Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Maps Of The Apocalypse

With the end coming soon (according to some prophets) lets take a look at what the world will look like in the post-apocalypse, shall we?

First up we have TSR's 1st ed. Gamma World map. Brilliant and ready to inspire the imagination of any GM/Mutant Lord!
Gamma World had a general campaign world background with factions set up but left things open - wide open, in fact, to really fill in the blanks DIY old-school style. One hex on that map of the future United States was about 80 miles, I believe. The map itself is fantastic with parts of the east coast blown to bits as well as California tumbling into the sea and notice Florida shrinkage. Classic post nuclear world!

Here's hoping that whole east coast - west coast thing is settled....or not!
I'll try to get an actual scan of this map in the near future.


Next we move into the realm of comic fantasy with Jack Kirby's world of Kamandi.
The creative insanity of Jack's vision of a future world brings us mutant animals controlling their own empires within the former United States. Beyond that we have such lovely vacation spots such as The Kanga-rat Murder Society, Mad-Hole, Island of the God Watchers and The Strange Fire Area among others. So plan your travel packages and Mutant Games now!

Vaughn Bode's future world fantasy of Cobalt 60 (now optioned by Universal Studios and Zach Snyder for a live action movie) brings us again to a grim world of mutants and savagery. The beautiful map below (created by his son Mark, I believe) shows the San Francisco area complete with flooded craters. Poor California!

The distopian future of Judge Dredd brought us the Judge, Jury and Executioner police force along with it's Mega-cities. But the real challenge for any traveler is a journey through the deserts of the Cursed Earth, a land of mutants, gangs and dinosaurs. Land too tough for even a Judge!


Finally, Dr. Chet Snow's post earth-change map of the United States. Again, bad news for California but not so bad for Tucson AZ where I may be able to pick up some beach-front property. I believe Dr. Snow's first major earthquake prediction date has come and gone but he still has a year and a half so we'll see. Other prophetic maps of similar ilk can be found here dealing with Nostradamus and pole-shifts.

And last I'd like to mention, if you really want to get a gander of what a post-nuclear world will be like in your home town, head on over to Ground Zero at Carlos Labs and look at the grim reality for yourself.

Mutant Future here we come!

"History shows again and again
How nature points out the follies of man"
-Blue Oyster Cult

5 comments:

  1. I loved the Gamma World map. Being from Washington State we set our campaign here. We marked off a couple of hexes in Eastern Washington and dubbed them the "Hanford Memorial Nuclear Wasteland." For some reason I still get a real kick out of that.

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  2. LOVE the maps in this post Bliss! And that nuke map is hilariously depressing--I keep annoying my wife ("...here's what our neighborhood would look like after Fat Man! After an asteroid!").

    Endless entertainment I tell you!

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  3. If you don't want to change geography and just want to see what the effect might be check out Morrow project. They had a list of targets in the US and what was most likely the payload. They then has diameters of complete destruction, massive radiation etc. I marked up more than one Rand McNally atlas because of those tables.

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  4. @Narmer - the gamma world map almost begs that you make your own region the campaign wasteland.

    @wymarc - huh, I never heard of the Morrow project. I'll have to look into that.

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  5. Haven't heard from you in awhile. Hope all is doing mighty fine, your way.

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