'After People': One World Vanishes; Another Emerges
"Life After People" explores what would happen to the world after humans die out. Animals such as bears would probably thrive.
(Photos From History)
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Friday, March 21, 2008
Worried about an upcoming presentation? In the middle of a career crisis? Can't find just the right color centerpieces for the wedding reception? Relax. It's all insignificant.
What put me in such a frame of mind? Watching "Life After People," the new DVD of the highest-rated show on the History channel. Using computer animation, the opinions of leading engineers and scientists, and field trips to such places as Pripyat, Ukraine (abandoned in 1986 after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster), the show examines what would happen to Earth if humans were to go the way of the dinosaurs.
The only extras on the disc ($24.95) are additional scenes not shown when the program aired before 5.4 million viewers earlier this year.
The show isn't terribly concerned with what might kill us off: a meteor, nuclear war, a modern plague or some other extinction-level event. It's focused on what's left behind after we're gone and traces a timeline stretching 10,000 years.
The New York subway system would flood in a couple of days because there would be no one to turn on the pumps that keep out groundwater. Within six months, wild animals would roam the suburbs, but domesticated pets would be in trouble. Some might escape their homes and turn feral. But others, bred more for looks than for function, would be at a competitive disadvantage and probably wouldn't last long.
Animals such as bears, sea creatures and apes would probably benefit from our disappearance. Apparently, the whole "Planet of the Apes" film series might not be so far-fetched.
Watching the timeline progress, you might be surprised how quickly things would vanish. Animated scenes show how, after about 200 years, such landmarks as the Eiffel Tower, the Golden Gate Bridge and Hoover Dam would collapse. (The dam would last the longest of those structures, standing for perhaps 10,000 years.)
But plastic milk jugs would still be around a million years later to commemorate our presence. And your plastic-foam coffee cup would outlast that PowerPoint presentation or wedding centerpiece you're worried about.
