Not a tech tree — a timeline of collapse
A city in collapse
The only chapter with no crafting progression. Everything here has already been made for you — water in the pipes, food in the shops, a roof overhead. What changes is something else: you do not gather a resource, you find it, and everyone else is looking for the same thing. So the clock here does not measure "how much can I build", it measures "how long until this turns dangerous".
Если в городе произошла авария
- Определите непосредственную угрозу. Пожар, запах газа, обрушение, химическое облако, вода или официальная эвакуация меняют порядок действий. При угрозе жизни выходите, не собирая имущество.
- Получите официальную информацию. Радио, экстренные уведомления и сообщения служб. Запишите время, источник и три ближайших действия, чтобы не принимать каждую пересланную запись за факт.
- Если вода ещё безопасна — наполните чистую закрываемую тару. Сначала бутылки и кастрюли; ванна пригодна прежде всего как технический запас, если её нельзя герметично закрыть.
- Отключите опасные системы только если умеете. При запахе газа не включайте свет, не зажигайте огонь, выйдите и вызовите аварийную службу. Повреждённые провода и вода рядом с ними — запретная зона.
- Организуйте одну безопасную комнату. Вода, лекарства, фонарь, обувь, документы, аптечка, радио и санитарный набор. Генератор, мангал и походная горелка работают только снаружи вдали от окон.
- Не оставайтесь ради запасов при пожаре, газе, видимом разрушении, быстром затоплении или официальном приказе об эвакуации. Жизнь важнее имущества.
Hour 1 — fill up while the water is still running
⏱ The most valuable window in the chapter, and it is shortЕсли службы не сообщили о химическом или микробном загрязнении и вода ещё подаётся нормально, сначала наполняйте чистую закрываемую пищевую тару: бутылки, канистры, кастрюли с крышкой. Ванну можно использовать как технический запас либо с чистым герметичным вкладышем; открытая ванна быстро загрязняется и не должна считаться гарантированно питьевой.
At the same time, work out what has happened and whether staying is dangerous: fire, a gas leak, collapse, a radiation threat (in that case start with "Why you left"). If the building is sound, staying home is almost always the better choicethan going outside.
Day 1 — the hidden water in your own flat
⏱ A few hoursAn ordinary flat already holds a supply of water that almost nobody remembers:
- The water heater tank — usually 100–300 litres (25–80 gallons) of clean drinking water. Drain it through the bottom tap. Set a gas heater to "pilot" beforehand, cut the power to an electric one, and never run the element in an empty tank.
- The toilet cistern (the cistern, not the bowl) — if no cleaning tablets go into it, the water is usable.
- Ice in the freezer и жидкость из консервированных овощей. Вода из отопления, радиаторов, пожарной системы и автомобильных контуров — техническая: присадки и металлы не удаляются кипячением.
Food: eat first whatever will spoil without a fridge, and save the tins for later. Light: a torch, not candles — an open flame in a building with no fire service is a risk of its own.
How to get the water out of the heater and the cistern
Once the supply is cut, an ordinary flat still holds between 50 and 300 litres (13 to 80 gallons) of clean drinking water. That is a week, even a month, of life — but you have to know how to take it without spoiling it.
The first move, before anything else: shut the stopcock where water enters the flat. Otherwise, when supply comes back, dirty water from the main will run into the pipes and mix with your clean water — and if there is a burst, the lot drains away.
- The water heater. Electric — cut the power first, and set a gas one to "pilot" or switch it off. A heater left heating with no water inside fails within minutes, and a gas one is a fire as well.
- Open the hot tap on any mixer — that lets air in, otherwise the water will not come out of the tank, the same way it will not pour from a bottle sealed at the top.
- Put a container under the bottom drain tap of the tank and open it slowly. The first litres may come out rusty and full of sediment — that is scale from the bottom. Let the water stand, then pour it off the sediment.
- The toilet cistern. The water in it is ordinary tap water and is fit to drink, but only if freshener tablets and cleaning blocks have never been put inside. Blue water: do not drink it and do not wash dishes in it. Water from the bowl itself is no use for anything.
- What else there is in a flat: лёд и замороженные продукты в морозилке, жидкость из банок с консервированными овощами. Вода из отопления и радиаторов остаётся только технической — кипячение не удаляет присадки и растворённые металлы.
Boil it anyway. Water from the heater is clean, but it has been standing warm in a tank, which is ideal for bacteria. A minute at a rolling boil settles it.
🌙 Night 1 — darkness changes the city
The first night without power lays bare the main thing: light is visible from far off and says "there are supplies here". Cover the windows, use as little light as you can, do not step onto the balcony with a torch. Sound carries surprisingly far in a blacked-out city — a generator, music or a loud conversation is audible a block away.
The door: brace it from the inside, do not just lock it. A simple prop wedged into the floor under the handle holds better than a lock.
Days 2–3 — the window when the crowd starts moving
⏱ The famous "72 hours". Here they mean something different: that is roughly how long order holdsFor the first day people expect it all to come back. By the end of the second or third, most have run out of water and food, and the city changes: queues, crushes, shops broken open. This is the worst time to go outside and the worst time to stock up. Everything that could be done should have been done in the first hours.
If you must go out: in daylight, not alone, with no rucksack on show, along back streets, carrying nothing openly in your hands. Watch how people around you are dressed and how they behave — and look the same.
🌙 Nights 2–3
Keep watch if there are several of you. An alarm on the approach: a tin of pebbles on a line by the door or on the stair landing — the same trick as against an animal in the forest, and it works just as well against a person. Do not open the door to a voice. Silence is a better strategy than talking through it.
Week 1 — hygiene and the toilet decide more than food does
⏱ The rest of the weekThe most underrated part of surviving in a city. With the sewers out of action, infection becomes the main killer — the record of every besieged city says so. Set up a toilet at once: a bucket with a tight lid, bags, a dry cover material (soil, ash, sawdust), emptied into one chosen place well away from where you live and from water.
Мыть руки — приоритет наравне с питьём: чистая вода с мылом либо спиртовой антисептик с содержанием спирта не менее 60%, если руки не видимо грязные. Зола не заменяет мытьё рук. Для заболевшего выделяют отдельные посуду и полотенце.
A toilet without sewers — half an hour's work, months of use
Why this matters more than food. После отказа канализации загрязнение рук, воды и поверхностей быстро распространяет кишечные инфекции. Безопасный туалет, мытьё рук и разделение питьевой и технической воды нужно наладить раньше поиска дополнительной еды.
Do not flush a toilet that is not working and do not use it "while it still goes down". Without pressure the stack blocks, and the contents come back up — into your own flat or your neighbours' below.
- Take a bucket with a tight lid — or the toilet itself, with the water bailed out of the bowl. Line it with a heavy bin bag, better two.
- Next to it stand a container of dry cover material: ash, dry soil, sand, sawdust, cat litter, or shredded paper at a pinch.
- Cover it every single time, burying it completely under a layer. That is the whole secret: the cover takes away the smell and shuts out flies, and flies are the main carrier.
- Keep the two apart: urine separately, since it can be poured away more often and barely smells. Mixed contents smell and rot many times worse.
- Tie the bag off and take it to one chosen place — well away from where you live, from where you take water, and from where you walk. If there is soil, bury it a spade's depth down.
- Wash your hands every single time. Keep a separate bottle by the toilet with a narrow neck or a pierced cap — washing hands takes astonishingly little water if you pour it in a thin stream.
Bought in advance this costs pennies: a stock of heavy bin bags, a sack of cat litter and a bar of household soap — the cheapest purchase on the whole "What to buy in advance" list, and one of the most useful.
🌙 Night, week 1
A routine appears: water, hygiene, watch, saving batteries. A battery radio is the only reliable source of news when the network is down; listen briefly and at set times to save the power.
Weeks 2–4 — choosing a place, and finding people
⏱ No rush, but do not put it offChoosing a building, if you have to move: mid-rise, one entrance, not the ground floor and not a shopfront, at least two ways out. Upper floors are safer from casual strangers but worse to retreat from; basements are the other way round. Steer clear of anything that draws other people: police stations, government offices, hospitals, pharmacies, gun shops, petrol stations.
A group. A small trusted group is safer than either being alone or joining a large crowd of strangers: watches, divided tasks, help when someone is ill. Better to put it together beforerather than after, out of people you already know. In detail — the "People" chapter.
A month and beyond — when what you found runs out
⏱ OngoingA city's stock is finite, and that is the great difference from the wild biomes: a forest grows back, a warehouse does not. From here on it is not the person who found the most who wins, but the person who can actually do something useful: purify water, treat injuries, mend, sew, grow. Balcony growing, rainwater collection and repair — that is what stands in for a tech tree in this chapter.
↳ People: contact and protection↳ Why you left↳ What to buy in advance
People
The greatest danger is ordinary people who have run out of water for their children. The practical conclusion: never show that you have supplies — not by how you look, not in conversation, not by the smell of cooking. Backing down is almost always better than a fight: even a fight you win means an injury with no medicine. What to do: Do not show your supplies, do not argue, walk away. Backing down is almost always cheaper than winning.
A crush kills with no ill intent behind it at all. Do not walk into a dense mass of people; at a hand-out or outside a shop stay at the edge and near the way out, and move diagonally towards the edge of the flow rather than against it. What to do: Do not fight the flow and do not stop: move along the edge and diagonally. If you fall, get up at once, covering your head with your arms.
Environment
Dead sewers and rubbish bring outbreaks of gut infections. Dehydration from diarrhoea kills faster than hunger. Boil water, wash hands, and have a proper toilet, not an improvised one. What to do: Set up a covered bucket toilet on the very first day, wash your hands, boil your water. This saves more people than anything else.
The fire service will not come, and in a block of flats fire climbs floor by floor. Open flame only under control and never in a room with a draught. Know two ways out of the building. What to do: Go down and stay low, cloth over your face. Before opening a door, test it with the back of your hand: if it is hot, do not open it.
After a few weeks they form packs and lose their fear. Do not run, do not turn your back, back away holding something in your hands. A stout stick puts them off on its own. What to do: Do not run. Stop, face them, make noise, pick up a stick or a stone. A pack is more dangerous than a single dog — back towards cover.
Where rubbish piles up they breed fast, ruin supplies and carry disease. Keep food in sealed containers and never leave waste indoors. What to do: Do not touch them, do not eat or sleep where there are many. Keep supplies in containers with lids, not in sacks.
Water
По убыванию надёжности для питья: заводская закрытая вода → чистая вода, заранее набранная в пищевую тару → бак водонагревателя после оценки и кипячения → чистый бачок без химических блоков → лёд и жидкость из консервов → дождь, собранный в чистую ёмкость → открытые водоёмы после фильтрации и обеззараживания. Батареи и трубы отопления в питьевой список не входят.
Food
The order to eat things in: first what is perishable in the fridge, then the freezer (a closed one holds the cold about a day), then grains and pasta; tins last, because they keep longest.
What people actually look for and find: tins, grains, sugar, salt, oil, baby food, pet food (edible for humans), spices. Do not take swollen tins or tins with a damaged lid — botulism with no medicine is fatal.
Later on: growing on the balcony and the windowsill — leaf greens and radishes crop in weeks, and potatoes and onions sprout from what is already in the house. This is the only way to get fresh food in a city.
In place of a tech tree, here is a list of what becomes valuableonce the power is off. Look for these and look after these, rather than whatever used to be expensive.
| Category | What exactly |
|---|---|
| Water | any container with a lid · a filter · purification tablets · bleach |
| Fire and light | lighters · matches · candles · a head torch · batteries · a power bank |
| Health | medicines · bandages and a tourniquet · antiseptic · soap · something for diarrhoea |
| Tools | knife · multi-tool · duct tape · rope · pry bar · pliers |
| Communication | a battery radio — the only source of news without a network |
| Trade | salt · sugar · tobacco · batteries · medicines · a skill is worth more than a thing |
The most valuable thing is not an object but an ability. Someone who can purify water, stitch a wound, mend something or grow something is always needed by a group, and unlike a stock of tins they do not get used up.
Which building to choose
- Mid-rise, the 2nd to 4th floor. The ground floor and a shopfront are a way in for anyone. Upper floors of a tower block are a trap: with no lift and no water it means hauling cans up every day, and in a fire there is only one route.
- One entrance that you control, and at least two ways out — the second can be a window, a roof, a fire escape, or a loft crossing into the next stairwell.
- Sound structure. Walk round and look: cracks in load-bearing walls, sagging floors, signs of fire — walk away. After an earthquake or an explosion this is the first thing to check.
- Not next to what draws people: shops, pharmacies, warehouses, petrol stations, police stations, hospitals, gun shops. In the first days everyone heads there.
- Water and sanitation. Is there anything to catch rain with (roof, balcony, downpipe), somewhere to take waste, somewhere to get non-drinking water.
- Neighbours. One or two people you know are worth more than any amount of barred windows. Sharing a watch with someone means you get to sleep.
- 1 The warm room. One room where you live and sleep. Less volume means less to heat. Cover the windows: light shows from the street and says "there are supplies here". Mattresses and blankets on the floor in one place: together is warmer.
- 2 Water and sanitation. Stored water in the bath and in containers; a bucket toilet with a tight lid and cover material, away from where you cook. With the sewers dead, infection kills sooner than hunger.
- 3 The door. A lock gets forced, a prop does not. A wedge or a length of timber into the floor under the handle, a second prop against the wall opposite. Do not open the door to a voice: silence is safer than talking through it.
- 4 The alarm. A thin line at knee height across the approach, tied to tins with pebbles in them. The same trick as against an animal in the forest — against a person it works just as well, and often scares them off by itself.
- 5 The second way. A window onto a fire escape, a roof hatch, a crawl through the loft, the next stairwell. Check it physically rather than in theory, and keep it clear.
- ! Самодельная печь, мангал, генератор и походная горелка в квартире запрещены. Открытое окно и самодельная труба не обеспечивают безопасный отвод угарного газа. Используйте холодную пищу или готовьте только снаружи на открытом месте вдали от окон, дверей и вентиляционных заборов.
What to do in the first days
- Water. Fill everything you have while the pressure holds, and shut the stopcock into the flat.
- The toilet. Bucket, bags, cover material, a set place to empty it. Do this on day one, not when it becomes urgent.
- The warm room. Pick the smallest one, ideally with a window that does not face the street. Hang blankets over the windows: warmth, and no light showing.
- The door and the approaches. Prop to the floor, a line of tins on the landing. No need to tape over the spyhole from outside — the point is to look through it in silence.
- Take stock. Lay out everything you have and count it in days. Eat the perishable first, put the tins aside.
- The second way out — walk it yourself. Stack a minimum kit beside it: shoes, documents, water, knife, torch.
- Information. A battery radio, listened to briefly and at set times.
- Neighbours. Agree watches and a shared signal with the people you know. Tell nobody what you have or how much.
Heating without heating. Heat yourself, not the flat: layers of clothing, a hat indoors, a tent or a canopy of blankets inside the room — the space under the canopy is warmed by your own body. This works better than any home-made stove and costs nothing.
When to leave. The decision is made on water: if your supply is running out and no recovery is in sight, leave, and better before everyone else decides the same. Direction — away from the centre, towards water and towards your own wild biome (see the map on the front page).
What a city home is shortest of
↳ People: contact and protection↳ What to buy in advance
Smoke, air and the door
Door
During: indoors — get under a solid table or against an internal load-bearing wall, cover your head, hold on. Do not run for the exit and do not use the lift: most injuries come from falling objects and from stairwells full of people. Outdoors — into the open, away from walls, glass and cables.
After: expect aftershocks, which can be stronger. Check for a gas leak (hissing, a smell) — do not switch on a light and do not strike a match. Look at the load-bearing walls: diagonal cracks, a corner crumbled away, a sagging floor mean get out and do not go back. Do not enter damaged buildings to fetch belongings. What to do: Get out into the open away from trees, rocks and buildings, sit down and wait it out. Afterwards, expect aftershocks and check the slope above your camp.
No fire service is coming, and that changes everything. Smoke kills, not flame: a few breaths on a floor where plastic is burning will knock you unconscious.
What to do: go down and stay low, the air is cleaner near the floor, cloth over your face. Before opening a door, touch it with the back of your hand: if it is hot, do not open it. If you are cut off, get into a room with a window, shut the door, stuff the gaps with wet cloth and make yourself visible at the window.
Prevention: no unattended open flame, a container of water and one of sand kept close, and a second way out that is known and clear.
In a city the danger is glass and whatever comes off the roofs. What to do: inside, into a room with no windows or an internal corridor, one floor lower. Tape the windows in a cross or curtain them — the shards fly inwards. Do not go near a window "to have a look". Afterwards, do not walk close to walls: cornices and the remains of glazing keep falling for another day.
It rises, so you go up. But not into a loft with no way onto the roof: people have drowned by climbing into a dead end.
What to do: carry water, food and documents upstairs in advance. Do not walk through flooded streets: half a metre (knee-deep) of moving water knocks you off your feet, and under the surface are open manholes and downed cables. Water after a flood is sewage by definition, and any wound in it becomes infected.
It does not look like a disaster, but by its consequences it is one. No power, water, sewers, phones, heating, payments or medicine, all together.
What to do: see the "Actions" tab — the first hour decides more than the following week. And keep the figure in mind: order usually holds for about 72 hours, and then the city changes.
If you are trapped in rubble, do not shout continuously (it costs air and strength) — tap on a pipe or on concrete at intervals: sound travels through the structure much further than a voice. Cover your nose and mouth with cloth against the dust, do not disturb whatever is holding the rubble up, and spend your movements sparingly. What to do: Tap on a pipe or on concrete at intervalsrather than shouting. Cover nose and mouth with cloth, and do not disturb whatever is holding the rubble up.
Once the utilities stop being maintained, the city starts collapsing on its own: a leaking pipe washes the ground out, the asphalt holds as a crust and gives way under weight. Add to that lifted manhole covers and flooded basements where nothing is visible below the surface.
Signs: sunken asphalt, water or steam coming from underground, cracks in a ring, paving that has dropped, a hollow sound. What to do: go round dips and wet patches, and along a flooded street do not walk at all — under the water are open manholes and holes. Do not go down into basements or service tunnels: gas collects there, and there is nobody to pull you out. At night, only walk where you walked by day.
- Time — leave straight away, not after packing.
- Distance — every step away from the source cuts the dose.
- Shielding — any mass between you and the source: earth, stone, water, a wall.
Nuclear
What shields you in a city, best first: the basement of a block of flats → central rooms on lower floors with no windows → the middle of the building on a middle floor → a flat with the windows covered. Bad: the top floor (fallout is lying on the roof) and the ground floor (contamination outside at window height).
- The first minutes: inside, downwards, into the middle of the building. Close windows, doors and ventilation, tape and sheet over the gaps.
- Take off outdoor clothes and shoes in the hallway or on the stairs — that is up to 90% of what you carried in. Tie the bag off and take it well away.
- Wash, but do not comb your hair: dry dust in hair gets carried through the whole flat.
- A day at minimum, better two or three. The peak is the first 24–48 hours.
- Water: whatever is already poured and covered is safe. The heater, the cistern, the bath, all filled before the event. From the tap afterwards — only if there is no alternative, and filtered.
- Food: anything that was packaged and in closed cupboards. Wipe the packaging with a damp cloth and take it off without touching the contents.
Chemical
In a city this is the likeliest scenario of the three: an accident at a plant, a tanker spill, a fire at a chemical store, burning plastic.
Heavy gases flow downwards — and that turns the whole logic on its head: in a chemical release a basement becomes a death trap, and safety is upstairs. Go to the upper floors, close windows and ventilation, tape the gaps, breathe through damp cloth.
How to tell chemical from radiation: there is a smell, your eyes sting, your throat catches, coughing starts immediately. Radiation does none of that. Getting the direction wrong — up or down — is the worst mistake you can make that day, so decide on the signs, not on habit.
Once out of the area: undress, leave the clothes, wash with soap from the top down without scrubbing the skin.
Biological
Here the risk is higher than in any other biome — the density of people and shared water. Everything that works is well known and dull.
- Distance. Do not stand in queues or go into crowds, and do not enter places where people gather if you can avoid it.
- Water is always boiled, even mains water: when pressure drops, groundwater and sewage get sucked into the pipes.
- Sanitation decides more than medicine. With the sewers out, gut infections are the leading cause of death in besieged and flooded cities — not hunger and not violence.
- Hands. Мыть водой с мылом перед едой и после туалета или отходов. Спиртовой антисептик не менее 60% — резерв, если руки не видимо грязные. Не наносить бытовую хлорку на кожу.
- Isolate anyone who falls ill in a separate room, with one person caring for them, separate dishes and towel, and regular airing.
- Do not take belongings from abandoned flats or from bodies.
Path A — with bare hands
You know everything humanity knows, but you have nothing except your hands and what grows around you.
The first year
- With bare hands a city gives you almost nothing: no timber, no water, no soil, no fuel.
- Realistic: collecting rainwater, boiling, sanitation, a garden on the balcony and in the yard.
- Craft instead of gathering: mend, sew, purify, treat, grow — that is what stands in for a tech tree in a city.
- After that it is either the land around the city, or leaving for your own wild biome.
Three years
- Growing in the yard and on the balcony: soil, seeds, water, compost from your own waste.
- Rainwater as a system: roof, gutter, containers, filter, boiling.
- A stove burning offcuts and furniture; a warm room instead of a warm flat.
- A community: watches, divided labour, traded skills — the only arrangement that lasts.
The ceiling, and an honest limit
- Achievable: months living on what you find, and with a garden and water, years, provided there are not many of you.
- Out of reach: self-sufficiency. A city produces neither food nor fuel nor water.
- The honest conclusion: a city is a launch pad and a warehouse, not a place to live. The strategy: take the most you can from it and leave for water and land while that is still safe.
The bottleneck of this biome
Water and sanitation. Not hunger and not cold: with the sewers out of action, infection kills faster than anything else.
Path B — on what is left
The same place, but within a day's walk there is something people abandoned. That does not cancel self-reliance — it only speeds it up.
What to look for here specifically
- Your own flat and stairwell — start here: heater, cistern, tins, first-aid kit, tools.
- Cars in the yard: batteries, mirrors, belts, wire, cans, petrol.
- Pharmacies, builders' merchants, garages, schools — in decreasing usefulness and increasing risk.
- Shops and warehouses are the most obvious and the most dangerous: everyone goes there.
What that unlocks
- Water, light, medicines, tools — all at once and within walking distance. No wild biome offers anything like it.
- Glass jars, salt, matches — preserving and storage.
- Seeds from shops and allotments — the thing that moves you from path B to path A.
The trap on this path
The main trap of this guide. What you find always looks like plenty, and so people do not start growing, mending and learning until it is too late. Count your stock out loud in days and start the changeover when half is left, not when it has run out.
The ceiling by year
| Timescale | With bare hands | On salvage |
|---|---|---|
| Month 1 | Water from the flat, sanitation, a warm room | The full set of what you found: food, light, medicines |
| Year 1 | Rainwater, a garden in the yard, a stove, a community | The same plus supplies — but they are already running down |
| Year 10 | Only if there is land and water around the city | The warehouses are gone. What is left is what you can do |
Protecting yourself and your family
A family in a city. Agree three things in advance: where to meet if you get separated; the word on which everyone quietly heads there; and that the door is not opened to anyone, not even a familiar voice. Give children real duties — water, counting the stores, watching from the window: a child with a job copes far better than a child being shielded.