could only interact with Earth in sporadic bursts of spacetime. They made a copy of a future city and plopped it near ''Spain'' back in 856 AD; the empires did the best they could to replicate the rotting apartment buildings, but carving stone slabs into structurally stable brutalist architecture used as ''dragon roosts and anti-dragon walls'' meant they didn't bother to furnish most of it.
162	** The vast majority of ''VideoGame/NierAutomata'' takes place in the ruins of an unnamed 21st century city, ten thousand years after it (along with the rest of the Earth) was [[VideoGame/NieR decimated by an]] [[VideoGame/{{Drakengard}} extradimensional curse/virus]]. It is subtly implied through the game that the reason why the buildings haven't crumbled to dust yet after such an astronomic time is that the Machine Lifeforms now controlling the Earth's surface keep the ruins in the state that they originally found them in.
163	[[/folder]]
164
165	[[folder:Webcomics]]
166	* ''Webcomic/AuroraDanseMacabre'': The wasteland is littered with the ruins of old cities.
167	* ''Webcomic/DaughterOfTheLilies'' has passing references to "ancient relics" like a battery and a flashlight, and later shows the monster-infested ruins of modern-day Vienna. Given that the setting includes orcs, elves, magic, gods, and [[spoiler:demons]], quite a lot appears to have happened in the interim.
168	* ''Webcomic/GoneWithTheBlastwave'' is set in undisclosed XX/XXI century city ruined by the ongoing war.
169	* ''Webcomic/{{Homestuck}}'' has a subplot involving characters in future times exploring a planet whose civilisation has been desolated, leaving the Earth covered by vast deserts littered with ruined buildings and cities.
170	-->[[https://www.homestuck.com/story/248 Years in the future, but not many...]] [[http://www.mspaintadventures.com/storyfiles/hs2/waywardvagabond/recordsastutteringstep/ A WAYWARD VAGABOND records a stuttering step in the sun-bleached dust.]]
171	* ''Webcomics/LaterComics'' has the [[http://www.latercomics.com/071/ memorable image]] of a flooded False Creek, the instantly-recognisable (to anyone who's spent much time in UsefulNotes/{{Vancouver}}, anyways) Science World geodesic dome protruding from the water.
172	* ''Webcomic/{{Sarilho}}'': The Mediterranean Empire's main endeavour is to recover and understand [[LostTechnology ancient technology]], which looks somewhat modern.
173	* ''Webcomic/StandStillStaySilent'': The characters are exploring Denmark ninety years after it has become a ForbiddenZone DeathWorld, so plenty of ruins show up as crumbling, monster-infested deathtraps only entered occasionally to scavenge for valuable old-world artifacts.
174	[[/folder]]
175
176	[[folder:Western Animation]]
177	* ''WesternAnimation/AdventureTime'' has a lot of settings like this, such as hospital (complete with helicopter plate), a baseball arena for the wizard tournament and other various structures and remnants, such as the police cars and ambulances in the Underworld.
178	* ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'' occasionally includes sojourns to the underground ruins of Old New York. Played straight with Los Angeles, which was never rebuilt after an apocalypse. The city is still inhabited, and Bender refers to mentioning this as "social commentary".
179	* ''WesternAnimation/KipoAndTheAgeOfWonderbeasts'', set AfterTheEnd, uses this for the surface world.
180	* ''WesternAnimation/ReturnToThePlanetOfTheApes'': In "The Unearthly Prophecy", Bill and Jeff discover the ruins of the New York Public Library in the Underdwellers' caverns.
181	%%* ''WesternAnimation/ThundarrTheBarbarian'': Just about every episode.
182	[[/folder]]
183
184	[[folder:RealLife]]
185	* The ''Anglo-Saxon Chronicles'' and other works record the culture shock experienced by the Saxon incomers on discovering the size and the extent of the evidence that a great civilization once lived in the British Isles. The works of the Roman Empire are discussed, as is the awe that the Saxons felt at discovering the extensive network of paved roads linking cities, the stone fortifications, the still-extant stone buildings of unbelievable size and structural grandeur. To the Saxons, the three-or-four centuries old Roman infrastructure was indeed Ruins of the Modern Age. The more thoughtful Saxons also wondered exactly what calamity had befallen this race of gods or giants that they had fled the land and were no longer there. [[note]]They also thought Stonehenge was a Roman building -- a ruin of a far earlier Modern Age...[[/note]]
186	* This was something Albert Speer has included in his plans for buildings and entire cities for the Nazi regime in Germany, designing them in a way they looked imposing and impressive even when in a state of decay. The idea behind this was that, should the Third Reich enter a temporary period of decline during its thousand year duration, the ruins of its glory days would help fuel a Renaissance-like effect (as the remains of ancient Rome did in Europe centuries earlier). Considering that the buildings were supposed to be built during the 20th century, they would quite literally have been RuinsOfTheModernAge. Unfortunately for fans of Speer's architectural style, the "ruin value" of a building that's been attacked with modern artillery or bomber aircraft is pretty minimal, and the occupation forces made a point of [[SmashTheSymbol thoroughly dismantling any prominent symbols of Nazism that were left]] after the war. One of Speer's only works to be left relatively unarmed was essentially a large concrete cylinder built for structural testing in the run-up to the construction of a triumphal arch.
187	* For a localised example, the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_Exclusion_Zone Chernobyl Exclusion Zone]] in Ukraine. The entire area including the nearby town of Pripyat is largely uninhabited and has since been reclaimed by nature.
188	* "[=UrbEx=]," or "Urban Exploration," is an effort by independent filmmakers and Youtubers to explore structures and buildings in North America left abandoned by economic downturns, safety concerns, and various other societal shifts. There are a surprising number of shopping malls, mental hospitals, and residential developments in the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic regions, left empty and crumbling because there is no interest in restoring them and no pressing need to demolish them.
189	[[/folder]]

Context Main / RuinsOfTheModernAge