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The Change series might contain some useful ideas too. It's much more short-term than you're thinking about, but even that is handy. The book is set in the Pacific NW though, so compared to a desert setting, the degradation is much quicker. Major highways, when not actively kept clear become impassible in a matter of a few years.
Vegetation can tear up cement, brick, and concrete in an amazingly short period of time. I'm not sure what they could do to steel, but my intuition is that, given the time-frame you're talking about, a lot of the bigger skyscrapers would get taken down at the foundations. I'd be surprised if a significant portion lasted half as long as the pyramids. Birds of prey would make a big comeback in the meantime though.
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quote:Originally posted by Jhai: This book, The World Without Us, by Alan Weisman, seems to be answering the exact question you posed. It also seems like a really interesting read.
Alan Weisman of "The World Without Us" was on the Daily Show tonight, and it looked pretty cool. He said the subways would flood within days of us dying off, and a couple decades later, the streets would collapse when the supports in the subway rust, and the streets will turn into rivers. Plastic would be around for thousands of years until microbes learn how to digest it into something else. It's apparently a really good read.
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