Amager, aka. “Lorteøen” (Shit Island), is not quite as bad as its nickname suggests. In addition to a large part of Copenhagen city, Amager contains large areas of nature and pastures. Much of this land is artificial however, built of assorted rubble and debris, and most of it used to be reserved for military exercises and still contains unexploded munitions. A few days ago it was foggy and frosty, and I decided to go for a walk. I ended up on Amager, in a part of it lodged between civilization and a large lake.
Well… civilization in the broadest sense. Mostly an old worn-down harbour area and small industry and warehouses. Between the fog, the frost, the low vegetation, the old industrial buildings, and the occasional pile of rubble or trash, I experienced a strong sense of Gamer Deja Vu. So I took a lot of pictures. Allow me to walk you through how Amager looks 200 years after the bombs fell.
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Here is a remnant of civilization that made it through mankind’s downfall relatively unscathed. Let’s jump the fence and see what lies in the cordoned-off wasteland beyond. |
| On the peninsula across the water, it looks like some wastelanders have erected a makeshift ladder, perhaps allowing them to more easily return to their hideout after a day of foraging and hunting the mutated wildlife. With sharpened sticks. |  |
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Here is a view down the coast into a small bay. The rotting remains of a trailer lies in the water on a bed of bricks from a ruined house. Further into the bay, several sunken boats are barely visible. |
| Here, it is clear that the coastline is in fact made out of rubble from old concrete and brick structures, doubtlessly torn apart in the nuclear holocaust two hundred years ago. Perhaps this was the site of a small settlement, or perhaps the debris was simply flung here by the blasts and allowed to remain, as nobody was left to clean up afterwards. |  |
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This photo illustrates the state of the water: Instead of rocks or sand, the bottom of the bay is made out of mainly bricks. In the foreground lies a sizeable chunk of house, slowly being reclaimed by the post-nuclear vegetation (which may look ordinary, but it glows at night). |
| This looks like a small, currently dried out brook. Except the sides and the bottom are lined with old bricks and pieces of concrete. |  |
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This pond may look idyllic, but note that it consists of strongly radioactive sewage water, carried here from the highly irradiated ruins of the old industry around ground-zero in Copenhagen inner city. In this pond doubtlessly lurks some Lovecraftian mutated monster. |
| Behold the source of the radioactive waste that feeds this lake of horrors. The unnatural shrieks of wretched atomic vermin emanates from its black depths. Sometimes. Probably. |  |
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Here is an ancient metal container, painted with tribal motifs before the great war, but now being reclaimed by nature as is the way of all things. Behind it, also being devoured by some manner of sentient plant masquerading as ivy, you can see an abandoned plastic shelter used in the early attempts to evacuate the population. |
| It’s impossible to tell if this expressionistic portrayal of a forbidding city, its buildings painted as nuclear silhouettes on its own walls, was created after the bombs were dropped, or whether it’s some sort of grim foreshadowing of the events that would soon transpire. Either way it’s pretty awesome. |  |
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Though this car has seen better days, I think we can all agree that it got through the nuclear apocalypse pretty alright all things considered, and that it’s still in remarkably good condition for having presumably been sitting here for over 200 years. |
| A patch of ice, shattered. Nuclear ice, maybe? It looks pretty neat anyway. |  |
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Here is the wreckage of a small boat at the far end of the bay visible in earlier photos. Somebody (probably filthy wastelanders) have attempted to moor it to a tree branch by crudely fastening it with duct tape. |
| Heading back through the Valby park, I spotted these signs of foresting and was quite captivated by the contrast between the dark green foliage and the bright orange sawdust. I do admit that this photo is not as post-apocalyptic as it could have been, but at least the fog is still visible between the trees. |  |
That concludes this tour of our bleak post-apocalyptic future. I hope you’ve enjoyed it, and that you’ll survive when China finally nukes us all. Note that none of these pictures have been modified in Photoshop – improving their contrast or tampering with their colours would just ruin the brilliantly oppressive authenticity of it all.
I did come away from there with some significantly less bleak photos, but you probably wouldn’t be interested in them. They’re mostly either extreme close-ups of frost-covered red berries or landscape shots of glistening ice-covered islands vanishing into the fog. I put a nice moody drawing I found at DeviantArt on top of one of them and am now using it as my wallpaper.
Fog is awesome.
Where is Mad Max, Snake Plisskin or Judge Dredd? In dont belive your story my good man!
Do you really think Denmark would be that cool after a nuclear apocalypse? Not a chance. The ‘States get all the badasses tearing up the urban ruins, Denmark would just be reduced to endless radioactive farmland. Face it, it would take more than nuclear holocaust to make Denmark that cool
At least you guys have legoland
This entry is hilarious, you should do things like this more often.
Heheh thanks, I’m pretty pleased with it myself. I think it’s a good way to make my increasingly frequent photo posts a little more interesting. I’ll keep an eye out for opportunities to do something similar in the future
It’s a good eye to spot how Amager can be used as a model for a post-collapse world.
It really goes to show exactly how much lee-way designers have in designing worlds – I do not particularly associate the images you’ve taken with any sort of apocalypse, but if I were to see the same thing in a game, it’d pass for it hands down.
But instead of going with an understated “the world is mostly just a barren wasteland” naturalistic approach, it seems to me that most game artists try to imbue their work with an impressionist angle…and this may sound weird, but I think many games are probably worse off for it. Generic design is not necessarily bad, if it’s used as a complement to special and particular design.
Actually this part of Amager wasn’t much way off from STALKER’s Zone. It’s no coincidence I started out with a barbed-wire fence, like STALKER starts you out in an area called “The Cordon”. Unlike Fallout 3′s omnipresent urban ruins with great big chunks of highway everywhere, STALKER’s first couple of areas are generally more barren, more just fields populated by mutated creatures. Parts of Amager is just a few mutants away from The Zone
“Parts of Amager is just a few mutants away from The Zone
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I don’t want any jokes regarding mutants and Amager!
Also “notify the administrator that WordPress 2.7 is available”.
Thanks but it’s not that long ago I updated. I can’t be arsed updating every second week like they want me to, though I know they have good intentions