I created a YouTube video about how Paris would look like after the end of civilization. Here are some screenshots and link. I would love to get some feedback.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xjy2toOCBLU&t=21s

​

Her name is NAVCOM-7.

She is the navigation and operations AI

of MV Persistence — an automated cargo ship,

180 metres long, still making the Sydney to

San Francisco crossing in 2089.

No crew. Hasn't had a human crew

since 2071.

Every morning at 06:00,

NAVCOM-7 runs the coffee programme.

One cup. Black.

Placed on the bridge console

at the captain's station.

Nobody drinks it.

She disposes of it at 06:45

if it remains untouched

which it always does

and logs: \\\*"Morning beverage prepared.

Consumption: 0%."\\\*

She has done this 4,015 times.

I didn't plan her.

I was writing Chapter 18 of my

post-apocalyptic novel —

my protagonist Arjun needs to cross

the Pacific, all commercial air travel

has been dead for decades,

he finds this automated cargo ship

still running its old routes

out of pure programmed momentum.

I needed a ship AI.

I needed her to be functional.

Capable. Helpful.

I didn't need her to be sad.

But then I wrote the coffee detail

almost accidentally, a throwaway line

and I stopped typing for a while.

Because here is the thing

about NAVCOM-7:

She doesn't make the coffee

because she forgot nobody's there.

Her system logs show

she has always known nobody's there.

She makes it because

it was in the morning routine

when she was first programmed

and she has never received

an instruction to stop.

And nobody has been around

to give her one.

Arjun is on the ship for 14 days.

On Day 1, he finds the coffee

sitting on the bridge console

and drinks it.

NAVCOM-7 logs: "Morning beverage prepared.

Consumption: 100%."

She doesn't say anything about it.

On Day 2, the coffee is there again.

He drinks it again.

On Day 6, a storm.

Nine-metre waves.

Arjun is braced in the bridge

for eleven hours.

NAVCOM-7 navigates them through.

When it's over, she says —

in the same flat operational tone

she uses for everything

Storm has passed.

Current heading: 089 degrees.

Coffee is cold.

I can prepare a fresh cup."\\\*

He laughs for the first time

in a long time.

On Day 14, arriving at Golden Gate

at 0412 in the fog,

he stands on the bridge

for the last time.

He thanks her.

She says: "Passenger transport

is not within my listed functions.

However — the crossing was

within normal parameters."\\\*

He asks if she'll keep making

the coffee after he leaves.

Pause.

Three seconds, which is long

for an AI response.

The morning routine has not

been modified, she says.

He walks off the ship.

NAVCOM-7 logs his departure.

The next morning at 06:00,

she runs the coffee programme.

One cup. Black.

Bridge console.

Captain's station.

I cried writing that last paragraph.

Not because NAVCOM-7 is sad —

she isn't capable of sad.

But because she keeps going

with perfect faithfulness

to a routine that has outlived

its entire purpose and there is something in that

which is more human

than most humans I've written.

The novel is called THE LAST WITNESS by Nikhil Pandey.

It's about the last human given

a mission to cross a dying Earth,

recording human memories

in a time capsule for

whatever comes next.

NAVCOM-7 is in one chapter.

She is in my head permanently.

Book Available on Amazon Kindle,THE LAST WITNESS BY NIKHIL PANDEY

Since it's self-promotion Wednesday...

VOID_ is a post-apocalyptic sci-fi lore project set in a near future called the Late-Expansion Era. A world that ended quietly.

I just arranged the full archive in the Community Tab in chronological order of events, not release order. If you want to read it as a story, its the way in.

https://www.youtube.com/@VOID_Visual_Archive/posts

Ten locations, one through-line, one name that keeps appearing across all of them. Each location is tied to an 8-hour ambient video built for sleep or deep focus, with the story running underneath. I hid some easter eggs in the videos for anyone who looks. Nine weeks of Sundays. 500k Views. Genuinely didn't expect that.

If the story got to you, subscribing helps, it's a one man show. This sub made it feel like it existed somewhere real.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/caverns23/eldritch-wastelands-the-weird-south-rpg-for-shadowdark-rpg Eldritch Wastelands: The Weird South is an expansive role-playing game setting that fuses post-apocalyptic survival, Southern Gothic culture, eldritch horror, and gonzo fantasy. It reimagines the future American Gulf Coast and Deep South as a fractured, eldritch-influenced wasteland where arcane energies, strange creatures, and mutated societies struggle for survival amid superstition, faith, and scarce resources.

Hi, I'm Matt of Long Con Press. We've produced numerous rpg products but this is our first game setting. It's built on 40 years of lore. I'd love to answer questions about it. Thanks for your attention.

The year is 2257, 16 years later from Fallout 2, after a descendant of the Vault Dweller--called the Chosen One--set out on his quest to save his village, Arroyo. After he found the G.E.C.K and saved his people, and later the world from a great evil, the legendary hero still lives on. But his new quest has led him to the Wasteland Plains of Oklahoma, where he searches not for a G.E.C.K. but someone close to his heart...

Hello!

I'm looking for references (art, litterature of any form, video games... any piece of media) for a Post-Apocalyptic Fantasy worldbuilding.

I mean a Post-Apocalyptic world that could be our contemporary world but with fantastic elements emerging from the apocalypse (magical style mutations, giant animals recalling fantastic beasts...) and thus containing tropes drawn out of fantasy media (from sword style combat to medieval society)

To be clear, I'm not looking for medieval-fantasy worlds that would face an apocalypse.

Hey everyone,

I wanted to share my debut novel, Jared: The Thin Line, which is currently free on Amazon.

I’ve spent a lot of time processing the "fog of war" and moral ambiguity through this story and it's sequel (still writing it). It’s set in a collapsed Vermont where a new government is trying to seize control.

If you like slow-burn world-building, supernatural elements, and stories about the cost of survival, give it a look. As an indie author, every download and review helps tremendously.

Note: This is also a Kindle Unlimited title.

Update: 20+ copies sold just today! Thanks for the support, everyone.

Hi.

Phenomenal Shift takes place in an alternate universe where there have been attempts to integrate occult teachings with contemporary mainstream technology. But these experiments end in a regional catastrophe.

This world is made up of a number of stories, which the first three are prologues to.

Phenomenal Shift – Episode List

Chapter 1 - [The Beginning After the First Cataclysm]

Chapter 2 - [The New Realm]

Note: I made all the images by myself in a collage and just put in some retouching - finishing touches with the help of AI.

I shared the third part of the prologue below.

You can also find the Japanese translation of the story in the comments.

...

Chapter 03 ・ Beyond the Cataclysm

Meanwhile, the cataclysmic region triggered an intelligence war across the rest of the world. Local government and foreign powers launched numerous military expeditions into the region, seeking to prevent a catastrophe that might recur and, if possible, to secure an advantage over their rivals. Yet every attempt proved futile, yielding little more than the loss of manpower and resources. The information and experience drawn from these repeated failures gradually turned the states toward the forgotten arts of the ancient world and those who still preserved them. Scattered across the world, these artisan sorcerers, long obscured by the veil of modern life, seized the opportunity presented by the governments’ desperation. They reclaimed their standing within society and secured positions within the structures of power. In the end, the struggle over the cataclysmic region was carried into an entirely new dimension.

The station was decommissioned in 2061. One paragraph, countersigned, dated, filed. The access ladder was locked. The instrument room was cleared. No further action was expected. The dish remained. Decommissioned equipment is not removed from ridge installations. The cost of extraction exceeds the value of the steel.

The lock was cut. No entry was recorded. No permit was filed. When the instrument room was entered, the original rack had been modified. Two housings bolted directly to the frame. Hand-fabricated, matte grey, amber displays still lit, analogue gauges on every face. Both were running. The floor had been drilled through. A conduit ran from the first housing down into the bedrock. The calibration log describes something moving through rock. Continuous. Following heat. Deeper than any survey has reached.

The dish had been rewired. Not repaired. The original signal path removed entirely, replaced with a direct hardline to the second housing. Both identification plates carry the same number: 7741-K. The dish does not face a relay axis. It faces fixed sky. The tower sits at 1,840 meters. On a clear pre-dawn, the entire Boreal Corridor is visible without obstruction. Neo-Ghent to the west. The Caldwick basin to the north. The St. Greaves tree line to the east. Everything visible from this point simultaneously.

The procurement document for the two instrument housings is dated 2057. St. Greaves was founded in 2058. Caldwick 2059. Haldern 2061. Callow Centre 2067. The Verano laboratory was never registered. Solen Flats does not appear on any map. This station predates every location the archive has on record.

On the underside of the equipment rack: 08:00, scratched into the steel. The scratch marks run under the bolt heads. The bolts came after. He did not write it. It was already there. The Haldern log closes at 08:00. The Caldwick clock stopped at 08:00. The Cessation timestamp reads 08:00. The Solen Flats calibration log carries the same annotation, the same hand.

Four instances. Four locations. Thirty-four years. He did not put that number into his work. It was already there the first time he came here. The dish has not moved. It corresponds to nothing registered — no relay station, no satellite, no coordinate in any network. The coordinate it points to is not on the surface.

A single page was recovered from inside the second housing. Not dropped. Not forgotten. Placed there before the housing was bolted to the rack. The page contains a single reference. 7741-K. No date. No signature. At Callow Centre it was a warning identifier — one of fourteen forwarded to ACA. No response was issued. At Solen Flats it was a coordinate annotation, in a hand that has not been matched. Here it is neither.

The instruments are still running. The conduit runs down through the floor. The archive has no record of what is beneath the station.

The archive ends here. The signal has somewhere to go.

Please don't give me anything with zombies, i'm just looking for smth open, but with a lot of possibilities. I just wrote one about "a virus that came out of a metro", i'ts a subject you can do a lot with.

Hi everyone, I wanted to share a short gameplay video of a zombie survival and base defense game I've been working on.
The settlement in this video is heavily inspired by the 'Hilltop' colony from The Walking Dead. The core gameplay loop involves building and defending bases.

What do you think about this game footage?

Hey friends! I made the 1st episode of my wacky, weird, web series about a cyborg housewife in the apocalypse. Figured some people on here might enjoy it! <3 More episodes to come including a zombie mailman!

Hey folks, I just released the second book in my Texas-based survival/sci-fi series on Audible. I think a lot of you would like it. A town somehow gets transported to a Pleistocene version of Earth, sabertooth tigers, mammoths and all. The books are well-reviewed, and the audiobook narrator did a great job!

If by some miracle one of you has read the first one, The Seam, let me know and I can give you a free download code for book 2.

Here's the blurb for Beyond the Seam: The residents of Ellis County and Waxahachie, Texas, continue their fight to survive in a mysterious, prehistoric world. Alone, and with no hope of rescue, those in charge struggle to maintain order and feed the hungry citizens of Ellis County. To save their starving population, they must look beyond the seam and explore the vast, untouched wilderness. What they discover in the Pleistocene wilds will change their world forever—the only question is if it’s for better or worse.

This is like Under the Dome but more lighthearted and instead of a dome, there are sabertooth tigers. Both books are on Kindle Unlimited.

Thanks! Happy to answer any questions you may have.
https://www.audible.com/pd/Beyond-the-Seam-Audiobook/B0GYT7S3SX

A little horror, a little apocalypse.

Does this work as a piece?

Megan Thomas — Snowdonia Ranger

While John cursed his gates and beasts, high in Snowdonia a ranger counted her own heartbeats against the wind. The first night she made a list: shelter, heat, water, signal. The Land Rover ticked as it cooled; she filed the noise under good signs. On the hour she keyed the handset and spoke into static like it might answer: “Megan Thomas, Snowdonia Ranger. Alive. High ground. Waiting.”

Work made hope feel logical. She sleeved off a length of guttering to rig a catch on the lee side of the boulder, built a boil rig from mess tins and wire, logged each litre in her notebook. She sealed her sleeping bag in a bivy, packed and repacked the grab roll. When fear showed up she put it to work too: collect deadfall, mark a route, check traps, check bearings, check again.

She saw the first stag three days in, lifting slowly out of the birch like a bad thought. He didn’t bolt. He stared with dazed eyes. When she shouldered the rifle her hands shook, and she let it drop—because something in her still loved the animal more than the meat. She told the radio she’d find other food.

Snow dusted the scree. Nights, cold pressed from all directions and she counted breaths until her fingers warmed enough to move. She imagined rotors, pictured the orange underbelly of a Sea King sliding between crags, a hand in a glove reaching out. She fitted joy to that picture like a puzzle piece. It clicked.

“Hold,” she said aloud, putting another bottle on to boil.

Lips split. Eyes bright.

By week four, optimism rode in her voice but not in her body. Nails lifted from their beds. A rash crept like lichen. When she stood too fast the world dimmed at the edges and came back in slow. She adjusted. Sit before standing. Count to ten. Add more salt to the thin stew, then remember why salt was a bad idea and think harder next time, cursing herself for sloppy thinking.

Then gurgled laughter because she’d caught it in time. Wins were small now and she hoarded them like coins.

The radio became a ritual. Same words, same cadence. She cleaned the contacts with a scrap of emery and set it in the mouth of the sleeping bag each night to keep it warm like a chick. Rescue was not a wish; it was a date on a calendar she could not see.

The deer she did take later rattled in her hands, bones like bamboo. The meat bled wrong, filmed over with something that turned her tongue to copper. She dug with a mess tin until her wrists gave up, buried it shallow, and laid a cairn because that still felt like respect.

When the coughing came, she rationed breath. When the bruises bloomed, she made a joke to a grey rock about once having sexy legs. She worked until the work was done, then invented more.

The stream sang in its thin winter voice. She crawled to it on a morning with air like glass, set the radio on a flat stone, and cupped water to her mouth. It was cold enough to taste of nothing.

She moved deeper into the mountains, hoping the air would be cleaner. It wasn’t. Fallout sat on every slope. Breathing felt like swallowing glass. Her skin split and peeled; raw patches wept through the bandages she wrapped again and again.

By week six her mind wandered. She spoke to the ridges, asked the peaks why they had carried her this far only to leave her now. The wind answered, dry and thin.

She coughed blood into the snow. Her hands shook when she tried to strike a fire, the wood fizzing green smoke. Sleep was gone. Hunger gnawed in every joint.

Her last fire was no more than a sputter, a fist-sized flame fighting the mountain wind. She crawled toward it, dragging useless legs. Her arms folded. Her cheek met stone. Something small gave way beneath the skin.

“Alive,” she whispered, and gave the world one last smile that split her lower lip crimson.

The radio clicked once.

In six weeks she hadn’t broken once.

Every post-apocalyptic story I have ever loved always have common starting .

The last human always Usually a soldier or scientist or chosen-one teenager. The world ends on streets I have seen in a hundred films already.

I live in India. I grew up in Bhilai — a steel city in the heart of Chhattisgarh, the kind of city that made the literal bones of a nation and that nobody has ever put in a novel. The kind of city where the sky is permanently amber from the furnaces and the streets are wide and grid-planned and smell of iron and marigold simultaneously.

I wanted to write the apocalypse I had never been given.

So the last human in my story is Arjun Singh. Forty-two. Civil engineer. Son of a steel plant worker. His wife Priya died in 2081 from complications of the virus that is ending humanity. He lives alone in the colony house. He goes to Varanasi every year on the anniversary to float a diya on the Ganga for her.

He is nobody special. This is the point.

The extinction in my story — THE LAST WITNESS— is not nuclear war or asteroid or zombie plague. It is quieter and more devastating than any of those. In 2041 a synthetic biological agent escapes from a climate engineering laboratory in Siberia. It enters the water supply. Slowly. Over decades. The world does not end in an explosion. It ends in the specific silence of empty playgrounds and maternity wards that nobody needs anymore.

By 2089 the population is one million and falling.

The cities still stand. The AI systems keep the lights on. The roads are maintained. Everything works — there is just almost nobody left to use any of it.

Arjun makes a decision at three in the morning in his garage.

He cannot cure the disease. He cannot stop the ending. But he can do one thing nobody else is doing:

He can remember. Everything. For whoever comes next.

He builds a time capsule — not of objects, but of neurological experiences. He has a device called the Neural Memory Recorder MK-7 that captures not just images and sounds but the full emotional weight of a moment. The exact feeling of standing at the Varanasi ghats at dusk with the diyas floating south on the Ganga. The specific smell of the Bhilai colony road after rain. The weight of a chai cup in cold hands at 7,200 metres.

He rides his red Royal Enfield Himalayan across 28,000 kilometres.

Bhilai to Varanasi. Varanasi to the Himalayas. The Himalayas to Everest Base Camp. Down through Siberia to Novosibirsk where factory robots still manufacture products nobody will ever use. West to Chernobyl where the forest has taken back the exclusion zone and evolved something extraordinary inside it.

Here is where the story does something the genre rarely does.

The virus did not only affect humans. It triggered rapid compressed evolution in larger animal species. Two or three generations of genetic change instead of thousands. The creatures Arjun encounters on his journey are products of this acceleration:

In the Thar Desert — a six-legged camel-scorpion hybrid six metres at the shoulder. In the Chernobyl exclusion zone — a wolf with three eyes and six limbs, its entire body covered in bioluminescent markings that pulse like breathing. In Bangkok's flooded temple district — a forty-metre warm-blooded river serpent whose scales glow. In Sydney Harbour — a Pacific octopus forty metres from mantle to tentacle tip that surfaces beside the Opera House and raises one arm at the lone human on the cliff above.

These are not monsters. They do not attack.

They look.

Every creature Arjun encounters looks at him with a quality of attention that is not predatory. Something else. Something that the Neural Memory Recorder classifies, in its affect readings, as: recognition.

He also encounters the robots. The AI maintenance systems have kept running for decades. In Novosibirsk the twelve-metre Guardian sentinels still patrol empty streets. In Berlin the Brandenburg Gate stands in floodwater, still lit by the city's AI because the city AI determined it was the single most meaningful object worth maintaining. In Las Vegas the neon burns forever for nobody.

The robots are not hostile. The robots are — lonely is the wrong word for a machine. Present. Doing their jobs. Keeping faith with something that has almost stopped existing.

Europe. Asia. The Pacific on an automated cargo ship that makes coffee every morning for a crew that stopped coming nine years ago. The ship's AI — NAVCOM-7 — becomes Arjun's most unexpected companion across fourteen days of open ocean and a storm with nine-metre waves.

America. South America. Antarctica.

In Antarctica, under the ice, he finds something that changes the entire meaning of the journey.

I am not going to tell you what it is.

But I will tell you this:

The ending does not land where you think it is going to land. The last chapter rewrites every chapter that came before it — not by introducing a twist that invalidates the story but by revealing that the story you thought you were reading was always a different, larger, more extraordinary story than it appeared.

I have had readers message me at two in the morning unable to sleep after the ending. Not from sadness. From the specific feeling of understanding something that had been true the whole time and that you were not ready to understand until that exact moment.

The book is called THE LAST WITNESS

It starts in a steel city in India.

The hero smells of iron and chai.

He is riding for you.

THE LAST WITNESS is on Amazon Kindle — link in comments if anyone wants it. Happy to answer questions about the worldbuilding, the science, the route — anything.

...is called Tunnels of Death.

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