Yay or nay. Thorough explanations are optional, but also very welcome. Personally, I vote nay. Here's why: - All tunnels will be flooded within one month after water pumping is stopped in a situation when all tunnel airlocks are open. Water pumps are working on diesel generators. There is plenty of fuel within the Moscow subway itself and on the surface, but it's not going to last for two decades. - Filters in the subway ventilation system can theoretically last up to one year and by the time they expire all radioactive dust is supposed to settle down and be washed away. - It's impossible to sustain a significantly large number of people by growing food underground, as depicted in the books. There are state reserve facilities that are accessible through the subway, but those won't last forever as well. - Metro was never designed to be lived in for a prolonged amount of time. According to civil defence rules everyone will be evacuated out of the city after three days. - It's physically impossible for new species to emerge in such a short span of time. Et cetera. A good dose of willing suspension of disbelief helps though.
Yes and no. Very few people would survive down there due to food shortages and lack of clean water. But a few might make it. They would probably get very sick, though, and die off. Nice analysis, Komodo.
But it is fiction, isn't it? Actually, more of a dystopia of modern day Russia, but a fiction novel nonetheless. Still, you bring up some valid points.
It is fictional, true, but that's not the point. Thanks in no small part to a marvelous thing called Doomsday Clock we know we have exactly five minutes before M.A.D. It's only natural to discuss whose fictional End of days was the most realistic, starting with Metro.
Heh, also true. I feel as if Last Light will provide some back-story on the nuclear exchange that occurred in 2012, at least more so than M2033 did, so that will be nice.
Russia is dirty as it is, it won't be much different from what's going on now in the middle/low class lives. A rule of thumb is to filter+boil tap water, for instance (Which is, ironically enough, what Europe forgot to do and paid for a few years back), as well as prepare food properly. Disinfectant pills are a result of Afganistan war in the past century and are fairly abundant.
It's just a habit. Even if the food and water are safe, I'd still filter, boil, and deep fry any consumables just in case.
i have to disagree with u komodo. i was born in russia (st petersburg) and visit it occasionally. i have also been in moscow once. Conditions are very clean. i might even say cleaner then here in sacramento CA. the city center has VERY little trash and garbage. howevre the city outskirts, (Where my home is located) is not as maintained as it should be. However new homes are built everyday and is getting better. The cities are getting better and bigger every single day.
I've lived here for a decade, doesn't look anywhere near clean to me *shrug* If it really is that clean though, then good luck to those tender high-class clean peeps when they get promoted to catastrophy survivors.
I've visited Moscow as well, in 2000. I may have been five, but the situation is just like any other city in the world. There are nice areas, and there are not-so-nice areas.
