To explore the idea of “haunted media”, I decided to examine the idea of post-apocalyptic New York City. A cliché, I know, but the idea of how the world might look if someone’s finger hit the proverbial “big red button” tempted me too much. However, to create a world of total nuclear destruction felt overdone, especially considering the number of Fallout games I’ve played over the years. Instead, I decided to investigate what New York would look like mid-disaster, and how exactly this would look from a more mundane perspective, say, from the viewpoint of the New York City Department of Transportation.
“Apocalypse through the mundane” is the key phrase here. While any newspaper or news channel would be plastering the latest information from the growing tragedy all over the front page of their website, things would not change so rapidly for the Department of Transportation. Political biases, usually pervasive in news outlets, would not have such a strong effect on the content of the DOT. Therefore, any changes that are made to the website indicate a lifestyle and culture change, regardless of the individual. Changes in what the DOT puts out indicate everyday life will change, which is why I used the New York City Department of Transportation website as a method of examining what everyday life would be like in a nuclear New York.
On the original DOT page, there are six main links, “Current Projects” – a list of all the various road work taking place in New York City, “Vision Zero Update” – a link to a 151 page PDF detailing the progress of “Vision Zero”, New York’s initiative to reduce pedestrian deaths to zero, “BQE Reconstruction Project” – another webpage detailing the effort to rebuild the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, “Car Free Earth Day” – information on New York City’s Earth Day celebration, along with detailed traffic advice, “Electric Vehicle Curbside Charger Pilot” – a website where New Yorkers can request the city to build electric vehicle chargers in various locations, and finally “Real-Time Traffic Conditions & Cameras” – an interactive map in which those worried about their morning commute can check everything from the traffic to whether a bus route is on time. The goal of this project is to reimagine these six links, including the home DOT page, thinking about how they may be different if a catastrophic nuclear event were to occur. Many of these sites will keep much of the same information that they hold now to keep the feeling of a purely bureaucratic website alive, with subtle changes made to introduce a feeling of unease.
- Current Projects
At a glance, the new “Current Projects” section of the DOT website is relatively unchanged, except for the fact that the number of ongoing projects in New York seem to be greatly reduced. However, under further investigation, some of the projects occurring seem to be just a bit different. Interspersed between regular descriptions of improving sidewalks and putting in crosswalks at busy intersections, are hints at a greater story. Mentions of “radiation shelters” and “RADSAFE approved transports” imply a lasting nuclear event that has required New York to alter its lifestyle, while never explicitly explaining the events that occurred. This pulls directly from the idea of “failure of presence” from Mark Fisher’s The Weird And The Eerie[i]. While not the ruins that Fisher describes in his work, the goal is to evoke the same feeling of wonder in the viewer. The nonchalant mention of radiation poisoning and the fictional “RADSAFE” authority imply that whatever occurred is well known in this fictional universe, and enough time has passed that governmental groups have been able to form in order to combat the threat radiation poses.
- Vision Zero Update
In this section, viewers receive a preview of the full Vision Zero initiative in the nuclear New York. The first four pages have gone unchanged, showing picturesque scenes of the roadways of New York City. The fifth and final page, however, holds the most narrative this project will have, a letter from the mayor. This fictional letter from the actual mayor of New York City gives hints to a tragic event that affected the entirety of New York. He also outlines some specific changes that needed to be made to “pre-event vehicles”, a subtle hint to how many people use the terms “pre/post-9/11” today. Also, in his letter, he references “radiation incidents”, which we can only gather are unpredictable and dangerous events to those without shelter, creating a harsh new world that citizens of New York City must brave. Yet all this must be viewed through the lens of the NYC DOT, which is why terms like “pedestrians” and “commuters” are used. Finally, the letter adds to the narrative a final hint, the mention of a “Zone AX1”, an area of New York that becomes more dangerous at night. Again, the idea of failure of presence is used here to show the viewer evidence of a fuller story, without giving it to them.
3 & 4. BQE Reconstruction and Car Free Earth Day
These sections I decided to leave untouched for a few reasons. First, leaving these links untouched allows them to be linked to the actual NYC DOT website, giving the sense of a more complete project world. Also, these sections left a particular “flavor” to the new website, as they are both vey uniquely New York things. The Brooklyn-Queens Expressway is an iconic piece of New York and leaving this section unchanged helps to keep the viewer engaged and believe the world of nuclear New York. I used similar reasoning for the Car Free Earth Day section, as New York’s progressive nature and its lean towards environmentalism is something that helps to make the city distinct, and I wanted to preserve that feeling of a uniquely New York website.
- RADSAFE Curbside Shelter Pilot
In this section, the viewer finds themselves looking at one of the logistical challenges of nuclear New York. The City of New York and “RADSAFE”, a fictional radiation safety group, have set out to ensure that those who are stuck on the busy streets of New York are safe in the event of a radiation incident. Originally the electric vehicle charger section, this section’s goal is to depict the challenges a government may face when tasked with the protection of its citizens from a threat that could strike at any time. Therefore, it’s not unreasonable to think that the DOT would turn to the citizens of New York City to help them understand where the protection is most needed. This section also gives the impression of a relatively functional government, one that is able to receive input from its citizens and act upon said input.
- Real – Time Traffic Conditions & Cameras
The goal of this section is to give a visual of the “new” New York City and build the world that has so drastically changed from present-day New York. Arguably the most obvious of the changes are the large, red or yellow circles covering a section of the “map” (actually just a screenshot of the original map). These circles have labels, noting various sections of the city to be under various levels of quarantine, with the ominously named “Event Zone” only available for access to government personnel. Just outside of the Event Zone is Zone AX1, which is less heavily cordoned, but the annotation warning citizens that the area becomes restricted at night shows the viewer that nuclear New York may have new visitors that go bump in the night. If the viewer looks directly behind these circles, the viewer will quickly notice that a large part of Long Island is missing. This is the most heavy-handed bit of world building I did during this project, as I wanted to cement the idea of tragedy in the viewer’s mind. Whatever this event was, it was destructive, both in the long and short term. Also, as a subtle nod to possible environmental concerns, the shorelines of New York City have been brought in just a little bit, to hint at a worsening climate, perhaps due to the event.
The Academic Stuff
The main inspiration for this project comes from Fisher’s work quite obviously. The idea in this project was to create a sense of eeriness through the website and give the viewer an image of a broken New York City, without ever explicitly telling them what happened and the full extent of the damage. As Fisher remarked, “the question concerns the particular nature of the agent at work…we have to reckon with the traces of the departed agent whose purposes are unknown.”. The viewer knows very early on in exploring the website that New York City has gone through a tragedy, this much is made clear. What is obfuscated is the exact who, what, and why of the tragedy in New York City, thus creating that tension and feeling of eeriness.
Next we move onto the idea of avoidance of death online. In Dear Tech Companies, the author makes note of her desire to not be reminded of the death of her unborn child[ii]. While the created website does not contain ad algorithms, it does contain a similar sentiment if examined closely. The “event” alluded to in the website must have been catastrophically damaging to the population of New York City, as it destroyed a sizeable piece of Long Island. Likely tens of thousands of people died in the fictional event, leaving an incredible emotional impact on the city. Despite all this, the DOT website avoids any mention of death, for fear of upsetting those who may read it. A government uncomfortable with acknowledging death created this fictional website, instead choosing to use euphemisms and implication whenever near the realm of death.
For outside research, I turned to two very real tragedies to understand a little more of how people reacted to them and how the world might look in my created world. These tragedies are the bombing of Hiroshima and the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11th. I used two different articles to inform my decision making, a short paper titled from the University of Michigan How Americans Responded: A Study of Public Reactions to 9/11/01 and a journal article by Paul Boyer titled Exotic Resonances: Hiroshima in American Memory.
The information gathered from the University of Michigan paper helped to inform the writing of the “Letter from the Mayor” in the second section, along with the overall tone of the website. This paper cites a figure that after the events of 9/11, trust in both “neighbors” and “Americans” was very high[iii]. This trust leads to much of the language used in the letter, for example the fictional mayor’s usage of “team effort”, implying a trust built through this tragedy.
Finally, using the article from Paul Boyer, we gain a better understanding of how Americans might react to an event similar to Hiroshima on their own soil. Boyer describes some of the activist movements that occurred after the bombing of Hiroshima, coming from a strong sense of fear of the possibilities of nuclear conflict[iv]. The government would want to allay those fears and bring some normalcy back into the lives of its citizens. Thus the inspiration for keeping the “Car Free Earth Day” page exactly the same, as a way to encourage fearful citizens back out into the world.
[i] Mark Fisher, The Weird and the Eerie, Third edition (London: Repeater Books, 2016), 62–63.
[ii] “Perspective | Dear Tech Companies, I Don’t Want to See Pregnancy Ads After My Child Was Stillborn,” Washington Post, accessed March 27, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2018/12/12/dear-tech-companies-i-dont-want-see-pregnancy-ads-after-my-child-was-stillborn/.
[iii] Michael Traugott et al., “How Americans Responded: A Study of Public Reactions to 9/11/01,” Political Science & Politics 35, no. 03 (September 2002): 11, https://doi.org/10.1017/S1049096502000768.
[iv] Paul Boyer, “Exotic Resonances: Hiroshima in American Memory,” Diplomatic History 19, no. 2 (1995): 297–318.