The world hasn’t ended, but this area isn’t habitable any longer. Either by some force of nature, government efforts, or something else, the situation is contained and one is not free to come and go into this land.
Whether the world knows or not isn’t the issue at hand. What matters is why the protagonists are there. More often than not, they’re there for profit. Sometimes they’re hoping to solve a mystery involving the place. Even more rarely they’re hoping to stop a threat that’s growing from within this area. Combinations of the above have occurred.
This is the isolated wasteland, a type of setting that has popped up a few times in fiction, but most examples I know of come from games. Let’s discuss some of our favorites, or maybe just our thoughts about this setting as a whole. Ideas for versions of this setting are also acceptable.
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Not sure if the Ishimura counts, but that.
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Edited by ALIAS-F4LS: 1/17/2019 4:22:47 PMRapture in the Bioshock series. Walking through a underwater city in a state of disrepair filled with it's former citizens all drugged to insanity on plasmids to the point they are just barely human. I'd say that's a pretty contained apocalypse. Maybe not a traditional wasteland but it's pretty hard to deny the place is pretty wasted.
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Edited by Blackout: 1/18/2019 2:56:15 AMChernobyl
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New Mombasa
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My bedroom...
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The Divide - Fallout: New Vegas
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Pretty much all of The Last Of Us. I doubt the Cordyceps virus spread further outside of America, so technically the world hasn't ended. Just a good portion of America is infested with fungus brained zombies.
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If I understand the question correctly, Rapture.
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While I’m partial to Fallout: New Vegas’ desert, my favourite would have to be Harran from Dying Light
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Glowing Sea from F4. I liked all of the secret stuff hidden below the Radioactive desert that it is. Especially that ominous Nuclear Pyramid outside the map...
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Does a Fallout vault count? One of the less reputable ones?
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Lost Izalith in Dark Souls was once the home of the Witch of Izalith and her seven daughters, and I guess still kinda is, but not how they were before.. The Witch’s motives aside (that’s a whole other discussion), she created the Chaos Flame, and it spiraled out of control, corrupting, and twisting all it touched into horrendous demons, and leaving the city surrounded by a molten plain. Gwyn, the Lord of Sunglight led a vicious war against the Demons, the burning conflict charring their armor and weapons black. But the Flame, and the Demons perisisted, and Izalith was left a charred wasteland filled with nothing but death, and Chaos. Or at least that’s what it seems. But maybe, perhaps, the Demons are not twisted monsters, but a proud, and misunderstood people, struggling for survival in a world that can’t accept them..
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My heart
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Karst, Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight Okay, okay, Karst is a city, not a wasteland, but.. It was once the capital of a great kingdom, but became host to a terrible curse. Not only do ghosts, and phantoms roam the streets, but an ancient powerful witch was resurrected as well, and began to wreak havoc. The few surviving citizens are quick to either go into hiding, or end it altogether. Kaho willingly enters this kingdom, as the curse is spreading to her homeland, and she seeks to stop it. Isolated. Uninhabitable. Dead. Cursed. [spoiler][i]”The queen would never.. Hurt us..”[/i][/spoiler]