“They took it whole, handle and all. What gave me goosebumps was the frame, open to nothing, in plain view of the whole corridor.”
The door as an object is what happens when a wanderer tires of wondering what is behind a locked door and decides to take it away. With a screwdriver, the leaf comes off its hinges and out whole. What remains is an open frame with nothing inside, which anyone passing afterward can see from the end of the corridor.
How it is dismantled
You need a screwdriver and a few seconds of still work, back to the corridor. When it is done, the door is no longer part of the building and becomes one more object, though it resembles none.
- The leaf comes off whole, with its handle and hinges still on.
- It is XL class: it fits in no backpack and is carried with both hands.
- While you carry it, you can’t hold anything else. If something catches you off guard, all you can do is drop it and run.
- The frame is left empty and in view.
Weight matters. Whoever carries a door crosses corridors slowly and makes noise turning corners. See Backpacks and Weight for how much the load slows you down.
What it is for
Locked doors almost never open, and Level 0 is full of them. Dismantling them turns that obstacle into material and, at the same time, into a way of reading the space, since a frame without a leaf says someone was here, had tools, and left in a hurry.
A whole door can be used to close a gap in your own shelter. Groups that set up a base in a room with too many entrances know this, and they bring a leaf from elsewhere and lean it in the opening they are missing. See Beds and Shelters and The Fastenings: Screws, Nails and Cable Ties.
Signs
The empty frame is a sign in itself. If you find one where you remembered a door, another group came through first. If you find one at the end of a corridor with nothing behind it, that is something else and you should look at Level 0 Anomalies, where the door to nowhere has its own entry.
What is said
The archive has confirmed none of this, but it circulates among wanderers:
- When the leaf comes off, screws, hinges and loose planks would also fall, useful for holding pieces. Some swear they filled a pocket with them after dismantling three doors in a row.
- Screwdrivers aren’t found just anywhere. They are said to come out of office furniture, inside drawers nobody had opened.
- No one has yet explained why some empty frames open onto a blank wall.
See also
Signs and Ceiling Fixtures, Scrap Piles, Frame and Panels.