History Main / RuinsOfTheModernAge

* 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 following a plague that wiped out most of the human population.

* In the short story "By the Waters of Babylon", by Stephen Vincent Benét, the son of a priest goes on a spiritual journey to the ruins of an American city. This story came out in 1937.

* Both ''{{VideoGame/Metro 2033}}'' and ''VideoGame/MetroLastLight'' prominently feature the post-nuclear war ruins of Moscow, in the form of both the Metro tunnels (obviously) and the devastated, overgrown, mutant-infested surface city.

* An episode of ''Series/{{Sliders}}'' 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]].

* Creator/JohnWyndham's ''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.
* His other books ''Literature/TheDayOfTheTriffids'' and ''The Kraken Wakes'' 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.

* ''Series/StargateAtlantis'': In a variation, one episode shows Ronon's home planet Sateda, on which the architecture resembles that of present day Earth. The area in which the action takes place is full of partially destroyed buildings and littered with rubble.

*
''Webcomic/GoneWithTheBlastwave'' is set in undisclosed XX/XXI century city ruined by the ongoing war.

* Terry Pratchett's ''[[Literature/Good Omens]]'' references this;

* Terry Pratchett'a '[[Literature/Good Omens]]'' 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."

"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

* ''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 StargateCity, anyways) Science World geodesic dome protruding from the water.

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