Explore the real-world places that appear in The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey. Each location on the map shows what happens there in the novel, the real history of the place, and what's there today. Featured locations include Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Dayton, Ohio, Rural Highway 68, Evan Walker's Farmhouse, Camp Ashpit Refugee Site and 8 more.
Dayton, Ohio — Camp Haven military installation
Wright-Patterson is the real-world basis for Camp Haven, the military compound where Ben Parish — known as Zombie — is taken after being rescued from a refugee camp. Here, traumatized child survivors are recruited, indoctrinated, and trained as soldiers by adults who claim to be fighting the Others. Cassie's younger brother Sammy is also brought here. The entire operation is later revealed to be run by the Others themselves, using human children as weapons against other survivors.
Wright-Patterson Air Force Base has been a cornerstone of U.S. military aviation since 1917. It is home to the National Museum of the United States Air Force and has historically been associated with rumors of extraterrestrial research, including alleged connections to the Roswell incident.
Wright-Patterson remains an active U.S. Air Force installation and is one of the largest and most diverse Air Force bases in the world. The National Museum of the United States Air Force on the base is open to the public and is the world's largest military aviation museum.
Visit: National Museum of the United States Air Force (museum)
Montgomery County — Regional refugee hub and evacuation center
Dayton and its surrounding suburbs serve as a major gathering point for survivors after the successive waves of the alien attack. Ben Parish and his family flee here after the electromagnetic pulse wave collapses civilization. Ben watches his family succumb to the plague wave while sheltering among crowds of other desperate survivors. The city's infrastructure has crumbled, and the streets are scenes of chaos, disease, and death as the waves take their toll.
Dayton, Ohio was a major American industrial and innovation hub, birthplace of aviation pioneers Orville and Wilbur Wright. During the 20th century it was a center of manufacturing and military research in the American Midwest.
Dayton is a mid-sized Midwestern city of roughly 137,000 people. It has undergone significant urban renewal efforts in recent decades, with a growing arts scene centered around the Oregon District neighborhood.
Central Ohio — Cassie's lonely stretch of road
It is on a desolate stretch of central Ohio highway that Cassie Sullivan runs from the Others — the alien-infested humans who kill any survivor they encounter. Armed with her M16 and her brother Sammy's stuffed bear, Cassie moves at night and hides by day, trusting no one. The highway is where she has her terrifying encounter with the Silencer — an alien sniper who shoots her in the leg — before Evan Walker carries her to safety. The road represents both her desperate isolation and her determination to find Sammy.
Ohio Route 68 is a historic state highway running through central and southwestern Ohio, passing through rural farmland and small towns. The region has been agricultural land since the early 19th century when Ohio was settled after the Northwest Ordinance.
Route 68 remains a functioning state highway connecting small Ohio communities. The surrounding landscape is largely farmland, small towns, and second-growth woodland — exactly the kind of terrain Yancey depicts in the novel.
Rural Ohio farmland — Cassie's recovery and refuge
After Cassie is shot by the alien Silencer, she wakes in Evan Walker's isolated farmhouse somewhere in rural Ohio. Evan — beguiling, strong, and mysterious — nurses her back to health over several weeks. Cassie is deeply suspicious of him, remembering her rule that trust no one. As she recovers her strength, their relationship deepens into something complicated and charged. It is here that Evan eventually confesses the truth: he is himself an Other, a Silencer who chose not to kill Cassie because he fell in love with her.
Isolated farmhouses like the one depicted have been a feature of central Ohio's landscape since the late 18th and early 19th centuries, when land grants and the Northwest Territory settlement pushed American agriculture westward into Ohio's rich plains.
Rural central Ohio is still dotted with working family farms and isolated homesteads. Many older farmhouses from the 19th and early 20th centuries survive across the region, maintained as private residences or working agricultural properties.
Central Ohio — Tent city where Sammy is taken
Camp Ashpit is the makeshift refugee settlement where Cassie, her father, and her little brother Sammy shelter after fleeing their home. It is a sprawling, desperate tent city where survivors gather believing in safety in numbers. Here, Cassie's father Oliver Sullivan is executed by soldiers — who are revealed to be alien-controlled — before Sammy is loaded onto a bus and taken to Camp Haven. This is the shattering moment that launches Cassie's quest: she promised Sammy she would come for him, and she intends to keep that promise.
During various American crises including the Civil War and the Great Depression, Ohio saw the establishment of temporary encampments and relief sites for displaced populations. The state's open farmland and central location made it a natural gathering place for displaced people.
No such camp exists today. The general setting represents the kind of open rural land found throughout central Ohio's farmland counties, which remain largely agricultural and sparsely populated.
Suburban Ohio — Cassie's life before the waves
Columbus's suburbs stand in for the Sullivan family's comfortable pre-invasion life. Cassie recalls her normal teenage existence — her crush on Ben Parish, her best friend Lizbeth, school dances, and everything that defined ordinary life. Her father Oliver Sullivan is a stable, loving presence before the waves destroy everything. These memories of normalcy haunt Cassie throughout the novel, fueling her grief and rage and her refusal to give up on what remains of her family: Sammy.
Columbus and its suburbs grew dramatically after World War II as part of the broader American suburbanization movement. The city became one of the fastest-growing in the Midwest, with sprawling residential communities extending outward from the city center through the latter half of the 20th century.
Columbus, Ohio is one of the fastest-growing cities in the United States with a population exceeding 900,000. Its suburbs remain among the most typical examples of American residential development, exactly the kind of ordinary world Yancey uses as contrast to the apocalyptic landscape.
Franklin County — Epicenter of collapse after the waves
Columbus represents the collapse of American urban civilization in the novel. After the 1st wave's electromagnetic pulse kills all electronics, the 2nd wave — a massive tsunami triggered by collapsing coastal fault lines — does not reach Ohio directly, but the 3rd wave's plague spreads devastatingly through the city's population. Ben Parish watches his sister Sissy die from the Red Death plague in a Columbus-area shelter. The city's hospitals, power grid, and social order dissolve as wave after wave of destruction strips away civilization.
Columbus was founded in 1812 as Ohio's state capital. It grew into a major Midwestern metropolitan area and became home to Ohio State University, one of the largest universities in the United States, as well as significant financial and technology sectors.
Columbus is Ohio's largest city and capital, a thriving metropolis with a diverse economy anchored by education, insurance, and technology. It has consistently ranked as one of America's most livable large cities.
Fairborn, Ohio — Possible staging ground near Camp Haven
The broad campus infrastructure near Wright-Patterson — including Wright State University — represents the kind of commandeered institutional spaces the Others' military operation would use to process and sort child survivors. Ben Parish and the other young recruits are processed through medical screening, psychological evaluation, and military training in facilities adjacent to Camp Haven. The militarized campus setting underscores the horror of children being turned into soldiers and weapons by an alien conspiracy masquerading as human rescue.
Wright State University was established in 1967 and named in honor of aviation pioneers Orville and Wilbur Wright. It grew quickly into a major regional university and has long had close ties to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, collaborating on research and veteran education programs.
Wright State University serves approximately 10,000 students and maintains active research partnerships with Wright-Patterson. The campus is located in Fairborn, Ohio, directly adjacent to the air force base.
Northern Ohio — Site of the 2nd Wave's devastation
Though Cassie's journey centers on inland Ohio, the 2nd wave — engineered seismic events that send tsunamis crashing over coastal areas — devastates Ohio's northern border along Lake Erie. Cleveland and the lakeside communities are obliterated. Cassie learns from survivors at Camp Ashpit that the waters rose with terrifying speed, and millions died along every coast and major waterway. Lake Erie's destruction is part of the vast, systematic elimination of human population that the Others have engineered across the globe.
Lake Erie, the southernmost and shallowest of the Great Lakes, has been central to Ohio's economy and culture since the early 19th century. Cleveland rose to industrial prominence partly because of its position on Lake Erie as a shipping hub connecting to the broader Great Lakes system.
Lake Erie's Ohio shoreline includes Cleveland, one of Ohio's largest cities. The lake has undergone significant environmental recovery since the Clean Water Act era following its heavily polluted nadir in the 1960s and 1970s, and today supports fishing and recreation industries.
Visit: Lake Erie Bluffs (park)
Montgomery County suburb — Civilian collapse and plague spread
The suburban communities surrounding Dayton — including Kettering — serve as the backdrop for the catastrophic spread of the 3rd wave's Red Death plague. Ben Parish witnesses this wave's horror firsthand as the bird-transmitted pestilence sweeps through crowded survivor camps and suburban refugee shelters. The dead accumulate faster than the living can bury them, and Ben loses his beloved younger sister Sissy here, cradling her as she dies. The experience breaks Ben and remakes him as the hardened soldier Zombie that Camp Haven eventually recruits.
Kettering is a suburban city founded formally in 1952, named after inventor and industrialist Charles F. Kettering. It developed primarily as a residential suburb of Dayton during the post-World War II boom and was known for its stable working- and middle-class communities.
Kettering remains one of the Dayton area's major suburbs with a population of roughly 55,000. It has a strong parks system and community infrastructure, and is home to Kettering Health, a major regional medical network.
Wright-Patterson AFB, Dayton — Public face of military power
The vast military complex at Wright-Patterson — of which this museum is a symbolic public face — represents the fusion of real American military power with the alien Others' infiltration strategy. Camp Haven uses the legitimacy and infrastructure of institutions like this air force base to convince desperate survivors that the military is still functioning and trustworthy. The presence of real military aircraft and hardware lends authority to the Others' deception, making survivors like Sammy believe they are being rescued when they are actually being processed as weapons.
The National Museum of the United States Air Force, established formally in 1923, is the world's oldest and largest military aviation museum. It houses more than 360 aerospace vehicles and missiles across four enormous hangars and traces the full history of American air power.
The museum is open to the public free of charge and draws over one million visitors annually. It includes presidential aircraft, nuclear weapons history exhibits, and a large collection of experimental and prototype aircraft. It remains one of Ohio's top tourist destinations.
Visit: National Museum of the United States Air Force (museum)
Southern Ohio — Boundary of the known survivor world
The Ohio River and its valley represent the southern edge of the devastated world Cassie navigates. Survivors who fled southward from Columbus encountered the river as a natural barrier and gathering point. The dense woodland and river terrain of southern Ohio also appear in flashback sequences when Cassie recalls her father's warnings about survival and his instruction on how to move through wilderness unseen — skills she uses desperately during her highway journey northward to find Sammy at Camp Haven.
The Ohio River has served as a major geographic and cultural boundary throughout American history, separating the Northwest Territory from the original colonies and later serving as a freedom border during the era of slavery. Its valley is rich with Native American history predating European settlement by thousands of years.
The Ohio River Valley along the southern border of Ohio includes state parks, historic sites, and scenic byways. Wayne National Forest covers much of the southeastern Ohio terrain, providing public outdoor recreation land across the region.
Visit: Wayne National Forest (park)
Clark County — Midpoint of Cassie's desperate march
Springfield and the surrounding Clark County landscape forms part of the geography Cassie crosses on her solo journey toward Camp Haven to rescue Sammy. Moving through decimated small towns, Cassie scavenges for food, avoids Silencers, and maintains her solitary discipline of trusting no one. The abandoned storefronts, silent streets, and decaying infrastructure of small Midwestern towns like Springfield embody the novel's vision of post-wave America: a civilization reduced to ghost towns, with only the most desperate and determined survivors still moving through the wreckage.
Springfield was founded in 1801 and grew as an agricultural and manufacturing center in the 19th century. It was once a significant industrial hub producing farm machinery and automobiles, and was connected by the National Road, one of America's first federally funded highways.
Springfield is a small city of roughly 58,000 people that has faced significant economic challenges following deindustrialization. It gained national attention in 2024 for political controversy and is home to Wittenberg University and several historic landmarks from its industrial heyday.
More by Rick Yancey: All Rick Yancey books
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