Highway 95

Today I was playing on a map called "highway 95," and something immediately felt off when I looked at the minimap. The highway runs east-west. For anyone familiar with the Interstate Highway System's numbering conventions, this is a significant error that breaks immersion.

The Interstate Highway System's numbering scheme assigns even numbers to east-west highways and odd numbers to north-south highways. This convention has been in place since the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956 and applies uniformly across the network. This is basic infrastructure knowledge that anyone working on a map for the United States should verify.

The system has additional layers of specificity. Major cross-country interstates use numbers ending in zero or five, with I-95 designated as the farthest east major north-south interstate route. Odd-numbered interstates increase from west to east, placing I-5 on the West Coast and I-95 on the East Coast. This creates a navigable grid where the number itself conveys geographical information.

Interstate 95 runs from Miami, Florida, to the Houlton-Woodstock Border Crossing between Maine and New Brunswick, Canada, spanning 1,906 miles as the longest north-south Interstate in the system. The route's north-south orientation isn't incidental—it functions as the principal road link between major Eastern Seaboard cities, connecting Miami, Jacksonville, Savannah, Richmond, Washington D.C., Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York City, Boston, and Portland along a vertical axis. The highway passes through 15 states, serves 110 million people, and facilitates 40 percent of the country's GDP. Its traffic patterns, auxiliary routes, and infrastructure planning all reflect its north-south alignment.

The system's internal consistency extends throughout the network. Three-digit auxiliary interstates use their last two digits to indicate their parent route, which is why I-95 has associated routes like I-295, I-395, I-495, and I-595—all of which maintain north-south or circumferential orientations relative to their parent highway. Mileage markers on odd-numbered interstates increase from south to north, while even-numbered routes increase from west to east. This standardization allows for consistent navigation across state boundaries and enables systems like distance-based exit numbering.

When I see "Highway 95" oriented east-west in the game, it creates cognitive dissonance because the designation "95" immediately signals "eastern seaboard, north-south". If other numbered highways exist in the game world, this breaks the implied numbering logic. This is a fundamental worldbuilding flaw.

For an east-west highway, the developers should have used even numbering. Interstate 10 is the southernmost major east-west route running through southern states. Interstate 40 is the mid-south corridor through Tennessee, Oklahoma, and Texas. Interstate 70 is the central corridor from Maryland through Utah. Interstate 80 is the northern corridor from New York through California. Interstate 90 is the northernmost route from Massachusetts through Washington. Any of these would maintain geographical plausibility. Alternatively, they could have oriented the map north-south and kept the "95" designation.

The Interstate numbering system is a fundamental part of infrastructure literacy. The system was established to create a rational, coordinated transportation network, and its conventions are deeply ingrained in how everyone can navigate and conceptualize geography. This should have been caught during development. The highway needs to be reoriented north-south or renumbered to an appropriate even-numbered designation.

Go talk to the map designer raaar about it. The ZK developers don't have any influence over map names.

Not everywhere operates on the same road numbering conventions as the United States.

i rotate the map to always play from bottom to top. i played the game wrong the whole time!

The concerns you raise are easily explained by the many East-West sections of the highway along its meandering route. For example here a section from Connecticut. Clearly the East-West match is not perfect, but I think it is fair to allow mappers at least a few degrees of artistic freedom, don't you think?



Using the standard speed of sound meter-elmo conversion of 0.125 meters/elmo (or a 1/3rd and a 1/13th of a foot per elmo), the map is 895 meters (six 10.8ths of a mile) across. This gives us plenty of room for Highway 95 East on the same stretch of straight, however, not enough for Highway 95 West. That said, due to the more built up terrain on that map, I expect Highway 95 West is meant to represent somewhere around The Bronx.

It is also notable that the roads don't quite line up, with those on the map being significantly wider than the source material. But remember that Zero-K is set in the future. Highway width is increasing over time, easily supporting highways at least as wide as those on the map. If anything, the highways on Highway 95 are too thin than what we would expect from a reasonable extrapolation of current trends. As for the hill in the middle? It looks like a remnant of the a bit of geological engineering, presumably to power some sort of high-tech future truckstop.

Problem solved? Not quite, take a look at the shadows.



The shadows point 45 degrees South, assuming the map is oriented to the North.



Shadows only point South in the morning and the evening, with the greatest extent being on the summer solstice. The shadows above, from the Northmost point of the highway, only point 32 degrees towards the South, and are far too long for those shown on the map.



The shadows on the Southernmost part of the highway are more vertical, but barely reach halfway to the required 45 degrees.

I think it is safe to conclude that some sort of dramatic event led to a realignment of the Earth's axis, magnetic core, or perhaps, both. In such circumstances I fear it will be near impossible to determine which exact part of highway 95 on the (formerly) East coast of the United States the map Highway 95 is meant to represent. Perhaps more could be done with a closer examination of the shadow angle, apparent time-of-year, and a survey of areas suitable for geoengineering.