Category
đș
TVTranscript
00:00What would happen if every human being on Earth disappeared?
00:10This isn't the story of how we might vanish.
00:14It is the story of what happens to the world we leave behind.
00:23In this episode of Life After People, humanity takes a holiday.
00:30What will remain when Christmas is past?
00:33These turkeys avoid the plate, but will they live to see another Thanksgiving?
00:39And what will happen to mankind's vacation destinations?
00:45This one has already become a holiday hell.
00:50Welcome to Earth.
00:53Population Zero.
01:00Population Zero.
01:01Population Zero.
01:02Population Zero.
01:03Population Zero.
01:04Population Zero.
01:09Throughout history, mankind marked the passing of time with special holidays.
01:18Days of celebration.
01:21Places of escape.
01:24But now, the party is over.
01:36One day, after people, it's still Christmas at Detroit's Always Christmas store.
01:46The lights sparkle.
01:47The animated Santas and snowmen sing carols.
02:01In the time of humans, Christmas spawned its own economy.
02:08Americans spent $154 billion at Christmas every year.
02:12We imported nearly half a billion dollars' worth of Christmas ornaments alone.
02:19That's more than the cost to launch the space shuttle.
02:27The most iconic symbol of the season was the Christmas tree.
02:31But by the 21st century, more than 60% of families put their presents under trees made of aluminum or plastic.
02:39Because of the chemistry of their main ingredient, plastic trees are destined for a long life after people.
02:53This is a very typical artificial Christmas tree.
02:57It's primarily made of two materials, steel or metal, and plastic.
03:03You've got wire rods that are covered in PVC or polyvinyl chloride.
03:07PVC is better known as vinyl.
03:12The same material that made record albums and gave automobiles that new car smell.
03:23Another artifact of Christmas is the traditional holiday food that was both beloved and reviled.
03:32The fruitcake.
03:33Invented in the Middle Ages and popularized in Victorian England, fruitcakes were built to last.
03:44A densely packed loaf that didn't need to be refrigerated.
03:48It was often joked that fruitcakes would last forever.
03:54But because of one key ingredient, perhaps it's not a joke at all.
04:05The twinkling Christmas lights dim as the power grid fails.
04:10Two days after people.
04:26Another Christmas icon is in trouble.
04:29Reindeer.
04:30Although they may seem like a Christmas invention, reindeer are a real domesticated species that live across Earth's polar regions.
04:45In places like Alaska, they were bred for milk, meat, and even for pulling sleighs.
04:51How they became part of the Christmas story isn't entirely clear.
04:57But many believe the image of Santa's sleigh being pulled by flying reindeer evolved from pagan images of the Norse god Thor.
05:05The Norse god Thor.
05:08With his sky chariot being pulled by flying goats.
05:15There are over 30,000 domesticated reindeer in Alaska alone.
05:22But now, with no humans to care for them, there is a threat looming nearby.
05:27Will these reindeer live to see another Christmas?
05:40Three days after people.
05:43Another holiday animal also faces tough times.
05:48Turkeys wander hungrily in their pens.
05:51In the time of humans, turkeys were an essential part of American culture.
05:58In fact, founding father Benjamin Franklin wanted the turkey, not the bald eagle, to be the national bird.
06:07By the 21st century, American farms were producing over 270 million turkeys per year.
06:1546 million of them destined to be eaten for Thanksgiving dinner.
06:22With people gone, these turkeys have avoided the axe.
06:27But something humans have done to make turkeys more appealing will also seal their fate.
06:35Tom turkey for the dinner table, just not going to make it.
06:39Selective breeding has created a turkey with massive breasts that meets consumer demand, but threatens supply.
06:48The turkey's breasts are too big to allow them to fly.
06:53Too big for males to even be able to mount their mates.
06:57Farm bred turkeys are actually produced by artificial insemination.
07:02So in order to reproduce, that's not going to happen.
07:10This generation of Thanksgiving turkey may be the last.
07:14One week after people.
07:26Steel roller coasters that once echoed with screams are now silent.
07:36Theme parks were one of the world's favorite holiday destinations.
07:40Roller coasters first appeared in America in the 1880s, and for nearly a century, all coasters were wooden.
07:53Although the first steel coaster was built in 1959, it wasn't until the 1970s that a breakthrough in engineering resulted in the birth of the extreme coaster.
08:04Looping, inverted, zero-g screen machines, like the silver bullet at Knott's Berry Farm in Southern California.
08:15The extreme coasters relied on highly engineered steel.
08:19The steels that go into a ride like this have to have certain characteristics.
08:27Steel is basically about 97 or 98 percent iron, but then like a good soup, it has a few little things stuck in there.
08:34Some silicon in it, some manganese, but the most important element is carbon.
08:39You can increase the strength of a steel by adding carbon.
08:42It's really a small amount, but it's a very powerful addition.
08:45Adding as little as half a percent of carbon can make steel two to three times stronger.
08:56But even the toughest steel has an ancient enemy.
09:02Rust.
09:04If we get a scratch on the right here, we go ahead and sand it up and protect it and recoat it.
09:08Now, without maintenance, a tiny scratch lets rust begin on the exposed steel.
09:24Not far away, a bizarre holiday oasis flourishes in the barren desert.
09:30Golf course fairways glisten, water fountains spray.
09:41And power still flows in the getaway of the stars.
09:47Palm Springs, California.
09:52This seems to me to be a place that really doesn't belong here.
09:58You drive around in Palm Springs and you see lawns, you see all these flowers, there are fountains and ponds.
10:06It just seems like this is a bad place to build a so-called civilization.
10:16Despite being placed in a barren desert, Palm Springs was crowded with more golf courses per square mile than any other place in America.
10:26But now, the golf course sprinklers keep the fairways lush and inviting for no one.
10:39There's another bizarre human artifact towering over the desert floor.
10:50It is the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway.
10:53In the time of humans, it was a tourist attraction that stretched a mile across five steel towers, from the desert floor to a mountain peak 8,500 feet above sea level.
11:10But now, the car sits empty, 200 feet in the air, swinging in a breeze overlooking the vacant resort city.
11:23The traffic lights still blink, and the air conditioners still hum in Palm Springs, because much of the power is still on.
11:37Due to the city's reliance on a massive forest of wind turbines.
11:444,000 of them still spin just outside the resort city.
11:50As long as wind pushes the blades, electricity keeps pumping out.
11:57These windmills appear very simple, but looks can be deceiving.
12:06A wind turbine is a fairly complicated beast.
12:09There's wind speed measuring sensors, wind direction measuring sensors, and they actually control the pitches of the blades so that you're producing the right amount of power all the time.
12:20But high tech demands high maintenance.
12:25You have to have lubricants.
12:26You have to have hydraulic fluids.
12:28It's just like in your car.
12:29You have to change the oil every so often, or your motor is going to seize up.
12:33The same thing happens with these things.
12:35If you don't replenish the oil, the lubricants, and the hydraulic fluids, they're going to quit working.
12:41One week after people, their blades still spin.
12:49Generating thousands of kilowatts every hour, every day, every time the wind blows.
13:03But just over the horizon, the winds of destruction are beginning to howl.
13:18One month after people.
13:23In a series of steel sheds and concrete bunkers in rural Pennsylvania, thousands of pounds of explosive power sit idle in a fireworks factory.
13:37In the time of humans, over 200 million pounds of fireworks were set off annually.
13:46That's twice the explosive power of the nuclear bomb that destroyed Hiroshima.
13:52But now, those fireworks await a celebration that will never come.
14:01Are these explosives in any danger of going off?
14:05It happened at a fireworks factory in Denmark in 2004.
14:15Killing one person, injuring 17, and damaging over 200 houses.
14:21The final explosion resembled a nuclear mushroom cloud.
14:37In America, regulations require smaller buildings, each containing smaller amounts of explosives, to prevent a massive explosion like the one that happened in Denmark.
14:53One month after people, the fireworks and gunpowder lie dormant, behind blast walls in their bunkers.
15:03There will be no fireworks display this year.
15:06At least, not yet.
15:10In Alaska, these domesticated reindeer are struggling to survive without their human masters.
15:22And the domesticated reindeer are about to come into contact with their larger wild cousins, the caribou.
15:34Reindeer and caribou are actually the same species, but with one key difference.
15:40Reindeer are domesticated, while caribou run wild.
15:44900,000 caribou range in massive migratory herds across Alaska.
15:51The caribou can migrate up to 3,000 miles in a year.
15:55The caribou are like the lean, mean running machines, and the reindeer are the couch potatoes.
16:00The caribou are actually built for running.
16:02They got long legs, slender bodies.
16:05The reindeer have very short legs, very heavy bodies.
16:09Although they aren't built to travel long distances, reindeer can't help heeding the call of the wild.
16:18Even in the time of humans, domesticated reindeer often disappeared from Alaskan rangeland, joining the caribou herds as they swept across the countryside.
16:31When they come out onto the rangeland, being migratory animals, being very closely related, they do intermingle.
16:37And when the caribou goes on through their migration, the reindeer have a tendency to travel along with them.
16:42Now, without humans to tend them, the once sedentary reindeer will join the caribou herds and face the challenge of a 3,000-mile migration.
16:56Further south, in Glacier Bay, Alaska, luxury cruise ships rock silently in the harbor.
17:09In the time of humans, hundreds of these ships sailed the inside passage from Vancouver to Seward, taking half a million visitors annually on a scenic holiday.
17:23But without maintenance, even the small pocket cruise ships face the creeping effects of Alaska's weather.
17:34I think generally during the summer season when most cruise ships are operating, the cold weather isn't too much of a hazard.
17:42But in winter, when it's very, very cold, when rain freezes on deck during the winter season, that can be hazardous.
17:50As the snow piles up on the decks, sunshine and daytime warming creates a thick sheath of ice, covering everything from the portholes to the rigging.
18:02It's eerily beautiful, but snow and ice buildup creates a weight that a cruise ship is not designed for.
18:12A ship rarely sits completely even in the water.
18:17There's going to be one side or the other where it's leaning a slight bit.
18:21And in the lower recesses is where water and snow are going to build up.
18:25And gradually, they're going to make the ship tilt over.
18:29For this ship, the voyage is over.
18:34Six weeks after people.
18:48At the San Diego Wild Animal Park, the lions are getting hungry.
18:55A lion can go two weeks without eating.
19:00But it's now been over a month since their last feeding.
19:05The lions are so ravenous, they are willing to test the electrified fence that surrounds their enclosure.
19:15To their surprise, they don't get a shock, since the power grid failed weeks ago.
19:23Now, the biggest obstacle is the moat.
19:27The moats are over 18 feet wide.
19:32But lions have been known to leap more than 30 feet.
19:36And now, they're free.
19:42The first thing they would do is go for food.
19:45Whether it's in the zebra enclosure right next door, or somewhere throughout the park.
19:51They would be timid at first, because they're used to a very small area.
19:56But soon, they will expand their range in search of food.
20:02There is a new king of the urban jungle.
20:07Six months after people.
20:21Some ski runs are beginning to look the way they did before man claimed them as his winter playground.
20:30But strangely, while some ski runs have already seen pine saplings sprout, others remain mysteriously free of growth.
20:44As if still being groomed by human hands.
20:57One year after people.
21:00The wind turbine farms still tower over the desert outside Palm Springs, California.
21:07The steel towers face a worse enemy than rust.
21:12The wind itself.
21:16These wind turbines are designed for a specific range of wind velocities.
21:20If you exceed that velocity, they're essentially going to fly apart.
21:25That's why these windmills were designed with automatic braking systems.
21:30To shut them down during extremely high winds.
21:36But what if those systems fail?
21:39It actually happened in Denmark in 2008.
21:44Now, after a year without maintenance, acres of power producing windmills are vulnerable to the same fate.
22:05The first time 100 mile an hour wind comes through here, the rotor is going to be spinning faster than it should.
22:12That's going to create vibration.
22:14The turbine is going to probably start to come apart.
22:18You would see the thing fly off.
22:21And then when it hit the ground, you would see a dust flying, park flying everywhere.
22:25You're going to have all sorts of mayhem.
22:2720 years after people, with the windmill farms destroyed, power went out long ago in Palm Springs.
22:45The once bustling resort town is eerily silent.
22:58Its golf courses return to sand.
23:01Its hotels empty shells.
23:03We know this because just down the road from Palm Springs is a place where life after people has already begun.
23:1520 years after people, high-end hotels are only checking in vermin.
23:33Once-lush golf courses have turned into acres of sand traps.
23:40And luxury swimming pools are now empty cesspools.
23:47This is the fate of the vacation destination called Palm Springs.
24:00We know what Palm Springs might look like 20 years after people.
24:04Because there's a place just like it, only 60 miles away, where it's already happened.
24:10The Salton Sea is the largest lake in California.
24:17Conceived as a resort paradise for boaters, water skiers, and vacationers,
24:23it was once called the next Palm Springs.
24:31Instead, it became an empty wasteland of foul smells.
24:36Abandoned homes.
24:42And acres of dead fish.
24:47The Salton Sea is one of the most beautiful places from a distance.
24:59And one of the most foul, feculent places when you get close up.
25:04Dead fish.
25:06A nice odor of ammonia.
25:09And you think, this is really hideous.
25:17The heyday of the Salton Sea was the 1960s and 70s.
25:25Vacation homes popped up like cactus blossoms.
25:30Crowds thronged the beaches.
25:33Swimming.
25:36Boating and water skiing during the day.
25:39And at night, sipping martinis at the yacht club.
25:43Now, the crowds at the yacht club are only pigeons.
25:58The vacation homes lie open to the elements.
26:04And RV campgrounds look more like burial grounds.
26:08These hookups all throughout the campground, they're kind of like tombstones to the dead campground.
26:23What happened to turn this lush oasis into an apocalyptic wasteland?
26:35It began in the 1970s.
26:39Masses of fish suddenly dying, floating to the surface by the thousands.
26:49The cause of the fish kills was agricultural runoff from local farms.
26:56Because of all these fertilizers running in there, we get this tremendous growth of algae.
27:03And as this algae dies, it falls to the bottom.
27:07And it creates a layer in the bottom of the sea where there's no oxygen.
27:09So we have bacteria that are eating all this dead organic matter and creating hydrogen sulfide gas.
27:19Hydrogen sulfide is a gas that is as toxic as cyanide, causing extreme damage to the central nervous system.
27:27Eventually, destroying the ability to breathe.
27:34It was so deadly, it was used as a poison gas in World War I.
27:42It's just as deadly today.
27:46And at times, it can kill millions of fish.
27:49A few years ago, about seven million fish died at once.
27:52The fish kills continued.
27:58Then the birds that ate the fish also got sick and died.
28:03Residents claimed they could smell and taste the gas in the air.
28:10People stopped coming to the Salton Sea.
28:15At its height, the population of Salton Sea was around 15,000 people.
28:22With thousands more arriving on weekends.
28:27But vacation homes were abandoned.
28:30Resort development stopped in mid-construction.
28:37RVs.
28:40Boats.
28:42Even the yacht clubs.
28:44All left behind.
28:46Today, where thousands once lived and played, only a few hundred people remain in each of the tiny shore-side communities.
28:58Surrounded by the ruins of vacation homes.
29:02Decades after being abandoned, the effects of water, sun and salt are clear.
29:15This is an old trailer.
29:17I think it's an Airstream trailer.
29:19And it's been exposed to the environment for 40 or 50 years at least.
29:24After people are gone, once one of the doors starts flopping in the wind, or perhaps one of the windows breaks, and the environment enters this trailer,
29:35The whole thing just becomes food for the environment.
29:43All the materials that are composite or man-made are falling apart.
29:48This here is like masonite or particle board.
29:51It's decaying much more rapidly than the solid timber.
29:56Like the people dribbling away from the toxic sea, the structural elements slowly disappear from the homes.
30:03This is about a 40 or 50 year old building.
30:11And although we still have some structure or frame in place, there's not much left.
30:16Once the roof went away, the windows are gone, I don't see any doors, any glass.
30:22It's all actually deep, several feet down, underneath the salt and sand.
30:26Ultimately, it'll go back to being desert with a lot of garbage on it.
30:42But in this desert of a future, time and nature may lead to a 4th of July display bigger than ever.
30:5620 years after people, vines and trees have covered up or broken through the concrete and steel bunkers of what was once a fireworks factory.
31:11Fireworks were a dangerous way to celebrate.
31:15In the time of humans, on average fireworks injured nearly 10,000 people a year.
31:20Now, it is late summer, dry heat, and a wildfire begins to burn out of control through the woods.
31:33The fire reaches the edges of the fireworks factory.
31:39For a decade, water has dripped or flooded into the steadily deteriorating bunkers.
31:46Gunpowder easily absorbs water, but wet gunpowder takes on a strange ability.
31:52After it dries out, it becomes more volatile and unstable.
31:57The finely milled powder clumps together, burning less evenly, and sometimes exploding more powerfully.
32:08Now, flames lick through cracks in the walls, and the powder ignites.
32:13The fire spreads from bunker to bunker, where thousands of pounds of prepared fireworks lay dormant.
32:22These explosives were destined for over a hundred different fireworks displays.
32:29Now, they all go off at once.
32:32Across the country, real snow mixes with artificial flocking at Detroit's Always Christmas.
32:45Soil has built up on the floor of the showroom.
32:49Grass grows in the aisles of decorations.
32:52Vines climb up plastic Santas and toy soldiers.
33:00And in a nearby aisle, fruitcake still rests.
33:03They owe their longevity to one key ingredient, alcohol, one of mankind's oldest disinfectants.
33:14The combination of rum or brandy with dense flour actually creates an anaerobic environment, an oxygen-free interior that inhibits microbe growth.
33:25Twenty years after people, the fruitcake shows no sign of decay.
33:34Maybe fruitcakes will last forever.
33:36But the classic Christmas reindeer, long ago swept up in caribou migrations, have disappeared.
33:47While some have interbred with their wild caribou cousins, most died out quickly after people.
33:54Although reindeer and caribou are the same species, there's a fundamental difference that caused many of the females to drop out of the herd within the first year.
34:06Reindeer have their calves one month before caribou.
34:11They would start falling behind during their calving seasons and fall prey to the bear and wolves.
34:17The reindeer games are over.
34:38Fifty years after people, a mystery remains on the ski slopes.
34:43While some ski runs have completely reverted to nature, others are strangely clear, as if groomed just yesterday.
34:54The reason.
34:57Slopes originally cleared without heavy machinery recover quickly.
35:04But those that were intensively engineered or graded defy the return of nature.
35:09Graded ski runs are machine graded with heavy equipment like bulldozers and scrapers, things like that.
35:17A lot of the topsoil is scraped away or buried beneath the subsoil, and the soils are compacted by the machinery.
35:24So there's reduced soil depth for plant rooting, as well as the soils being compacted makes it harder for plant roots to grow there.
35:30These ski runs will remain just as humans left them for a very long time.
35:42In Southern California, a new top cat enjoys his spot in the sun.
35:48Having escaped from the San Diego Wild Animal Park, the African lions have spread out and adapted to their new environment.
35:58We've got predatory cats that size from San Diego to Santa Barbara.
36:05Real easy to get places on the freeways, get off the freeways into open savannas.
36:10Perfect environment for them.
36:12There's a lot of ranches in the area.
36:15They would be able to take down cows, horses.
36:18Lions can eat up to 75 pounds at one sitting.
36:24That's an entire baby calf, from hooves to head at a single meal.
36:30They would be an apex predator of Southern California, and they might, in enough time, evolve into a new American lion.
36:38And as the centuries march on, a unique ingredient hidden inside this extreme roller coaster will prove its downfall.
36:5180 years after people, outside Detroit, Michigan, at the always Christmas store, it's beginning to look a lot less like Christmas.
37:21100 years after people, the 150 foot tall curves of Knott's Berry Farm Silver Bullet are about to reach their breaking point.
37:42Incredibly, this coaster's doom comes from the inside due to a surprising feature hidden in its bones.
37:52To keep this noisy ride from disturbing the theme park's neighbors, engineers filled each of the rails of the 1,300 foot long coaster with sand.
38:04This actually cuts down the ride's decibel level by at least half.
38:12It's actually, if you've heard it run, it's an extremely quiet ride.
38:15But hairline cracks in the coaster's steel, after 100 years of neglect, have turned the sand into a coaster killer.
38:28Well, it's kind of an ironic thing.
38:33If you have sand in the track, if you get moisture in there, if you get water in there, then you'll trap it in there, and that will probably accelerate corrosion on the inside.
38:43Water trapped by the sand speeds up internal corrosion in the rails, weakening the steel, including the bolts.
38:58It's the connections that start to fail first.
39:01That's almost true in any structure.
39:05Boats snap, steel bends, and the entire track begins to wave crazily.
39:11This extreme coaster makes its final plunge.
39:18120 years after people, the winter resort destination of Palm Springs has reverted completely to desert,
39:38where snowbirds and retirees once lounged by the pool.
39:44Sand, yucca, and mesquite cover almost all remnants of civilization.
39:52Yet the aerial tramway still stands.
39:57Five giant steel towers once supported the cable cars that ferried vacationers up 8,500 feet.
40:04The steel has held up for over a century.
40:10But one thing will set up a catastrophic chain reaction.
40:15A constant, steady corrosion at the base of each tower.
40:22The problem begins with the cable itself.
40:26The track cables on this tram are almost three inches in diameter.
40:31Those are huge. Those are really big cables.
40:34And they're not one piece of wire.
40:36They're many, many pieces of wire wrapped around each other in a rope fashion.
40:42But the constant, steady pressure of a hanging cable car,
40:46and over a century of erosion on the tightly wound wires,
40:51finally causes the cable to snap.
40:53It is the first of a cascade of catastrophes.
41:00The crashing gondola swings down into tower number one.
41:04The rust weakened tower cannot withstand the impact, and it begins to collapse.
41:09And as that tower fell, it's liable to put too much torque on the next tower, which would then pull it over.
41:18And then it's liable to put too much torque on the next tower, which would pull it over.
41:21And so on up the mountain, you'd have that domino effect.
41:23If there's one tower fell, then it would daisy chain up.
41:27Five towers connected by two miles of cable pull each other down from the bedrock of the mountain
41:35and fall in an avalanche of rubble, dust, and twisted metal.
41:40130 years after people, nearly all signs of human holidays have been wiped off the face of the earth.
42:03But like a ghost of Christmas past, the fruitcake lives on, protected by its anaerobic mix of sugar, flour, and alcohol.
42:21In fact, the oldest recorded fruitcake in the time of humans was more than 130 years old.
42:28It was baked in 1878 by an elderly grandmother who died shortly after it came out of the oven.
42:37And the family couldn't part with it.
42:41In 2003, the baker's great-grandson presided over a tasting of the cake, where it was deemed still edible.
42:50Now, as fruitcakes continue to defy decay.
43:03Throughout America, wild turkeys continue to roam.
43:08These are the descendants of mankind's Thanksgiving turkeys, just not the ones eaten by modern Americans.
43:15They are the lean and fast native breed that was eaten by the pilgrims at the first Thanksgiving.
43:25The creature that Benjamin Franklin thought should be the national bird, lives on as a feathered reminder of holidays past.
43:35In a life after people.
43:38In the next episode of Life After People.
43:46Water, water everywhere.
43:49As the giver of life satisfies its thirst for destruction.
43:54And if you're visiting this chilly abandoned place, you'd better be packing heat.
43:59You'd better be packing heat.