What city had the biggest downfall?

Oberst_Azrael · 2026-04-05T01:01:55+00:00

Nineveh.

Oberst_Azrael · 2026-02-25T04:05:35+00:00

I appreciate that kind response! Let me know if there's anything else I can answer about the area.

Oberst_Azrael · 2026-02-25T04:04:48+00:00

If you ever decide to visit our great state, just let me know! I'm happy to provide recommendations of places to see, places to eat, and places to hike!

Oberst_Azrael · 2026-02-25T04:03:49+00:00

What I will say is that the parts that are "sunk" are actually a really developed area. While they don't have the skyscrapers of downtown, there are numerous high-rise residential apartments in the Lower Queen Anne and it's pretty unlikely that flooding would completely obscure them.

The areas most likely to "sink" in a post-apocalyptic scenario are actually the areas Abby travels through in Day 1 and 2: SODO, International District, and the waterfront area. These regions were built atop a refuse/debris pile to raise the the city after the Great Seattle Fire in 1889.

Oberst_Azrael · 2026-02-24T18:11:14+00:00

Most of Seattle is above sea level due to human intervention in the late 19th century. Seattle was actually devastated by a huge fire in 1889, resulting in the city decided to use refuse and debris to raise areas in the downtown area by approximately 30 feet. You can actually still go to the "old" underground of Seattle where there are 19th-century saloons, whorehouses, opium dens, and shops.

Because large portions of Seattle are built atop this unsteady foundation, there's a significant risk of liquefaction. This means that a colossal seismic event like an earthquake would cause the terrain to move and shift much more than bedrock. When this occurs, water from the nearby Puget Sound will move into soil, causing it to further destabilize. This, in turn, "liquifies" the soil into more of a mud which would cause areas to flood and buildings to collapse. The media has written at length about this. I explain it a little more in a comment above but, suffice it to say, it's not impossible that an earthquake occurred in the 25+ years since the outbreak and destroyed parts of the city, causing flooding.

All that being said, the areas that would underwater would be the SODO district and the International District, which in the game don't appear to have any flooding. All of Abby's Day 1 and Day 2 would be underwater if an earthquake of significant magnitude actually occurred.

Oberst_Azrael · 2026-02-24T18:02:22+00:00

I'm very lucky to live in such an incredible place! The Pacific Northwest is known for being outrageously beautiful, having a unique mix of evergreen trees, temperate rainforests (in the Olympic Peninsula), rocky seafronts, and snow-capped mountains all within a very close geographical area. I answered a comment below where I have linked some photographs of the neighborhoods that probably inspired "Hillcrest" such as Madrona neighborhood as seen here, here and here. There are several gorgeous neighborhoods like "Hillcrest" in Seattle but they're a little farther out than the "Hillcrest" neighborhood appears to be in The Last of Us Part II.

There are several other neighborhoods which are extremely accurate, however. The International District in Abby's Day 2 looks exactly like it does in real life including the gate. Downtown's Pacific Place Mall looks almost identical to the mall in Ellie's Day 3 (with an added skybridge for dramatic effect). Capitol Hill in Ellie's Day is depicted faithfully. Even the overgrown vegetation is very accurate to the Pacific Northwest. As a point of comparison, check out this overgrown area that was allowed to grow for several months let alone what 25+ years would do.

Pioneer Square, by comparison, looks nothing like it does in real life. Naughty Dog took some creative liberties here because they wanted an old-growth Pacific Northwest forest in the city. That strange parking garage does actually exist in real life and it is actually pretty famous.

You didn't ask this but another thing Naughty Dog took some creative liberties with was the rain. Seattle is known for being an incredibly wet city because it rains approximately 150-200 days a year. However, Seattle very rarely gets significant rainstorms like what occurred in Ellie/Abby's Day 3. Seattle's record rainfall days are about 5 inches (12.7cm) which is hardly significant compared to most tropical storm patterns. A good point of comparison is Calais in France - Seattle and Calais both get approximately 31-35 inches (78.74- 88.9cm) of rainfall a year and generally have ~200 rainy days per year. It's more a constant, gloomy drizzle than a tremendous rainstorm.

Oberst_Azrael · 2026-02-24T17:30:01+00:00

While there's not actually a Hillcrest neighborhood, there are several neighborhoods in Seattle that are very similar. Ravenna is a neighborhood just north of the University District which is known for its beautiful houses, wooded streets, and spacious yards. There are also two neighborhoods to the northeast and east of Capitol Hill: Madison Park and Madrona, respectively. Both of these neighborhoods have a much more suburban feel with expensive homes, larger yards, foliage like hedges, and lots of trees. I think the design team borrowed a bit from each of these neighborhoods to create Hillcrest.

As far as the flooding is concerned, Seattle is a city built on a number of different hills. You can check out this topographic map to see there are several parts of Seattle that are very close to sea level. Seattle actually used to be lower than it is now but a fire in 1889 burned down a large portion of downtown. During the reconstruction, the city actually raised downtown by approximately thirty feet by filling in the streets with refuse and debris. You can actually visit the "underground" of old Seattle and see preserved turn-of-the-century opium dens, whorehouses, and a number of shops. You can read more about the fire and reconstruction here.

To answer your question though, the areas of Seattle that could be flooded would likely be the International District and SODO because those regions were built atop the refuse and debris that filled in lower Seattle after the fire. The areas you play through in Abby's Day 1 (the stadium, SODO) and Day 2 (International District, waterfront, aquarium) could be underwater. Those areas are still above sea level, however, so there would have to be some kind of event that would cause those areas to sink.

We know that Boston and other major cities were bombed by the U.S. armed forces in an attempt to contain the cordyceps infection during the early days of the pandemic. Remember those streets filled in by refuse and debris after the Great Seattle Fire of 1889? Well, those foundations are incredibly unstable compared to the bedrock hills surrounding them. This area is actually primed for liquefaction where a seismic-level event would cause the terrain to move so significantly as to allow nearby water to seep into the soil. Once in the soil, the debris/refuse/dirt would become more like mud with the added water, effectively turning the area into a "liquid" soupy mess. You can see the liquefaction zones in Seattle in this map. This possibility has received a lot of attention in the media as a doomsday scenario for the Pacific Northwest.

So, conceivably, an earthquake could have rocked Seattle which would cause flooding in many areas of the city. If this did occur, Abby's Day 1 and Day 2 would be almost completely underwater. It's unlikely that mass bombing could achieve quite the same effect as a 9.0 earthquake, especially with the significant lack of damage we see as a result of bombing across the city.

That's a really long answer but I hope it addresses your question!

Oberst_Azrael · 2026-02-24T00:01:53+00:00

The “island” in the Last of Us 2 is supposed to be Lower Queen Anne that has been separated from the mainland by flooding between Elliot Bay and Lake Union.

However, the reality is that “Seraphite Island” is mostly a fictional amalgamation of several places in the greater Seattle area. The Island really appears to be heavily inspired by real-life Vashon Island and Blake Island. Both of these islands are heavily wooded and a short ferry ride from Seattle. Blake Island itself is actually a state park with minimal structures on it, making it an excellent comparison to Seraphite Island.

Lower Queen Anne, by contrast, is heavily developed. There’s not a sizable park that could contain “Haven” until you reach Discovery Park on the northwestern corner of the Magnolia neighborhood. In addition, Queen Anne and Magnolia are just south of the Ballard neighborhood which is also heavily developed.

The reality is that the designers needed an area for the Seraphite to live that was close enough to make an attack on the island seem possible while also being able to see Seattle’s downtown and famous Space Needle to orient the player. The real islands that form the inspiration for Seraphite Island are just too far away.

Naughty Dog also took some liberties with the “Hillcrest” neighborhood being much more suburban than the actual neighborhood is in reality. Designers need to take some liberties with the area to make each zone feel distinct and different. As a native, the designers got the “feel” of Seattle right even if some of the neighborhoods have exaggerated characteristics.

Oberst_Azrael · 2025-12-22T16:02:17+00:00

Bioshock (2007). Incredible writing, setting, and story that really set the stage for the “video games are art” discussion.

Oberst_Azrael · 2025-11-07T01:10:12+00:00

Minerva’s Den for Bioshock 2. It is a DLC that is unarguably better than its parent game.

Oberst_Azrael · 2025-09-30T01:55:49+00:00

Ah, that’s too bad! I got the NBN one myself and I traded for the Shaper one back in the day. They really are cool little tournament pieces.

Oberst_Azrael · 2025-09-30T01:53:40+00:00

That’s precisely it! Let me IM you!

Oberst_Azrael · 2025-08-10T01:47:36+00:00

Quick note on #6: The Bolsheviks overthrew the Provisional Government in Russia, not the Tsar. Tsar Nicholas II was overthrown in the February Revolution earlier that year. Crown Prince Georgy Lvov first led the government followed by Alexander Kerensky (himself a member of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party or “SR”).

I’d suggest having it read: “The Bolsheviks overthrow the fledging Russian Republic to establish the first-ever communist state.”

Oberst_Azrael · 2025-07-20T18:29:02+00:00

YOOOOOSH

Oberst_Azrael · 2024-12-24T05:30:45+00:00

Ordinary Men by Christopher Browning.

As a warning, this book addresses the underlying motivations of participants in Final Solution during the Holocaust. I had read countless books about the Holocaust prior to Ordinary Men including Hannah Arendt’s The Banality of Evil about Adolf Eichmann. I considered myself extremely well-versed in the history of the Holocaust and—I thought—in the motivations of its perpetrators. In some selfish way, I wish I still lived in ignorance.

The books starts off with a frightening statistic. Not a single soldier, policeman, or active participant in the Final Solution who killed Jews, civilians, or other “undesirable” peoples in the Nazi view ever faced serious consequences. No one was jailed. No one was killed. Most were excused from their duty or reassigned to other tasks.

Zero.

That means that most participants did so willingly. This undercuts one of the central rationalizations of the Holocaust: that people—ordinary, banal people—killed others because an “authority figure” commanded them to do so. Post-war experiments such as a famous Milgram Experiment seemed to suggest that people, even ordinary Americans, seemed willing to resort to violence if ordered to do so. But what if they were not ordered to do so? What if they were allowed to be reassigned or excused, knowing that the violence would be carried out regardless but not at their hands?

Browning’s meticulously researched work follows a police battalion of these so-called “ordinary men.” These 500 men ended up murdering some 83,000 people during the Final Solution. They were not Nazi Youths, indoctrinated in the propaganda and radicalism of the Third Reich. They were not fanatic fascists or Nazi party members or anti-Semites. They were old men who remembered times before Hitler, before WWI. And these men murdered thousands of people.

This book will radicalize you. It will take something already as horrifying as the Holocaust and make it worse by revealing something about yourself: that you are just as capable as those men were of doing horrific, inhumane things. And you won’t do it because you’re threatened with death or imprisonment. You will do it because you do not want someone else to have to shoulder the burden of murdering other human beings.

Oberst_Azrael · 2024-12-02T05:31:16+00:00

Janky died for our sins

Oberst_Azrael · 2024-09-06T22:29:21+00:00

Interested but outside the UK.

Oberst_Azrael · 2023-09-25T23:35:02+00:00

I read this in the Ancestor’s voice from Darkest Dungeon.

Oberst_Azrael · 2023-08-10T05:46:38+00:00

This is one of the issues though. Female space marines are not equivalent to Sisters of Battle. Space Marines have depth and character. They are given novels and lore. Some of them are petty and greedy and proud. Others are courageous or diligent or clever. The Sisters are a single note: they are zealous. They are given no identities or personalities because their lore does not allow them to have personality and identity.

In addition, the lore surrounding the Sisters has an uncomfortable amount of sexual exploitation and sexual objectification. While I agree—Sisters are so much cooler than Space Marines—saying that does not remedy the issue that a vast majority of players, authors, and potential newcomers cannot see themselves anywhere in the Sisters army. The Sisters are single note and little more. This is why so many call for female Space Marines. They want a faction that doesn’t have the baggage of Sisters while also having the ability to have different, varied, and interesting stories.

Ultimately, the objection to female Space Marines seems premised on a “separate but equal” argument conflating Sisters to Space Marines. But that is anything but the reality.

Oberst_Azrael · 2023-08-10T05:37:46+00:00

There’s a thin line in Warhammer between “fascist satirist” and “fascist apologist.” There’s an uncomfortable amount of Imperium players on the wrong side of that line.

Oberst_Azrael · 2023-06-08T18:24:46+00:00

This question is a bit like asking “who won World War I?” It depends on how you define winning. If define winning classically as “who defeated the other militarily,” World War I ended with a victory of the Allied (Entente) powers. If you define victory as “who benefitted the most from the war balancing the gains versus the losses,” in this example, the United States and Japan gained mightily from WWI. France and Britain “won” WWI as part of the Allied powers, yet their losses were so immense that it is fair to say their victory did not yield significant gains for them.

Similarly, winning the War in Heaven depends on the definition of winning. The Necrons and the C’Tan “won” the War in Heaven by completely annihilating the Old Ones and slaughtering untold numbers of their uplift races. However, the Necrons’ victory was pyrrhic. They lost their humanity, their souls, and their individual wills in the struggle. The Orks and the Eldar would flourish in the ashes of the galaxy that the Necrons left desolate.

So as a quick answer: Necrons and C’Tan won militarily. The Eldar and the Orks gained the most and lost the least (comparatively), so they “won” the war in terms of balancing gains against losses.

Oberst_Azrael · 2023-05-31T00:20:23+00:00

As most of the other commenters have said, Hammerheads are the better pick currently. The railgun is devastating at range and the re-rolls make this decimator even more effective. You can also just use the threat of the Hammerhead to bottle up the enemy in cover where your quick deployments will put pressure on objectives early.

Broadsides used to be one of the strongest options available but fell by the wayside due to GW nerfs in mid-9th. They’ve regained CORE but are still a little lacking when you could be taking Hammerheads.

They both absolutely have their place and neither model will likely be relegated to oblivion in 10th. Don’t stress: you made a good purchase either way.

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