History Main / RuinsOfTheModernAge

* ''Anime/TheBigO'' features a number of sequences, including one aquatic one [[spoiler:through Grand Central Terminal]], that reveal something interesting about Paradigm City: [[spoiler:It's built on the ruins of New York]].

* ''Anime/SoundOfTheSky'''s 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]].
* ''Manga/TsubasaReservoirChronicle'' has Acid Tokyo, which is ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin, 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.

* ''ComicBook/{{Kamandi}}'' by Creator/JackKirby was full of this, including the first issue cover which homaged/ripped off the Statue of Liberty from ''Film/PlanetOfTheApes1968''.

* ''ComicBook/{{Kingdom}}'' lovingly shows off the ruins of Sydney.

* ''Anime/PatemaInverted'': In the film's 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]].

-->'''Nostalgia Critic:''' And over here we see a mouse god named Mickey.

* ''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 UsefulNotes/LosAngeles AfterTheEnd. 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.

* ''Film/PlanetOfTheApes1968'': "You maniacs! You blew it up! Damn you! God ''damn'' you all to hell!"

* ''Literature/ByTheWatersOfBabylon'', by Stephen Vincent Benét: 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.
* ''Literature/ClocksThatDontTick'': Seattle. The 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.
* ''Franchise/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.

** ''Literature/TheDayOfTheTriffids'' and ''Literature/TheKrakenWakes'' also 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.

* OlderThanRadio: 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

* ''Literature/RoadsidePicnic'': "The Zone" is a region abandoned by all (well -- 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.
* ''Literature/TheSaxonStories'' by Creator/BernardCornwell sets this trope, paradoxically, in the past. The Saxon and Viking kingdoms that arose in England in the late 700s discovered the ruins of the departed Romans. Four centuries on from the Roman Empire, the Saxons found the infrastructure left behind by a departed people, and only had a hazy idea as to how it got there. They do know the stone buildings, the city walls, and the roads linking them, are there, and are far in advance of anything that their technology can create. This leads to extravagant speculation about a race of gods and giants - as well as a depressive sense of culture shock among the more thoughtful Saxons who wonder if this is a sign of former greatness now degenerating into a CrapsackWorld. The hero Uhtred has a sense of awe and angst when he sees Hadrian's Wall for the first time, for instance. Although he has fought the Scots and understands ''exactly'' why the Wall was built. He just can't comprehend ''how''. But the ruins of a former modern age are all around, for all to see.

* ''Series/The100'' largely 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.

* Chapter 1 of ''VideoGame/{{Celeste}}'' 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.

%%* ''VideoGame/MetalSaga'': This trope is a staple of the series.

* ''VideoGame/HorizonZeroDawn'': The world is absolutely littered with the ruins of the "Ancient 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.

* ''VideoGame/TheLastOfUs'': The opening chapters are set in a decaying Boston invaded by vegetation.

* ''VideoGame/{{Fallout}}'' takes place centuries after a nuclear apocalypse, in a world littered with the {{Zeerust}} ruins of pre-war America. The only city shown that wasn't vaporized was Las Vegas; two close-range nuclear strikes and two centuries sitting alone and untouched in the Mojave Desert have worn her down, but she still shines at night as [[VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas New Vegas]].

* ''Literature/TheSaxonStories'' by Creator/BernardCornwell sets this trope, paradoxically, in the past. The Saxon and Viking kingdoms that arose in England in the late 700's discovered the ruins of the departed Romans. Four centuries on from the Roman Empire, the Saxons found the infrastructure left behind by a departed people, and only had a hazy idea as to how it got there. They do know the stone buildings, the city walls, and the roads linking them, are there, and are far in advance of anything that their technology can create. This leads to extravagant speculation about a race of gods and giants - as well as a depressive sense of culture shock among the more thoughtful Saxons who wonder if this is a sign of former greatness now degenerating into a CrapsackWorld. The hero Uhtred has a sense of awe and angst when he sees Hadrian's Wall for the first time, for instance. Although he has fought the Scots and understands ''exactly'' why the Wall was built. He just can't comprehend ''how''. But the ruins of a former modern age are all around, for all to see.

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]]. Used to great effect in many AfterTheEnd pieces. Related to SceneryGorn and RagnarokProofing. See also MonumentalDamageResistance. For further down the line see TechnoWreckage.

* Franchise/TheDCU's ''ComicBook/{{Kamandi}}'' by Creator/JackKirby was full of this, including the first issue cover which homaged/ripped off the Statue of Liberty from ''Film/PlanetOfTheApes1968''.

* ''Kingdom'' lovingly shows off the ruins of Sydney.

* At the start of ''Film/TwelveMonkeys'', 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.

* ''Film/LogansRun'': The world outside the domed City is all ruins, including an overgrown Washington, D.C..
* The ending of ''Film/AIArtificialIntelligence'' takes place in a flooded Manhattan where all the skyscrapers are collapsed, in the process of collapsing, or in really bad shape overall.
* ''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]].
* ''Film/{{Waterworld}}'': The ruins can be found underwater.
* The alternate ending of ''Film/ArmyOfDarkness'' 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.
* ''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 UsefulNotes/LosAngeles AfterTheEnd. 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.
* ''Film/BattlefieldEarth'' shows them in ruins. To the point that the humans think that [[AllHailTheGreatGodMickey mascot statues on a golf course were gods]].
-->'''Nostalgia Critic:''' And over here we see a mouse god named Mickey.
* ''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.
* ''Film/EscapeFromNewYork'', while not a true example, makes use of the trope's effect.
** As does its sequel ''Film/EscapeFromLA''.
* ''Film/TerminatorSalvation'' has a group of people hiding out in a 7-11 that has definitely seen better days.
* Much of the setting of ''Film/Oblivion2013''.
* In ''Film/TheLastWitchHunter'', the vision of the future the Witch Queen shows to Kaulder is ruined New York, rusting and overgrown with vegetation.
* ''Film/TwentyYearsAfter'' has tons of dilapidated/abandoned structures and vehicles as well as few people left.
* ''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.

* In the short story ''Literature/ByTheWatersOfBabylon'', by Stephen Vincent Benét, 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.

* In "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]].

* In ''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.
* Creator/HGWells' ''Literature/TheTimeMachine'' (the original novel and probably other adaptations as well) 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.
* In ''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 it may not be the ruins of the ''modern'' age, rather some future age. (We are told that the mine tailings contain perfectly preserved corpses, which is probably beyond today's science.)
* ''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.
* ''Literature/{{Flood}}'' features underwater ruins as a global flood continually rises and drowns everything. People survive by diving down and scavenging usable materials.
* Terry Pratchett's ''Literature/GoodOmens'' references this;
--> "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."
* Larry Niven's ''[[Literature/KnownSpace Beowulf Shaeffer]]'' series mentions crumbling roadways on Earth. They're crumbling not because of disaster, but quite the opposite -- they became obsolete once flying vehicles were ubiquitous. There's a section of roadway around Los Angeles preserved so that people can drive on it for sport.
* The multi-author ''Death Zone'' series, which take place about 50 years after ''Film/Stalker1979'' show 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.
* Creator/JohnWyndham:
** ''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.
** ''Literature/TheDayOfTheTriffids'' and ''Literature/TheKrakenWakes'' also 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.
* "The Zone" from ''Literature/RoadsidePicnic'' is a region abandoned by all (well -- 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.
* After a plague wipes out most of humanity, the protagonist of ''Literature/EarthAbides'' watches the city of San Francisco deteriorate from nearly intact to fire- and earthquake-ravaged ruins over the course of several decades.
* Much of Creator/StephenKing's ''Franchise/TheDarkTower'' 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.
* ''Literature/TheTripods'' series has the main characters touring France, passing through a ruined Paris at one point.
* Much of ''Literature/LocksmithsCloset'' 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]].
* ''Ape and Essence'' has a poem describing a ruined sewer.
* In ''Literature/StarCarrier's'' 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.
* Seattle in ''Literature/ClocksThatDontTick''. The 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.
* ''Literature/TheSaxonStories'' by Creator/BernardCornwell sets this trope, paradoxically, in the past. The Saxon and Viking kingdoms that arose in England in the late 700's discovered the ruins of the departed Romans. Four centuries on from the Roman Empire, the Saxons found the infrastructure left behind by a departed people, and only had a hazy idea as to how it got there. They do know the stone buildings, the city walls, and the roads linking them, are there, and are far in advance of anything that their technology can create. This leads to extravagant speculation about a race of gods and giants - as well as a depressive sense of culture shock among the more thoughtful Saxons who wonder if this is a sign of former greatness now degenerating into a CrapsackWorld. The hero Uhtred has a sense of awe and angst when he sees Hadrian's Wall for the first time, for instance. Although he has fought the Scots and understands ''exactly'' why the Wall was built. He just can't comprehend ''how''. But the ruins of a former modern age are all around, for all to see.
* OlderThanRadio: 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
--> meets some fragment huge, and stops to guess\\
What powerful but unrecorded race\\
Once dwelt in that annihilated place.
* ''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.
* ''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.

* Shown in ''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aftermath:_Population_Zero Aftermath: Population Zero]]'' and ''Series/LifeAfterPeople''. Both show the ruined remains of the modern cities succumbing to nature's relentless advances, but showcases also several ancient ruins surviving for even more time.

* ''Series/{{Survivors}}'' is set in the then-present day and depict the aftermath of a ''virulent'' disease. Our works are sliding into ruin.

* ''Series/StargateAtlantis'': In a variation, "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.
* ''Series/{{Sliders}}'': "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]].
* ''Series/{{The 100}}'' largely 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.
* Mostly averted in ''Series/{{Defiance}}'', where the Votan terraformers ended 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.
* ''Series/TheOuterLimits1995'':
** In "Rite of Passage", Shal and Brav come across the ruins of an underground carpark which is littered with skeletons.
** In "[[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.
** In "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.
* ''Series/PlanetOfTheApes'':
** In "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.
** In "The Legacy", Galen, Virdon and Burke discover the ruins of UsefulNotes/{{Oakland}}. The ruined city sets are reused from "The Trap".
* ''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.

* Two major dungeons from ''VideoGame/BreathOfDeathVII'' 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.

* In ''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]].
* In ''[[VideoGame/{{Crysis}} Crysis 3]]'', 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.
* Just about every environment in ''Videogame/{{Destiny}}'' 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]].
* The early stages of ''VideoGame/EnslavedOdysseyToTheWest'' are set in a New York that is actually in ''better'' shape than it should be.

* The ''VideoGame/{{Fallout}}'' games take place decades or even centuries after a nuclear apocalypse, and so are littered with the {{Zeerust}} ruins of pre-war America. The only city shown that wasn't vaporized was Las Vegas; two close-range nuclear strikes and two centuries sitting alone and untouched in the Mojave Desert has worn her down, but she still shines at night as [[VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas New Vegas]].

* A section of Gran Pulse from ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIII'' provides the trope picture. All around there, 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.

* In ''VideoGame/HorizonZeroDawn'' the world is absolutely littered with the ruins of the "Ancient 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.

* The main setting of ''VideoGame/KirbyAndTheForgottenLand'' is in another mysterious world where cities lie in ruin, overtaken by nature and populated by animals. Notably, Kirby can interact with various worn-out artifacts in this world, including cars, vending machines, traffic cones and many more.

* The opening chapters of ''VideoGame/TheLastOfUs'' are set in a decaying Boston invaded by vegetation.
* This trope is a staple of the ''VideoGame/MetalSaga'' series.
* Both ''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.

* The ''VideoGame/{{STALKER}}'' 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.]]

* Shows up in ''VideoGame/XenobladeChronicles2'' as 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]]".

* ''Later Comics'' 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.
* ''Webcomic/{{Homestuck}}'' has a subplot involving characters in future times exploring a planet whose civilisation has been desolated.
-->[[http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=6&p=002148 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.]]

* ''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.

* ''{{Webcomic/Sarilho}}'': The Mediterranean Empire's ''main endeavour'' is to recover and understand [[LostTechnology ancient technology]], which looks somewhat modern.

* In ''WesternAnimation/AdventureTime'' we get 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.

* Just about every episode of ''WesternAnimation/ThundarrTheBarbarian''.
* ''WesternAnimation/ReturnToThePlanetOfTheApes'': In "The Unearthly Prophecy", Bill and Jeff discover the ruins of the New York Public Library in the Underdwellers' caverns.

* 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 well as the awe 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 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]]

* 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 [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwerbelastungsk%C3%B6rper concrete cylinder]] built for structural testing in the run-up to the construction of a triumphal arch.

* ''Literature/EternityRoad'' by Creator/JackMcDevitt has this in its title--we're remembered as the "Roadmakers," because our highways are the only things we left behind.

[[caption-width-right:350:[-Yeah, school's definitely out today.-] ]]

* ''LightNovel/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.

* ''LightNovel/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.

* 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.

* ''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.
* ''Anime/SonicTheHedgehogTheMovie'' treats the viewers to the long-abandoned ruins of a city on the surface on the hero's way to Eggman Land--and amazingly, the traffic lights still work!
* At one point in ''LightNovel/ScrappedPrincess'', 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.

* In ''WesternAnimation/WallE'', the Earth has been reduced to one big pop-culture garbage heap.

* ''Anime/CowboyBebop'': Every time there's an episode that takes place on Earth. In one episode, Spike trudges through an abandoned museum in search of a rare Beta video tape player.

* ''Anime/TheBigO'' features a number of sequences, including one aquatic one [[spoiler:through Grand Central Terminal]], that reveal something interesting about Paradigm City: [[spoiler:It's built on the ruins of New York]].

* ''Film/{{The Time Machine|2002}}'' 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]].
* ''Film/{{Waterworld}}''. The ruins can be found underwater.

* Much of the setting of ''Film/{{Oblivion 2013}}''.

* ''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.

* The multi-author ''Death Zone'' series, which take place about 50 years after ''Film/{{STALKER}}'' show 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.

* The ''[[VideoGame/{{STALKER}} S.T.A.L.K.E.R.]]'' 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.]]

* ''VideoGame/EtrianOdyssey'': Shows up alongside the reveal that [[spoiler:the setting is EarthAllAlong, some indeterminate amount of time after the end]].

* 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 fueling 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.