108 replies to this topic

[chancellorjake]

Life After People. The new special documentary from The History Channel.
Premiering Monday, January 21st, 2008 at 9:00 p.m. ET.

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.

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, records would fade quickly, leaving little evidence that we ever existed. 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.

A slightly creepy subject for a show, but the CGI looks amazing and it might turn out to be an interesting program. The promos that show the Space Needle and the Sears Tower collapsing into piles of rubble, after years of neglect, are pretty impressive. I wonder if they'll give any explanation for how our species would die out. I'm, also, very curious about what would happen to all of our house pets. I doubt my cats would live long without me and that's pretty depressing.

Edited by chancellorjake, Jan 13, 2008 @ 12:08 AM.

[MichelleAK]

The History Channel website doesn't seem to mention it, but I am assuming that this show is based on (or at least, "inspired by") Alan Weisman's book The World Without Us, which covers what this show seems to cover (including Chernobyl), only without the pretty CGI. I've read the book, which I highly recommend. I'll probably watch the HC version as well.

[Ivang]

A slightly creepy subject for a show,

It's something I think about all the time, I wish I had thought to write a book about it. Haven't seen the show yet. A good fictional book on the topic is Earth Abides by George Stewart.

[InvaderZim]

Weisman's book is good and was a best seller too. Since the History Channel makes no mention of the book but is clearly inspired by it, does Alan Weisman have a potential lawsuit here?

(Edited because his name is Alan and not Len. Isn't Len Weisman somebody? A director, I think?)

Edited by InvaderZim, Jan 15, 2008 @ 9:32 AM.

[Gharlane]

Wow. I am a bit depressed now after watching this.

[arlycat]

I found this show fascinating and had assumed it was based on the book by Weisman. I heard a interview with him on late-night radio and the show seemed pretty much like his view of the world without people. He did express some concern about nuclear power plants eventually melting down, I think. Like the show, Weisman said many breeds of dogs might not survive because of competition from coyotes and wolves. But he joked that cats would do very well without us.

It would be equally interesting to contemplate what would happen if only 10 or 20 percent of the world's population survived. Would they be able to maintain all mankind's technological advances or would they revert to subsistence levels?

[Gharlane]

A photo appropriate for this show.

[Rabrab]

I found it fairly interesting, and pretty well done, with only a few points that I think they bobbled fairly badly.

First off, the animations: Some really good and some really bad. Pretty clearly done by folks who have watched movies and controlled demolitions but have not seen the way that an abandoned wood-frame building really collapses. They should have come out to the Midwest and looked at some of the old barns that have been abandoned for decades. They also should have gone to a plant nursery and taken a look at just how big a ten-year old sapling is -- they're in general nowhere near as big as the animation of what Central Park would look like had them.

Second, whoever wrote the section on how fast the roads and paved areas would be reclaimed should have watched the footage from Chernobyl;.The sidewalks? Yes, the sidewalks will be well on the way to broken up in 10 or 15 years. But roads are much, much thicker, and will take a lot longer to succumb. Same for the buildings.

If the family dog has to get out of the house in the first week or it will die, how in the hell do they think that the zoo animals will be still around in 5 to 10 years?

And finally, the idea that the dogs will interbreed with wolves and learn to form packs. First, dogs don't need to "learn" to form packs. Feral dogs instinctively form packs. Second, there was a study several years ago that found that in a stable breeding population of multiple breeds of dogs, uncontrolled breeding tends to push size, shape and color back toward an archetypal "wild dog" form: about 45 pounds, 20 inches tall or so at the shoulder, and yellowish-dun in color. That's too small for a wolf to consider as breeding material; it's going to hold the same place in the canid chain as the coyote: competitor and prey.

The good:
The animations of the Brooklyn and Golden Gate Bridges collapsing were dead on; if you've ever seen footage of the Tacoma-Narrows collapse, that's exactly the way that a suspension bridge comes apart: in chunks, in series. So was the collapse of the Space Needle.

The fact that they had experts from the various disciplines talking about their specialties, rather than going with catch-all "futurists" or something equally nebulous. When the engineer from Hoover Dam says that he thinks it would keep generating power for perhaps a year, perhaps a bit more, before it shuts down, I believe that he knows what he's talking about in a way that I wouldn't necessarily if it had been some professor or writer saying it.

I also really appreciated that they started out with "We aren't going to try to explain what happened to all the people. They're all gone, all at once. What happened to them isn't important." While that's not quite true; what happened would have some effect in the immediate aftermath simply because anything severe enough to wipe out all human life would also have some environmental impact, it was a good way to give us (the viewers) a "safe place" to stand and watch from

[MichelleAK]

The show was pretty to look at, and if I hadn't read Weisman's book, I probably would have been more impressed. However, compared to the book, the show was pretty shallow, and didn't cover many of the residual, man-made ecological problems discussed in the book (imported plants and animals; plastics; oil refineries). Plus, the CGI was laughably bad in a couple of scenes (the wolf-dogs bringing down the steer; an earlier shot of a CGI bear).

The best part for me was the filming done at the city near Chernobyl, showing how quickly nature can "snap back."

I really recommend the book, which was so much better than this.

[ILoveTV07]

My thoughts:

I almost turned it off at the beginning - showing all the dogs looking sad and helpless without their owners around just about did me in - my own dog was walking around the house whining during that part. It was almost like she instinctively knew what was being said, LOL!! I gave her some extra hugs and gave her a treat - what can I say? I'm a sap!!!

Other than that, my overly psychoanalytical self was trying to figure out what was the purpose of this show. Fascinating, yes. But was there a point? Were they trying to say that the world would be better off without people? I had to answer the phone in the last 15 minutes or so - and I missed the conclusion. Did that tie it up and give some sort of conclusive point, or was this just to satisfy our curiosity?

[Rabrab]

No message beyond that the world will continue in some form after we're gone, life will continue, change happens.

[bimbo du jour]

I enjoyed it. I thought that the overall message was that humans aren't as in control of the planet as we like to think we are; that it's a constant routine of maintenance that really keeps things going. I agree that the CGI bear wasn't very good, and I also wondered how zoo animals would survive since zoos are designed to keep animals from escaping (hunger can be a tremendous motivator, though).

I was fascinated by the return of predators, in large numbers. I thought all of the biological angles were interesting, from owls to weather to bursting windows in high rises.

[public defender]

I also really appreciated that they started out with "We aren't going to try to explain what happened to all the people. They're all gone, all at once. What happened to them isn't important." While that's not quite true; what happened would have some effect in the immediate aftermath simply because anything severe enough to wipe out all human life would also have some environmental impact, it was a good way to give us (the viewers) a "safe place" to stand and watch from

I went with the "Night of the Comet" theory. Something happened to just make humanity disappear, otherwise we'd all be lying around dead, acting as a food source for our surviving house pets.

I had just finished watching "Last Days on Earth" anyway, so I figured that the History Channel covered it already, even though all of the scenarios presented there were ELEs and not just "humans go poof."

That opening almost had me, too, but my dogs started to bark at the television rather than whine, as if to tell me that they'd be okay and that the puppy on the tv was a wuss. They barked at the wolves and coyotes, too, but were silent towards the lions and bears. They know their place in the food chain.

My cat just slept through it, as if to say, "Yeah. I know. We bad."

[bimbo du jour]

"humans go poof"

Maybe there's a future tie-in to a program about the Rapture.

[formergr]

Maybe there's a future tie-in to a program about the Rapture.

Ha, that's awesome!

Based on comments here this sounds less cheesy than I expected, so I might have to check it out. Though I will skip the first ten minutes with the pets, because that kind of thing always does me in (Katrina, stories from WWII, etc).

[GeoBQn]

I like how they somehow made plants seem very violent and threatening, such as when the clovers were growing in the field and shaking very fast. If given the chance, plants will eat you and everything you care about!

[Raging Apathy]

This was fascinating, but really depressing. for parts of it I had that Talking Heads song "Nothing but flowers" running through my head, but in the end all I could think of was that damm poem"Ozymadias". And I suppose for anyone looking for a "point" to this show, that's it right there: It's basically "Ozymandias" writ large.

I didn't read the Weisman's book, but I saw him when he talked about it on The Daily Show. I that interview, he mentioned the cockroaches and claimed that they actually wouldn't do very well without us, that without the warmth provided by our artificially heated structures, they wouldn't survive for long outside of tropical regions. It was interesting that while the show did have some people who expressed this view, it also had some that disputed it, and in the end came down firmly on the opinion that cockroaches *would* survive, that they'd find someplace they could burrow underground to ride out the winter (and I'd think there'd be enough rotting garbage lying around for the first year or so to provide some heat). I'd have to agree with the latter view: they may have come from the tropics, but they've been living in Norhern regions with us for so damm long, and produced so many thousands (millions?) of generations of bugs in that time, and considering their drive to spread out and infest every last crevice they could possibly survive in, I'm sure that not only are New York cockroaches in general already a lot more hardy than their tropical ancestors, but in amongst the population there must already be the odd "freak of nature" here & there who's truly resistant to cold. Not much of an evolutionary advantage as long as Humans have the heat going, but come that first winter after Man, they're going to be the ones to stand out from the crowd. I wonder if this or other divergences from Weisman's conclusions has anything to do with not acknowledging his book as the main source & inspiration for this special.

Rabrab
They also should have gone to a plant nursery and taken a look at just how big a ten-year old sapling is -- they're in general nowhere near as big as the animation of what Central Park would look like had them.

I think the rate of growth can vary wildly from one tree species to another, although I suspect the more tropical trees tend to be the fastest growing ones, and the ones that would flourish at NYC's latitude probably would be much smaller than what was shown after 10 years

Second, whoever wrote the section on how fast the roads and paved areas would be reclaimed should have watched the footage from Chernobyl;.The sidewalks? Yes, the sidewalks will be well on the way to broken up in 10 or 15 years. But roads are much, much thicker, and will take a lot longer to succumb. Same for the buildings.

The narration, and the visuals, seemed to suggest not so much the road surfaces crumbling into rubble & dust within a few years, but of quickly being covered up by a layer of debris from which some hardy plants (and maybe fungi?) would sprout & decay, soon leading to a layer of topsoil burying the still-somewhat-intact roadbed within a few years. This sounds like a fairly likely scenario, at least for rural roads & highways in undeveloped areas, although less so for roads in more built up areas where all the ground around it is paved and the debris that collects on the road surface would likely be less organic material and more rubble & rust from the decaying buildings & cars.

If the family dog has to get out of the house in the first week or it will die, how in the hell do they think that the zoo animals will be still around in 5 to 10 years?

Well, the recent incident with the Tiger in the San Francisco zoo shows that it can happen. An awful lot of zoo animals are kept in those open pit enclosures nowadays, and after a couple of days without getting regular meals served up to them, a lot of them are going to get frisky & creative & motivated to test their abilitiy to exceed their enclosure's design specifications. Add to that the odd incident like a branch or something falling into the pit & providing them a higher platform to leap from, and I could see a couple of critters getting out here & there. Once out, they might quickly die off in an enviorment they weren't "designed" for, or with no natural preditors their population could quickly explode like rabbits in the Australian outback. Like the show said, it would be a real wild card.

And finally, the idea that the dogs will interbreed with wolves and learn to form packs. First, dogs don't need to "learn" to form packs. Feral dogs instinctively form packs. Second, there was a study several years ago that found that in a stable breeding population of multiple breeds of dogs, uncontrolled breeding tends to push size, shape and color back toward an archetypal "wild dog" form: about 45 pounds, 20 inches tall or so at the shoulder, and yellowish-dun in color. That's too small for a wolf to consider as breeding material; it's going to hold the same place in the canid chain as the coyote: competitor and prey.

I'm not sure about a wolf's breeding practices, but I know for a fact that dogs just aren't that choosy, and some male dogs just don't seem all that hung up on getting the willing consent of whatever female (or inanimate object) they decide to become affectionate with. A dog is pretty much a man made animal anyway (probably the earliest one) created from the tamer members of the wolf packs who would follow our hunting tribes around and scavenge our leftovers ...unless we were the ones following the wolf packs around and scavenging from them, either way it got to be a symbiotic relationship. Take away Man, and I suspect the feral dog population would indeed eventually disappear by interbreeding and fading back into the wolf population that they came from.

And while I've never been a big fan of cats, I've no doubt that they'll do just fine without us. We've altered the behavior of dogs through breeding to the point that 90% of them would die once we were gone, but cats have never really let us fuck with their nature to that extent, or fully accepted us as "master", they just hang out with us and pretend to like us because we can operate the can opener. Even so, (and this is what I've always found a little creepy about them) they make it a point to keep in practice with the stalking and the rodent-hunting, because I think they look at us and there's something about us that makes them suspect we might not make it for the long haul. They're definitely smarter than dogs, and felines (of all sizes) would be my pick to take over once we're gone and dominate the planet like the dinosaurs once did. They're just waiting, bidding their time...,

Edited by Raging Apathy, Jan 22, 2008 @ 2:34 PM.

[Rabrab]

It's not that the dogs won't breed with the wolves if they're given a chance; it's that very, very few will even be given the chance. Wolves have one mate at a time, and usually mate for life. A solitary wolf might accept a bitch as a mate, a solitary bitch wolf is less likely to accept a dog, mostly because the dog is going to be smaller, lighter and weaker than she is. In packs, only the alpha pair breed, so the only way a dog gets a chance in that situation is to first be accepted into the pack then to rise to alpha along with their mate. But packs are generally family groups and don't generally accept strangers; typically, they'll drive them off or kill them.

The most likely scenario for getting a pack of dog/wolf hybrids is for a feral dog pack to be taken over by a solitary wolf. Whether it would last long enough to establish a stable breeding population is another question.

There's also genetic evidence that the first domesticated dogs (semi-domesticated dogs? human-tolerant dogs?) weren't wolves, but wild dogs, more closely related to the dingo, the Carolina dog, and the New Guinea Singing dog than to the wolf.

Edited by Rabrab, Jan 22, 2008 @ 3:13 PM.

[skippercollecto]

I missed about a half hour of the show. Was there any mention about other domesticated animals, such as farm animals, or pet birds that are lucky enough to get out of the house?
The cats near the end of the show looked quite content where they were living. But they all seemed to have really long fur. I had assumed that over several generations of indiscriminate feline breeding, that they would return to the gray striped tabby look. I remember reading somewhere last year that tabbies are the "basic" cat, for want of a better term.
Someone earlier mentioned the book This Quiet Earth. In that book (which I think is from the 40s or 50s), the domesticated cats do much better in the first few years than do the domesticated dogs, but in the end, even the feral cats get devoured by larger animals. (I got the impression that the author just didn't like cats!)
One thing that was discussed in some detail in The World Without Us but never mentioned in the show last night was another reason why windows broke. If the land slips a little, the building gets off-kilter, putting more pressure on the window frames, which will get misshapen. Eventually the glass just doesn't "fit" anymore, and cracks.

Edited by skippercollecto, Jan 22, 2008 @ 6:20 PM.

[Rabrab]

No, they didn't really talk about other domesticated animals, except an oblique reference to cattle in the segment about the dog/wolf packs in the animation; the dog/wolves are shown taking down what looks like a standard domesticated bull, implying that cattle will survive. Some will, many more won't.

[Harlin G Hewitt]

I like how they somehow made plants seem very violent and threatening, such as when the clovers were growing in the field and shaking very fast. If given the chance, plants will eat you and everything you care about!

Clovers aren't crazy, just ignorant!

[AD35]

An interesting show to be show, but pretty depressing as well. And what is with the History Channel's fascination with doomsday? They should seriously consider changing their name to the Doomsday Channel, since it seems most of their programming is about the (imminent) demise of mankind. I bet if they did a show on the history of Winnie the Pooh, they'd find a way to work in some way about how the human race would be threatened with destruction in some way.

[cutecouple]

The book was far superior. The only way the show could be said to improve on it was to do a straight chronology. It would have been better if it had an on screen narrator to go through the time line. It felt to me like they were going for 'barely any trace of us would last the test of time', which the various forms of chemical and plastics we leave behind would invalidate.

[UnfamousLoser]

because anything severe enough to wipe out all human life would also have some environmental impact, it was a good way to give us (the viewers) a "safe place" to stand and watch from

I know this is all speculative fiction, but to run with it: it could be a brand new virus that would, theoretically, wipe out the human race. When the great Influenza epidemic of 1918 happened I don't think there was a lot of environmental impact (other than there were a lot of dead bodies no one wanted to go near or bury).

[Gharlane]

And while I've never been a big fan of cats, I've no doubt that they'll do just fine without us. We've altered the behavior of dogs through breeding to the point that 90% of them would die once we were gone, but cats have never really let us fuck with their nature to that extent, or fully accepted us as "master", they just hang out with us and pretend to like us because we can operate the can opener. Even so, (and this is what I've always found a little creepy about them) they make it a point to keep in practice with the stalking and the rodent-hunting

As I understand it, humans didn't interfere with cats too much because they already served a purpose -- controlling rodents and other vermin.

[Dahak]

They left the "where did all the people go" question out for two reasons. First and most obviously since the most likely answer is we would all be dead they didn't want depress us viewers. Second from a long term POV I don't think it would make much difference. More pets would live. Zoo animals would be far more likely to be freed. And there would be a huge one time food source at the begining. But a year later (except for the zoo animals) everything would be back to the original timeline.
I liked the show but it did have it's faults. Yes a thousand years later there would be very little obvious signs of man. But archeologists find al kinds of stuff when they dig. So if some alien came to Earth our stuff would be everywhere even a million years from now. If no one came then it wouldn't matter.

[Rabrab]

That's why I said anything that could completely wipe out humanity in like that would have some environmental impact. It might only be the presence of 6.5 billion dead bodies, but that's going to be quite an impact for quite some time. Personally, I was just assuming it was aliens.

I do wish, that since it was primarily focussed on what would happen in the various US cities, that they had addressed places like Atlanta, Savannah, or Mobile. Why? two things: milder climate and kudzu.

[Druck]

I liked the show (despite only catching it from about 20 minutes in..) but did find the outlook from a human perspective to be quite bleak. The "money shots" of the Effiel Tower and Sears Towers collapsing do make up for the awful wolf and steer CGI. The Mice and cats in the skyscraper CGI was pretty good so the wolf and steer stuff seemed tacked on.

The Everybody Goes Poof! theory is fine theory to evaluate the decline of our physical remains of our society, but it's not really scientifically accurate. Even Rapture-ists believe that only some of the population Goes Poof! while everybody else has to fight the Army of the Devil (I know..). The only other choice to create a human remain free planet is to imagine a SuperVirus that has the tissue destruction of necrotising faciitis, along with the ease of transmission like the common cold, and making it hyper resistant to anti-biotics.

This special also ignored what like 5 other History Channel shows have pretty much stated as fact: That in the next 10,000 years or so Earth is going to be visited by an ELE collision that may destroy most if not all life on the planet. Of course they'd then have to explain that the odds of that happening 10,000 years from now are the same as it happening tomorrow, or next month or next year. That really invalidates most of the Life After People special then, plus is super depressing.

The really depressing thing was the theory expressed that all our radio and TV signals that we have been sending out into space dissapate into noise only 2 light years away. That was the great hope years ago for extra-terrestial contact, was that they would hear our signals and come investigate. 2 light years distance is nothing...it's like only being able to smell fast food from walking by the drive through window. So if anybody "out there" finds us, it's going to be entirely by accident.

[Rabrab]

Well, Voyager is out there, still, broadcasting its "We're here!" message.

As far as ignoring the ELE scenario the other shows mentioned, that wasn't the point of this one at all. If you missed the beginning, it started off with a statement that "All the people are gone. We aren't going to get into what happened, or how. This is about what happens when we're gone. Why we're gone doesn't matter." There's no way that one show could have covered all the possible ways that people would die off, and all the variants that each reason would cause in the time-line. There's no end-time scenario that could realistically kill all people everywhere, at the same time, immediately, and have absolutely no effect on either the animal population, plant population, or physical infrastructure.

[Gharlane]

The really depressing thing was the theory expressed that all our radio and TV signals that we have been sending out into space dissipate into noise only 2 light years away.

I think it was one light year, but yeah, I was shocked to hear that.