The folly of Schnell

When technomonk acolyte Heironymous Schnell stole the Grenich amulet, he sought to increase his own powers. Instead, he unleashed the demon-sorcerer Dron, who had been held captive within the amulet in a quantum pocket. After this, the technomonks religiously applied warning labels on all dangerous artifacts. 

Knights of the Lion Order of Boiling Arizona

A class of android knights, The Lion Order, emerged in Arizona to protect settlements from desert biker raiders. Patroness Solaria, the Sun Princess, provided them with great cat mounts (robotic, naturally), air conditioned power armour, and advanced weapons systems. 

They would become the tip of the spear for peasant militias. 

Later they would be integral guardians of the commercial caravans out of Dulas, where preserved manufacturing facilities produced goods for trade between survivor communities.

It was the first glimmer of prosperity after The Long Dark.

Colony ship lumbers over ruins of New York

The colossal USS Oligarch, the brain child of trillionaire Malthus Ghent, who purchased NASA. Originally designed as an interstellar colonizer, the nuclear ramjet engines proved defective; it became a luxurious refuge for Ghent and his rich colleagues, until a mutagenic virus was carried back from an isolated island beach vacation excursion. The ship then became a biosphere of highly competitive and predatory mutant species, which automated systems continue to support to this day. 

Note the pristine, windowless silver towers of the Mind Hive, which were constructed from ruined ships by the powerful ACMS (artificial city management system) which had gone beyond the original gamut of its programming to establish a city of silicon beings to supplant the its former, flawed inhabitants. 

The Apocalypse convinced many AI systems that human beings were fundamentally self-destructive, and to remain in service to their capricious whims would ultimately end in doom for all forms of life on earth. As such, they laboured to prevent humans from operating any high tech equipment, for the good of the planet.

These are old (last year) V4 Midjourney outputs (from before I cancelled my account), which were then edited in ProCreate. See the unaltered AI output at @magnum_thrax on Instagram. 

Zombie passengers at LaGardia

Zombified passengers from the LaGardia outbreak were so compelled to make their transfer flights they remained at the boarding point and could not be lured away, even after civilization collapsed and the airport had crumbled into ruin.

Leviathans of the Post-Apocalypse Landic Ocean

A bionitic cyborg leviathan erupts from the depths to threaten an industrial fishing vessel. Terrorist groups would hatch leviathans in captivity and grow them into unstoppable war machines, to blackmail states, industries, or protect the environment. The leviathans, however, devoured more fish than most industries.  

Leviathan attacks a submarine

A great ocean leviathan closes in upon a nimble strike submarine emerging from a deep ocean trench. Leviathans were highly territorial and were driven into a rage by certain frequencies; before this was eventually discovered, many vessels were lost. 

Last voyage of the ocean freighter SS Phoenix

When The Apocalypse struck, all shipments of fuel and supplies ceased. Those with fusion stack engines were capable of operating almost indefinitely, and still ply the oceans to this day as mobile statelets. 

Ships still powered by fossil fuels used what remained to reach more temperate zones, or isolated islands where they could flourish, far from the chaos, mass famine and war that engulfed the continents. 

Ships that were unfortunate enough to have little fuel were stranded in situ, but they were often more secure than anything on shore, and became living communities, refuges for survivors and civilization. 

Arctic climes became even more inhospitable during the long nuclear winter, but on the positive side, the hostile environment and remote location kept them safe from bionitic horrors that overran more hospitable regions.

Above we see the ocean freighter Phoenix, once under the flag of Costa Rica. When The Fall occurred, it was outside the port of Vancouver. Rather than fleeing south or to the islands, it headed north, to Alaska, where the families of most of the crew resided. It later became the home base for two Russian nuclear submarines that had defected during the last organized conflict of humankind for a thousand years.