This is an old revision of this page, as edited by AussieLegend (talk | contribs) at 02:37, 13 February 2010 (Reverted 1 edit by 117.1.217.69 identified as vandalism to last revision by AussieLegend. (TW)). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.
Revision as of 02:37, 13 February 2010 by AussieLegend (talk | contribs) (Reverted 1 edit by 117.1.217.69 identified as vandalism to last revision by AussieLegend. (TW))(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff) This redirect is about the television series. For the documentary film, see Life After People. | It has been suggested that this article be merged with Life After People. (Discuss) Proposed since December 2009. |
| Life After People: The Series | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Created by | David de Vries |
| Narrated by | James Lurie |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Original language | Transclusion error: {{En}} is only for use in File namespace. Use {{langx|en}} or {{in lang|en}} instead. |
| No. of seasons | 2 |
| No. of episodes | 16 (as of February 9, 2010) (list of episodes) |
| Production | |
| Running time | 45 minutes |
| Original release | |
| Network | History |
| Release | April 21, 2009 (2009-04-21) – present |
Life After People: The Series is a documentary television series that began premiering on April 21, 2009 on the History Channel. The program is a spin-off of the documentary film Life After People. The series features material not previously mentioned in the original documentary film and also explains in depth on material that was present in its precursor.
A second season began airing on January 5, 2010.
The series shares the same tagline as original documentary film: "Welcome to Earth...Population: Zero."
With an audience of 5.4 million viewers, the original documentary film was the most watched program ever on the History Channel. Aftermath: Population Zero, a program with a similar premise, aired on the National Geographic Channel in March 2008.
Synopsis
In the program, scientists and other experts speculate about what may occur to the Earth, animal life, plant life, and the artifacts of civilization if humanity suddenly disappeared. Speculation is based upon documented results of the sudden removal of humans from a geographical area and projections of what could occur if humanity discontinues its maintenance of buildings and urban infrastructure.
The series features hypothetical scenarios of the gradual and post-apocalyptic disintegration of urban civilization in a world devoid of human beings. Each episode contains a series of short scenes presented in chronological order, covering a time span that begins "one day after people" and ends thousands or millions of years in the future. The hypotheses are depicted using CGI dramatizations of the possible fate of iconic structures and landmarks (e.g., The Pyramids, the Empire State Building, the Willis Tower, the Space Needle, the Eiffel Tower, the Golden Gate Bridge, and the Hoover Dam).
Each episode also contains a documentary sequence in which experts examine real locations that have been abandoned by people, including ghost towns and other sites of deteriorating buildings.
Life After People does not speculate about the cause or manner of humanity's sudden disappearance.
Episodes
Main article: List of Life After People episodes| Season | Episodes | Originally aired | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Season premiere | Season finale | ||
| 1 | 10 | April 21, 2009 (2009-04-21) | June 23, 2009 (2009-06-23) |
| 2 | January 5, 2010 (2010-01-05) | ||
Prediction timetable
The series makes predictions as to what will happen after humanity disappears. The following table lists some of the more globally notable and significant events, as well as some of the lesser events used to establish a timeline.
| Time Period | Predictions |
|---|---|
| 1 day | Without humans to maintain them, power plants across the world begin to shut down. |
| 5 days | Methane gas seeps into the New York City Subway, and into Grand Central Terminal |
| 1 week | In London, Big Ben stops running when no one is around to rewind it. |
| 2 weeks | From Japan to California, 3.5 million tons of garbage goes uncollected and storms wash some of it out to sea expanding the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. |
| 3 months | In Rome, Michelangelo's artwork on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel has been without protection since the computerized climate control system failed, but the lack of moisture and body heat from visitors is actually helping preserve the works of art. |
| 3 years | The International Space Station loses altitude and falls to Earth, destroying the "Immortality Drive", a computer disk containing the digitized genetic information of some extraordinary humans, with it. The wind powered Ricoh sign in Times Square finally goes dark when the light bulbs burn out. |
| 4 years | Some cities have fallen victim to floods. With no people to repair the damage, homes succumb to decay and the foundations of buildings slowly erode. This future has already happened in New Orleans; four years after Hurricane Katrina, much of the flood damage remains. |
| 10 years | At Independence Hall, broken windows allow sunlight to beam down on the Declaration of Independence. Protected from the elements in its airtight case, the light will cause the letters to fade away over time. |
| 15 years | In Hawaii, the lines holding the USS Missouri to the docks succumb to corrosion and decay. The warship, now free of its moorings, floats away but only gets so far when it bottoms out in the mud. |
| 25 years | In museums, without functioning environmental systems to preserve them, insects and fungi ravage the Egyptian mummies. The same fate happens to the embalmed body of Lenin. Soon nothing is left but dust and bones. Without people to maintain levees, low lying cities such as London will have flooded. Freeze dried food remains edible. |
| 50 years | The metal letters of the Hollywood Sign are finally brought down by an earthquake. Ravaged by pyrite disease, dinosaur skeletons in museums across the globe begin to fall apart. By now, the plant seeds frozen in the Svalbard Global Seed Vault will have died. In the Gulf of Mexico, only one oil platform remains after 50 years of hurricanes. Mold and metal corrosion finally collapses the Burj Al Arab in Dubai. In orbit, uncontrolled satellites begin colliding into each other. |
| 60 years | The Last Supper of Leonardo DaVinci is unrecognizable. The pinnacle atop Randy's Donuts crumbles apart. Cargo ships from the Great lakes tumble over Niagara falls. |
| 70 years | At Pearl Harbor, the USS Missouri is now covered in green as seeds dropped by birds have caused vegetation to grow all over the wooden deck. |
| 75 years | Bridges begin to collapse when their protective paint flakes off and are no longer protected from moisture and corrosion. In Kuala Lumpur, the supports under the sky bridge of the Petronas Twin Towers buckle because of corrosion, and it falls to the ground. In Philadelphia, the Liberty Bell falls to the ground and cracks completely in half. |
| 100 years | Big Ben, the Brooklyn Bridge, and the Golden Gate Bridge collapse. Washington D.C. reverts back into a swamp where beavers thrive damming up the Potomac River. At the Louvre Museum in Paris, Leonardo Da Vinci's Mona Lisa is eaten away by death watch beetles. In Turin, the Shroud of Turin is exposed to the elements when the roof of Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist collapses. Mold and humidity consume the cloth and the image of Christ on the shroud becomes unrecognizable. |
| 125 years | In Moscow, after 125 years of fighting water damage and corrosion, St. Basil's Cathedral finally collapses to the ground. |
| 150 years | Elephant herds roam free in the American West filling the ecological niches that mammoths and mastodons left vacant at the end of the last ice age. The levees in New Orleans finally give way after 150 years of being gnawed at by local animals, and the city floods with saltwater. The Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum is collapsed by an earthquake, but the ancient Colosseum in Rome will remain standing for centuries more. |
| 175 years | At nuclear plants, cooling towers begin to tip over and collapse |
| 200 years | In San Francisco, only the skeletal towers of the Golden Gate Bridge remain after the road deck collapses. In New York City, the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building finally collapse. Structures such as the Eiffel Tower in Paris and the Tower Bridge in London collapse. In Taipei, the Taipei 101 collapses when the tuned mass damper fails. |
| 250 years | By now, the United States Constitution has faded away inside the crumbled rotunda of the National Archives and Records Administration. In Hawaii, water has penetrated the hull of the USS Missouri. It floods and begins to sink deeper into the mud of the harbor bottom, but it could last as long as 20,000 years. In Rio de Janeiro, a strong wind topples the weakened Christ the Redeemer statue leaving only the pedestal and part of the feet. The Burj Khalifa in Dubai collapses in the biggest structural collapse the world has ever seen. |
| 300 years | In New York City, the Statue of Liberty breaks in pieces and sinks into the Atlantic Ocean. |
| 500 years | Though Michelangelo's frescos are still recognizable after so many centuries, the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel collapses, bringing down the entire building. The Petronas Twin Towers finally collapse after five centuries of tropical sun and moisture. St. Peter's Basilica's dome collapses after the weakening of its steel support chains. |
| 1,000 years | Almost all traces of human culture are buried beneath vegetation and sand. The Earth itself will have buried all of man's cities. The Taj Mahal in Agra collapses after a fairly large earthquake, and rising sea levels flood the area where Washington D.C. once stood, leaving a highly degraded, but still erect Washington Monument emerging over the waves. Meanwhile, on the Moon, the three Lunar Roving Vehicles left behind from the Apollo 15 through Apollo 17 missions will remain in near-mint condition barring degradation or destruction from meteor impacts. The Colosseum in Rome falls from an earthquake. |
| 2,000 years | Because it is basically held together by gravity, the medieval Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris may still stand and be recognizable. Honey is the only food item that remains intact and edible. The American side of Niagara Falls disappears. |
| 5,000 years | The Confederate Memorial, carved on Stone Mountain in Atlanta, is one of few indications that man ever inhabited the area. Most of what man has built has long eroded or been destroyed. |
| 10,000 years | Almost all traces of human civilization have been buried under sand and vegetation. Buried underground, the vault of the Federal Reserve Bank in New York City, still holds $200 billion of gold bars intact. In New Orleans, plastic and glass Mardi Gras beads can still be found buried under soil and vegetation. |
| 20,000 years | The final seeds in the Svalbard Global Seed Vault die. |
| 1,000,000 years | The Golden Records aboard the Voyager space probes are damaged beyond recognition after centuries of collisions with dust and space debris. |
| 10,000,000 years | The fossilized corpses of New Orleans are a mile and a half underground. Pressure and heat have transformed the soft tissue that remained into oil. |
| 100,000,000 years | All that will remain from the existence of human beings are our fossilized bones. |
See also
- Life After People
- The World Without Us
- The Future Is Wild
- After Man: A Zoology of the Future
- Aftermath: Population Zero
References
- http://www.history.com/content/life_after_people/about-the-series
- "Depopulation Boom", The Washington Post, March 8, 2008.
External links
- Official website
- Life After People at IMDb (series)
- Life After People at IMDb (original special documentary film)