London | Dead

The silence in London was not the quiet of a sleeping city; it was the heavy, suffocating stillness of a tomb. George stepped over a scattered pile of watches and gold chains on the pavement near South Kensington, their ticking long since choked by the fine black dust that coated every surface like a shroud. He didn't look at the jeweler's broken window. In a city where a loaf of bread was worth more than a crown, gold was just another kind of gravel.

: An Eighth Doctor audio drama titled Dead London features the Doctor trapped in a "maze of interlocking Londons" from different time periods ( Tardis Wiki ). Dead London

The smell hit him before he reached Oxford Street: the scent of stagnant water, scorched brick, and something older and more biological. He passed a double-decker bus that had been tossed onto its side like a child’s toy. Nearby, the bleached ribs of a horse lay tangled in the harness, picked clean by the starving dogs that now ruled the back alleys. The silence in London was not the quiet

: Jeff Wayne’s musical version of The War of the Worlds includes a haunting track titled "Dead London," capturing the atmosphere of the abandoned city ( Musical Version ). In a city where a loaf of bread

The great hood of the Fighting Machine was tilted toward the sky. Blackbirds circled it in a noisy, frantic cloud, pecking at the tattered red shreds of flesh that hung from the joints of the metal titan. Below it, in a great pit the invaders had dug, lay a dozen of the Martians. They weren't defeated by the artillery of men or the ingenuity of scientists. They lay in a row, still and rotting, their alien systems overwhelmed by the simplest of Earth’s inhabitants: bacteria.

The phrase "Dead London" has appeared in several famous media contexts: