Title:
Life After People
Featuring
Interviews With: Gordon Masterson and David Brin
Running
Time: 120 minutes with commercials
Media:
The History Channel Original Television Event (NTSC DVD Screener)
World
Premiere Monday, January 21, 2008, at 9pm (ET/PT)
Network:
The History Channel (Check your local cable/satellite listings for channel)
TV
Rating: TV-PG
Reviewer:
Mark Rivera – The Brooklyn Critic
The
History Channel’s fascinating two-hour television event entitled Life After
People is a fascinating and at times poignant look at how nature could in a
sense recycle an environment left by humans if suddenly one day our species
never existed. Using feature film quality visual effects, the documentary
details how the world would change from days, years, decades, centuries and
millennia after humans become extinct or simply move on. This is not a science
fiction program depicting an apocalyptic demise for humans. This show simply
illustrates what would happen if we just suddenly disappeared. How would our pet
cats and dogs survive? How would vermin like rats and roaches adapt? How would
birds conditioned to eat our garbage survive when it runs out? The answers are
sobering since it will not take very long at all before plants begin to grow
into the pavement and walls. The power in most major cities will go out within
about a day. Wildlife will gradually begin to reclaim the city and some
specimens like zoo creatures are perfectly capable of evolving as hunters and so
forth in their new environments over time. There will be no one to put out the
fires and no one to kill the termites as they slowly destroy wooden structures
in homes and buildings.
Molds and
rust will also eat away at the cars, structures, and bridges left behind. Most
of the structures from the last two centuries will be gone within a century as
water floods tunnels and new ecosystems develop in the remains of skyscrapers
that eventually will not exist either. The shocking truth is most of what we
believe was built to last will be completely gone with no trace they ever
existed. The structures of antiquity built by the Romans and Egyptians will last
longer and have lasted longer than nearly anything that exists today. Not even
radio waves sent through space will survive. By the time they reach the closest
star they will have degraded into static. These sobering facts suggest not only
a reason why no one has yet been able to decipher a signal from another world
via the technology used by SETI, but for all we know, there have been sentient
species that built societies greater than our own and there is no trace because
it would only take about ten thousand years to wipe out nearly all evidence we
ever existed. It is like the Earth digested everything and now a new world has
grown from it. One can look at ancient ruins in Asia and Mexico to get an idea
of what could happen, but that doesn’t quite hit as hard as a visit to a
modern city evacuated twenty years earlier after the nuclear power plant
accident at Chernobyl. It has to be seen to be believed and it will just remind
you that life finds a way and it certainly puts human arrogance in it’s place.
Featuring interview clip discussions from experts like Civil Engineer Gordon
Masterson and Scientist, Speaker, Futurist and Hugo Award winning Author David
Brin. Mr. Brin’s musings do actually give hope that if there are sentient
successors to our planet, there may be a monolithic like remnant that could be
our only surviving proof of our legacy, but to find out what that is, you will
have to tune in when Life After People makes it’s world premiere on
Monday, January 21, 2008, (ET/PT) on The History Channel.
©
Copyright 2008 By Mark Rivera – The Brooklyn Critic
All Rights Reserved.