The Unknown Zone Official

“After the Third World War, the world freezes, nuclear fallout has destroyed life as it was in the 21rst century. A seemingly eternal winter ravages the planet. Humankind survives, broken and terrified, but resilient as ever. After The Thaw, life begins again.” 1 world, 1 blog, 7 main arcs.

[theunknownzoneofficial]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

First chapter of the first story is up and readable.

[theunknownzoneofficial]

Almost did artfight this year, almost. Made some mockup character pages for it, we'll see how next year goes lol!

[theunknownzoneofficial]

Doing oc-tober this year, I got a late start lol.

[theunknownzoneofficial]

Put this on Cara as well, Luca is an OC of mine I temporarily forget exists even though he's super load bearing to the story.

[theunknownzoneofficial]

Doing oc-tober this year, I got a late start lol.

[theunknownzoneofficial]

Updated Vio's color scheme, plus drew Adwoa. Tried to make them matchy-matchy lol

[theunknownzoneofficial]

Almost did artfight this year, almost. Made some mockup character pages for it, we'll see how next year goes lol!

[theunknownzoneofficial]

Adding on Vio, I was trying way too hard with his design for most of 2024-2025 so now I've toned it down again.

[theunknownzoneofficial]

Almost did artfight this year, almost. Made some mockup character pages for it, we'll see how next year goes lol!

[theunknownzoneofficial]

https://archiveofourown.org/works/65374339

An original prose work is now hosted on ao3! It'll be a comic someday but that takes time.

[theunknownzoneofficial]

Apparently this is the best I can come up with to make the characters from this project more conceptually accessible. It's also been 6 years since this blog was made, that's wild.

[theunknownzoneofficial]

Context:

Context is important. This blog is for a (heavily under construction) comic series with the working title "The Unknown Zone". TUZ is set on Earth, with most stories taking place between 2190-2215 CE. The genre is cyberpunk, there are 7 arcs that are fleshed out, and a few more still being finalized.

[theunknownzoneofficial]

Back again! After a long hiatus we’re going to try to make this thing happen.

[master-painters]

Viktor Vasnetsov - Cherubim sketches for the cathedral in Kiev - 1893

[theunknownzoneofficial]

Newest speed paint, elapsed time is 2 hours and 48 minutes.

Lines by @k-howsartblarg and color by @clockworkmegrim

[futurumterra]

Rutger van de Steeg - Quarantine Cyberpunk Megacity (2)

[futurumterra]

Javier Izquierdo Vicente - Ruins of the future - UE4

[tony-hawks-prole-skater-2]

[theofficialvincenzo]

Finally a moment to show off my obsession with solarpunk!

“Overpopulation” is such an easy thing to brainwash people on. I used to believe this until somebody pointed out that you could double the living space of my hometown without developing more land by hypothetically adding one extra floor per building. Do this across the board and you’ve already ended homelessness- but thats not even considering all the millions of vacant buildings just lying around that could be used for housing (fill those up first).

Theres also a more sci-fi concept for incredibly tall, thick skyscrapers and artificial layered mountains that, to my knowledge, are completely within the realm of physical possibility and would house tens of thousands of people. Blueprints were drawn up in the 90s in a few different countries, like Sky City 100 in Japan

And the Ultima Tower in San Francisco

The designs are gathering dust and need proof-of-concept but the basic idea is contemporary: If youre a high-technology civilization and you have too many people, build UP, or DOWN, but never OUT. Then surround the towers with farming space and preserve the rest of nature. You could triple the global population if you wanted to, and not only would you be able to give all of those people the living space of a modest house, but youd actually vastly increase food production (which is already enough to feed all those people and can be doubled like OP said)

And if you still prefer living out in the country? Nobodys saying you can’t! It would barely affect current living accommodations, it would just make things easier for the current homeless and you wouldnt need to pay as much for food.

Or if you wanna look at something that we can 100% do now, literally just combine agriculture and architecture.

These are just concept art pieces of Forest Cities, but there are legitimate plans to begin building living spaces that use plants in their designs. Again, towers are more environmentally friendly than individual housing because you get vastly more living space per acre and if those buildings double as crop/oxygen production then youre basically supercharging nature by “overpopulating” humans.

Remember kids: We are the only species on earth that can not only intentionally save nature, but vastly increase its potential. When people talk about environmental issues and housing crisises by saying “the earth is dying because of human overpopulation,” they’re detracting from any real solution by saying that it’s actually your fault just for existing in a large species. Never listen to them.