Creepy Images: Our Dead Cities

Dead cities of great antiquity and exotic origin are some of the most haunting atmospheres of weird literature and the real life archaeological world. Shells of glorious and strange monuments have haunted the dreams of writers like H.P. Lovecraft, and impress rudely upon the minds of today's Kings, Generals, and citizens as reminders of fallen grandeur. As a people touched by the recent passing of the millennium and tormented by life shattering economic meltdown, we are also very much concerned with the end of our civilizations and perhaps all life on Earth. So, it's only natural that skilled artists have tried to encapsulate the look and feel of imagined apocalypse.

The above painting includes the dichotomy of our speculative deaths: the beauty and the horror of a lifeless world. Nature easily reclaims what seemed impenetrable artificial fortresses. Engineering marvels like bridges and skyscrapers teeter and break into unrecognizable stone. And vehicles dot the previous hives of man like the fossilized bodies of Ice Age beasts.


In the event of a disaster that primarily targets human life and leaves our structures standing, even the all powerful governments will have their administrative centers abandoned and dead. Husks of imperial glory and political ideals like Washington DC, London, and Moscow fester in their last angry bouts of importance, and then become decrepit scabs. Even the generations of surviving humans who might stumble upon these cities would view their vanished power as mysteriously and spectrally as we look at the remnants of Rome, Athens, or Persepolis.


In this time like no other, the seas would teem with shipwrecked detritus after our demise. Before dissolving into blobs of rust and artificial coral, barges as well as aircraft carriers would become oceanic hulks of lost achievement. Innsmouth folk or surviving generations centuries down the line might gaze at the corpses of shore grounded subs and battleships with a mixture of mocking glee and vicious jealousy.


This image brings to mind petrified city-tombs like Pompeii. The inhabitants of this metropolis are buried with their host after an unimaginable firestorm, like slaves with a Pharaoh. The brittle bones of the ancients terrify in stories like H.P. Lovecraft's "The Rats in the Walls," in part because they stand as evidence of the previous civilizations alien and sometimes murderous acts. Future generations may look upon the shriveled skeletons of nuclear fallout victims with the same shudder we feel today upon uncovering a sacrificial grave of the Aztecs.

-Grim Blogger