Safe places for humanity

In a story I’ve just started the world has more or less ended. Most of the earth has been overrun by monsters and humanity has been pushed back to scattered defensible positions all over the world.

I need more places for human bases but have run out of ideas.

So far I have: the Burlington bunker complex, Switzerland’s National Redoubt, the Vatican, and a nondescript military base in the Nevada desert.

Anybody know any conveniently well defended places that could support a small community?

The Other Rainforest (North California, Oregon, and Washington) would be a damn good place to hide. All our bleeding-heart conservation FINALLY pays off!

Firstly, how the heck did they manage to overrun most of the planet???

Without knowing their offensive capabilities, it would hard to say if any place is "safe".

The Moon.

Cheyenne Mountain. It's a literal city within the mountain built to withstand nuclear bombardment. (Emphasis on bombardment.) There's only one way in or out of the facility (that people are aware of).

I imagine an isolated, sustainable, and dangerous place might be ideal for hiding. The Australian outback comes to mind. A ship would be ideal, so long as the people on board can stock up every now and then. There are plenty of castles around that did pretty well in their era, and still would. As for defending against an attack, with decent weapons, I imagine places high up, like observatories or radio buildings would be good. They're usually fairly secure as well. Anywhere with high security would be a source of weapons, such as prisons, airports, government facilities, those banks with big vaults that you see in moveis, etc.

You took my idea before I even thought of it

You should google U.S military bases if you want a lot of places to use. other than that, possibly the Russian Metro System? (Yes I'm thinking of Metro2033 )

edited 15th Jul '12 3:56:47 PM by ZapCorp

Thanks for the ideas so far guys definitely gonna have to look these places up.

as for offensive capability the monsters are all of the standard fantasy type. so trolls, goblins, dragons, sea-monsters, a couple demons, a few lichs, assorted undead, minotaurs, werewolves, vampires, spell casters etc. oh and a mortal god. so yeah not so much safe as safer than the rest of the world.

hope that helps

Sorry, but asides from the "God" I don't see how the rest are a problem.

And perhaps not even the God.

Armies of men with guns, tanks, choppers, artillery, aircraft, bombers, carriers, criuse missiles, nukes and more could solve the "monster" problem easily.

Why would humanity have to go on the defensive at all?

I don't see how we'd lose ground to the nightmares and myths of our ancestors when we have progressed so far as to able to be reliably claim to be able to be worse nightmares on our own.

That's not the point. assassin Z isn't asking if you think the scenario is plausible. S/he's just asking for ideas of places to hide after these creatures have overtaken the world. Obviously, they were more of a threat than you imagine, since they won.

Yeah, but HOW did they win?

How about the Superconducting Super Collider? It was cancelled before completion, but there are still buildings that can be used — and plenty of underground tunnels to boot. How you use them in the context of your story is up for grabs, but there's something there if you're willing to use it.

Alternatively, as Frogger5 suggested, you could go with ships (of the land or sea variety). Or you could take the Rapture route and make an underwater haven...assuming that things under the sea don't go awry.

^^ My guess says Rule Of Plot. Alternatively, there's a thousand reasons why ranging from pandemic diseases (weaponized or inherent with the creatures), to outright invasion and we backed the losing horse, to simple Zerg Rush and we lost the war of attrition.

The way we lost is essential.

If it was to some super plauge softening us up, then the problem would actually be more about gathering enough survivors to man defensible positions and keep the infrastructure/war machinery going, and not so much about winning battles but keeping logistical supplies open.

Ex: Oil fields have to keep pumping out valuable fuel, power plants have to supply electricity, factories have to keep churning out supplies with a depleted work force AND there has to be enough boots on the ground to cover everything.

If it was some sort of zerg rush, humans on the defensive would have to prepare for constant war, and making sure they aren't overrun in important places.

It would be a like Trench/seige Warfare all over again but with better conditions hopefully.

Ex: Major cities/installations will have to guarded at all times by a ring of soldiers to be viable but as long as armored convoys, air drops, naval blockade runners are available, it would be ok.

Bot of the above scenarios are just holding on until someone figures out where to shove a nuke into the enemy before mobilizing humanity for the clean up effort.

You have a lot more faith in humanity than I do. :) You do have a point, though, the plot should make sense. And the way we lost would actually affect which places remain safe.

With good reason I think. We've come a long way from the sticks and stones of cavemen.

We're not only the top of the food chain, but I have this strange feeling that some of us mentally masturbate to the thought of this and are eager to go war against hellish, inhuman monsters.

sorry Natasel it seems ive left your question open for too long. its more or less the zerg rush scenario with the monsters coming in from their world through portals into important locations. the initial attack was fast and violent enough to surprise us and was tactical enough to take out our ability to fight back. after the intelligent ones who led the attack were satisfied that we were no longer a threat the monsters dispersed and more or less do there own thing now. humans aren't constantly at full blown war but their defiantly not safe either. so its more like a zombie apocalypse type safe haven but defending against roaming dragons requires quite a bit more protection than rotting corpses do.

^ Defending against dragons requires overhead cover. So places like Cheyenne Mountain (mentioned earlier) are your best bets.

Either that or invest heavily into anti-aircraft guns/missiles in your remaining settlements.

All underground railways, especially ones that have a history of being used as air raid shelters. On a related note, the London Underground has WWII deep level shelters connected to eight of the stations (the connecting doors are currently bricked up but that can easily be changed with the proper application of a hammer).

London actually has the Kingsway Telephone exchange,miles of culverted rivers, sewers, and utiliity tunnels, and a number of underground military citadels.

I'd advise checking out urban exploration sites since if there's anything interesting underground then at least one urbex enthusiast would have found their way into it. Some potentially useful links:

Deep level shelters

Assorted underground stuff

More assorted underground stuff

Even more assorted underground stuff

Assorted military stuff

Large air raid shelter under Bristol

Bath stone quarry No.1

Bath stone quarry No.2

There's tons more stuff out there but if I linked all of it this post would go on forever.

A question that springs to mind, what would be the situation regarding food, electricity, water etc?

edited 20th Jul '12 10:34:01 AM by Weaver

Are the monsters edible?