History Channel "Life After People - Welcome to Earth: Population 0"

I missed it Monday night, but it repeats tonight (Wednesday) at 8pm and midnite PST.

"The 1986 nuclear power plant accident at Chernobyl and its aftermath provides a riveting and emotional case study of what can happen after humans have moved on. Life After People goes to remote islands off the coast of Maine to search for traces of abandoned towns, beneath the streets of New York to see how subway tunnels may become watery canals, to the Montana wilderness to divine the destiny of the bears and wolves."



http://www.history.com/minisite.do?content_type=Minisite_Generic&content_type_id=57578&display_order=2&mini_id=57517

About the Show

What would happen to planet earth if the human race were to suddenly disappear forever? Would ecosystems thrive? What remnants of our industrialized world would survive? What would crumble fastest? From the ruins of ancient civilizations to present day cities devastated by natural disasters, history gives us clues to these questions and many more in the visually stunning and thought-provoking new special LIFE AFTER PEOPLE, premiering Monday, January 21st, 2008 at 9:00 p.m. ET/PT on The History Channel®.

Abandoned skyscrapers would, after hundreds of years, become "vertical ecosystems" complete with birds, rodents and even plant life. One small animal might be responsible for bringing down the Hoover Dam hydroelectric plant. Swelled rivers, crumbling bridges and buildings, grizzly bears in California and herds of buffalo returning to the Great Western Plains: In a world without humans, these would be the visual hallmarks. Our cars would shrivel to piles of dust, our house pets would be overtaken by flourishing wildlife and most of the records of our human storybooks, photos, recordswould fade quickly, leaving little that we ever existed.

Using feature film quality visual effects and top experts in the fields of engineering, botany, ecology, biology, geology, climatology and archeology, Life After People provides an amazing visual journey through the ultimately hypothetical.

The 1986 nuclear power plant accident at Chernobyl and its aftermath provides a riveting and emotional case study of what can happen after humans have moved on. Life After People goes to remote islands off the coast of Maine to search for traces of abandoned towns, beneath the streets of New York to see how subway tunnels may become watery canals, to the Montana wilderness to divine the destiny of the bears and wolves.

Humans won't be around forever, and now we can see in detail, for the very first time, the world that will be left behind in Life After People.

Not bad, but not great. Some of the CG animals were pretty rough.

That said, I just got the Science Channel in HD. It's like crack for science geeks. Best channel ever!

part was in Week One, when dogs left behind, locked in houses, would either have to escape or die. They said that the toy breeds would fair the worst. Cats, as it turned out, would prosper in the wild.

...that could possibly hold its own against the coyotes.

I have another dog who would be killed at the empty bird feeder by hungry squirrels.

that a sudden universal disappearance of all humans (and nothing else) is the one way that it won't happen. They've sort of lifted the premise from Left Behind. And even in Left Behind, there were a fair number of people, ummm, left behind.

I guess it is one way to avoid dwelling too much on the more likely scenario, where we take down a lot of the biosphere with us, in a final blowout of resource-grabbing.

Humans are not going to just disappear and turn the planet over to Bambi.

By the time humans disappear all the Elk in Yellowstone will have become BigMacs, the Rainforests will have been cut down for Ethanol, and Radioactive Fallout will have infected every gutted ecosystem....

nt

there would be a rapturing out of all people?

"A world without us".

I'm only midway through the book, but I'm enjoying it so far. It's pretty sobering, though, to read about the man-made materials that would endure long after our disappearance unless some organism evolves the ability to break down plastics.

I think it's toward the end of the book, but when he starts talking about radioactive materials, it gets really weird.

If only we were as fascinated with the idea of feeding, housing and caring for everyone in the world... it might seem more possible.

http://store.aetv.com/html/product/index.jhtml?id=112340

Has anyone else noticed how the definition of "History Channel" seems to be getting a bit fluid?

The one on 2012 is pretty weak, though. And the Mayan calendar actually makes no mention of Doomsday at the end of 2012 -- that's just when the calendar ends. Similarly, McKenna's "Timewave Zero" is not the gloom-and-doom oracle it was implied to be.

I liked "After People," too, but I think they placed most of the breakdowns too early. And the Hoover Dam, for example, is likely to turn into a hill after Lake Mead fills with silt and the Colorado River finds a new pathway around it. It could be easily recognizable by archeologists in 500,000 years -- but I also think Brin is too optimistic about the endurance of the faces on Mount Rushmore.

I also think that they should have given more attention to the formation of the Great Sacramento Sea in the late 21st century by rising sea levels.

--p!

It was okay.

The scenes from the Chernobyl area were especially interesting (to see how nature is "bouncing back.")

"End Day" was a pretty good end-of-the-world documentary.
A bit like "Groundhog Day" but with each day presenting a bigger cataclysm than the one before, ending up with a miniature black hole being formed after a strangelet is created in a lab....

End Day

Bet they didn't though.