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[[File:EmptyLondon.jpg|link=28 Days Later|frame|[[Everybody's Dead, Dave|Everybody's Dead, Jim.]]]]
A
▲A [[Ghost City]] is the larger version of a [[Ghost Town]], and is used in visual media as shorthand for 'something terrible has happened'. A city typically contains millions of people, and the viewer knows that only [[Weapon of Mass Destruction|the hugest]] of [[Apocalypse How|disasters]] could completely clear it of its inhabitants.
Always characterized by newspapers lining the streets, shuffled about by the wind (usually with headlines alluding to the disaster), the urban counterpart to a [[Ghost Town]]'s tumbleweeds. Besides newspapers, other classic signs of abandonment may include blinking yellow light on a crossing, or an arc of sparks from a street light (though their electrification raises [[Fridge Logic]]).
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{{examples}}
== Anime and Manga ==
* Kino comes across one of these in ''[[Kino's Journey]]'', with only one inhabitant. It turns out that the country was destroyed by rabid democracy following the death of a tyrannical king, as only direct vote by the entire people was seen as accepted way to make decisions, and the losing side was always deemed as "dangerous elements", and executed.
* Krakow in ''[[The Sky Crawlers]]'' seems like this, presumably because it's very late at night, and for stylistic reasons. The only thing moving in the dark streets is the tram that brings the protagonists in, the bowling alley is near-deserted and the only person in the restaurant apart from the main characters is the silent and almost invisible waiter.
* The deadly game of Hide and Seek from ''[[Kakurenbo]]'' take place in one. {{spoiler|It's for a good reason.}}
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== Fan Works ==
* Ehndris in ''[[With Strings Attached]]''.
* ''[[Kimi no Na Iowa]]'': In Chapter 42, one of the signs of how public perception about the war is worsening is that while Yokohama and Tokyo haven't outright been abandoned yet, they are getting awfully quiet in ways that no big city should be even on a weekday morning.
== Film ==
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** This was filmed in the early hours of the morning in [[Real Life]] London. Much of the centre of town, especially the City, empties out at weekends and during the night.
** This scene was a homage to the opening of ''Day of the Triffids'' (see Literature below).
* A very derivative use pops up at the end of ''[[Alone in
* ''[[The Last Man On Earth]]'' (1964), ''[[The Omega Man]]'' (1971) and ''[[I Am Legend]]''(2007), all based on the same book. ''The Omega Man'', similar to ''28 Days Later'', achieved the look by filming on location in suburban L.A. early on Sunday mornings, when there was little traffic to speak of and most local businesses hadn't yet opened.
* ''[[Land of the Dead]]'', a sequel to the more famous ''[[Night of the Living Dead]]'', features the struggles of humanity, who have managed to fortify a city against the dead and are relatively safe. However, an early overhead shot shows the tiny number of humans in a city made for millions.
* ''[[Logan's Run]]''
* ''[[On the Beach]]''
* ''[[The Quiet Earth (film)|The Quiet Earth]]''
* ''[[Resident Evil: Apocalypse|Resident Evil Apocalypse]]'' {{spoiler|has one after raccoon city is subject to the [[Zombie Apocalypse]]}}
* The film version of ''[[Silent Hill (film)|Silent Hill]]'' was inspired by the [[Real Life]] example of Centralia, Pennsylvania.
* ''[[12 Monkeys]]''
* ''[[Vanilla Sky]]'' (2001), but this is a case of [[Your Mind Makes It Real|it all being in his mind]].
* ''The World, The Flesh, And The Devil'' (1959)
* Near the end of ''[[The Devil's Advocate]]'', when the main character goes to meet with [[Satan]], the streets of New York are completely empty.
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* Shadar Logoth in The Wheel of Time.
* ''Night Work'' (German: ''Die Arbeit der Nacht''), a novel about an Austrian man named Jonas who woke up one morning to find the world empty of (non-plant) life.
* In [[J. G. Ballard]]'s ''Chronopolis'', the titular city used to have a population of ''over a billion'', with everyone divided into shifts to prevent total chaos when they tried to go to work (or anything else). The fall of the city {{spoiler|caused timekeeping to be forbidden, and the main character learning how it works starts the plot.}}
* London, following an epidemic, in [[John Christopher]]'s ''Empty World''.
* Many examples in the ''[[Freeway Warrior]]'' series.
* [[Stephen King]]'s ''[[The Stand]]''
** Also ''[[Cell]]''.
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* Brendan DuBois' novel ''Resurrection Day'': In 1972, New York City, along with a good chunk of New Jersey and New York State, is completely deserted and cordoned off by the US Army as a result of 3 Soviet nukes that hit Queens, Idlewild (JFK) Airport and Orange New Jersey (bomber missed Newark Airport) in 1962 when the Cuban Missile Crisis escalated into World War III. {{spoiler|However, later in the novel it is revealed that many residents never left, and some even came back, and now live underground in a 'free' society compared to the rationing, censorship and drafting still ongoing in the USA. The Army knows but seemingly doesn't care, but still keeps it secret.}}
* In ''[[The Old Kingdom]]'', Sabriel travels through two cities that have been mostly deserted because of [[The Undead|the Dead]]. During the day, they're Ghost Cities and at night they're crawling with Dead. In both places the survivors found a part of the city they could fortify against the Dead (who don't like running water) and are living there.
* London again, in the opening
* In ''[[A Song of Ice and Fire]]'', Daenerys Targaryen and her few remaining people {{spoiler|after Drogo dies}} cross the vast desert of Red Waste when they find an abandoned city, which is a good thing because they find water and food there. They don't stay for long though.
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== Live Action TV ==
* ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]'' Season 7 has Sunnydale become this so that they can have a [[No Endor Holocaust]] ending.
* ''[[Doctor Who]]'' several times.
** Played with in "Voyage of the Damned" (new series Christmas special), where London appears to be a ghost city populated by a few trigger-happy residents. It turns out that [[Genre Savvy|people have gotten so used to horrible things happening every Christmas]] that they decided to stay out of town for a few days and avoid all the fuss.
* ''[[Heroes (TV series)|Heroes]]''
* ''[[Red Dwarf]]'' "Tikka To Ride"
* ''[[Star Trek: The Original Series|Star Trek]]'' "Miri".
* ''[[Stargate SG-1]]'' episodes "Bane", "Ascension", "2001" and "Menace".
* Season 1 and 2 of
* ''[[Life After People]]'' shows what would happen to all those ghost cities as they slowly revert back to the wild.
* British TV series ''Survivors'' depicts a world where 99% of humanity are wiped out by a rogue virus, leaving hundreds of pristine but abandoned cities. The cities are largely avoided however, due to the health risks of the [[Nightmare Fuel|millions of unburied bodies.]]
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** [[Modern Warfare|"Fifty thousand people used to live in this city. Now it's a ghost town."]]
** For what it's worth quite a few people do live there. A lot are elderly residents who refused to move or snuck back in. Others are refugees from the former USSR. There is also some real deal [[STALKER]] type looters and vagabonds.
** The town is practically bustling at the moment, as a new radiation shield is being built to replace the old one in the infamous power plant.
* A lot of big cities on the weekends, i.e. Dallas.
** Or conversely, late on weekday nights.
* Areas of [[Motor City|Detroit]]. Nature has so thoroughly reclaimed some of the abandoned lots that you can even find wild pheasants running around, and [https://web.archive.org/web/20130827142848/http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1864272,00.html one TIME photographer sent to the city] said parts of it felt like "a post-apocalyptic environment." The ''whole city'', and even some of the suburbs, may be [[Dying Town|on its way]].)
* [[wikipedia:Varosha
* [[New Orleans]] in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. They got better!
** [[Greater Houston]] during Hurricane Rita, before the storm moved north, due to the largest mass movement of civilians during peacetime. Any hurricane will result in a portion of the population moving to higher ground, helping to fulfill this trope for localized areas, but after seeing what happened to New Orleans the Houstonians understandably wanted to avoid it. To this day local citizens are still divided on whether to refer to 'Texodus' as an understandable precaution, a dry run for the next Cat 4/5, a panic induced fiasco, or a combination of all of the above.
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* The ruined cities in ''[[GURPS]] [[GURPS Reign of Steel|Reign Of Steel]]'' that are too small for the AIs to bother with.
* Pretty much every major city in ''[[Deadlands]]: Hell On Earth'', due to ghost-rock bombs that kill everything around them while leaving the infrastructure more or less intact. Does not apply to smaller cities, which were usually hit by conventional nukes and obliterated.
* ''[[Orpheus]]'' takes this to an extreme by showing abandoned cities in the [[World-Wrecking Wave|post-maelstrom]] world of the dead. That's right...there are Ghost Cities in the world of the ghosts. Two highlights:
** The completely empty ruins of a nameless city, implied to be the once-bustling Stygia, the capital of the kingdom of the Western dead.
** Necropolis New York City, where the maelstrom was so powerful it actually fused all of the ghosts within with the ruins of the city itself.
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** Also, the end of the first ''Resident Evil'' movie.
* The end of ''[[Doom]]'', and the middle part of ''[[Doom]] II''.
* Silverspring from ''[[Heretic]]'' and ''Heretic 2'', first time because of a evil wizard and his army, second time because of a magical disease.
* The Kingdom of Sorrow in ''[[Klonoa]] 2: Lunatea's Veil.''
* The city of Fairport is turned into one of these in the ''[[F.E.A.R.]]'' series.
* The fate of most cities on {{spoiler|Gran Pulse}} in ''[[Final Fantasy XIII]]''. The sequel game implies that there may be more to the planet than the heroes originally discovered, however.
* Along with the example of Prypiat mentioned in the Real Life section, ''[[Modern Warfare]]'' also has a second one briefly {{spoiler|when a nuke sets off in the capital city at the end of "Shock and Awe" - the last images that [[Player Character|Sgt. Paul Jackson]] sees before succumbing to his injuries is of a ruined, eerily silent city that maybe ten minutes prior was awash in fierce gunfire.}}
** There's also Chernobyl.
** Even though nobody saw the russian invasion in ''Modern Warfare 2'' coming until the first wave of planes was already in the skies over Virginia, by the time American forces arrive in Washington, the city has been completely evacuated with no signs of civilians anywhere.
* ''[[World of Warcraft]]'' features Gilneas City, emptied out like the rest of Gilneas following the Forsaken invasion.
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== [[Web Original]] ==
* In ''[[The Gamers Alliance]]'', Dar'Cenrath, the capital of what became known as the Ruined Kingdom, ends up as a ghost city when its population is wiped out by a destructive spell. The heroes of the Grand Alliance visit it hundreds of years later, and it ends up playing an important part as the birthplace of the Godslayer as well as the prison of the mad god Shakkan.
* "Mountain Glenn" in the southeast of ''[[RWBY]]''{{'}}s Kingdom of Vale.
{{reflist}}
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