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00:00What would happen if every human being on Earth disappeared?
00:07This isn't the story of how we might vanish.
00:13It is the story of what happens to the world we leave behind.
00:19In this episode, life after people takes to the skies.
00:26What will happen to the most famous planes on Earth?
00:32What strange flying creatures will black out the sun?
00:36How might this spacecraft change the universe?
00:40And how did this secret place designed to protect man from airborne Armageddon
00:45become a post-apocalyptic nightmare?
00:50Welcome to Earth. Population Zero.
01:08For a creature so bound to the Earth, mankind's dreams often took him to the skies.
01:14But what will now become of the engineering humans use to conquer the air?
01:20And what will seize control of the skies?
01:24One day after people.
01:31Air Force One. The most recognized plane in the world.
01:36Sits empty on the tarmac of Andrews Air Force Base.
01:4263 feet longer than the actual White House.
01:45It was built with the body of a Boeing 747.
01:48Its two kitchens, a soundproof conference room,
01:51and a hallelujah.
01:52It was built with the body of a Boeing 747.
01:54It was built with the body of a Boeing 747.
01:57Its two kitchens, a soundproof conference room,
02:00and an entire bay of secure communications made Air Force One
02:02unlike any other plane in the world.
02:04There is an enormous amount of extra equipment on board Air Force One.
02:06Equipment that you would never see on a private jetliner,
02:08or a regular commercial jet.
02:11This includes an array of top secret defense systems.
02:27There was a danger that the plane could be a target for missiles.
02:32So Air Force One packs an ingenious countermeasure.
02:36If a heat-seeking missile locked onto the plane,
02:39a series of false target flares would shoot out,
02:42generating more heat than the engines themselves,
02:45and diverting the missiles.
02:48Air Force One was a state-of-the-art fortress.
02:51Aircraft are not designed to sit around not being maintained.
02:55Air Force One has a state-of-the-art fortress.
02:58Aircraft are not designed to sit around not being maintained.
03:03Air Force One has more stuff in it that can go wrong
03:07than any other 747s in the world.
03:10In a life after people,
03:13a small malfunction can lead to a high-flying failure.
03:18Air Force Two days after people,
03:31the highest mountain on Earth no longer welcomes any climbers.
03:37At more than 29,000 feet,
03:40the summit of Mount Everest reached nearly as far into the sky
03:43as most commercial airliners.
03:47The final 3,000 feet to its summit was called the Death Zone
03:52because there's so little oxygen at this height,
03:55the human body could not sustain itself.
04:00You've got one-third the oxygen that you have at sea level.
04:04Basically, you're going to have acute mountain altitude sickness.
04:07And as it gets worse, you get fluid in the lungs or fluid in the brain.
04:11And as that progresses, people are going to die.
04:16With every ounce of energy needed just to survive,
04:21climbers routinely left behind food tins, plastics, used oxygen bottles,
04:26and almost anything that wasn't essential.
04:32In 1994, climber Brent Bishop organized a cleanup effort
04:37that removed 25,000 pounds of trash from the mountain.
04:41But with 400 climbers a season, refuse continued to be a problem.
04:52And one day after people,
04:54the mountain's mighty glaciers conceal even greater secrets
04:58that aren't going to vanish into the thin air.
05:13Three days after people.
05:17Although some battery-powered radios are still on,
05:21the broadcasts have ceased.
05:28Nearly 15,000 radio stations once beamed news, talk, and music
05:33across the United States every day.
05:38Now, with people gone and the power failing,
05:42radio all over the nation signs off forever.
05:51Yet there's one place in the American Southwest,
05:56where the airwaves still crackle with the voices of man.
06:01Sweet sounds from all over the world.
06:03New Mexico radio station KTAO is completely solar-powered.
06:08It's the cleanest sound on Earth.
06:10And because of its remote location,
06:12it was engineered for a computer to take over
06:15any time humans weren't there.
06:17With the best in reggae, blues, and sweet sounds.
06:20In the northern part of the state,
06:22music and announcements beam across the land.
06:25Home of solar radio.
06:26Without any human input.
06:28Put a little sunshine in your ears.
06:30With zero emissions radio.
06:32Four days after people.
06:42Airports that once thronged with passengers are vacant.
06:47And so is the airspace around the world.
06:56In the time of humans,
07:00there were more than 5,000 flights in the skies
07:03above the United States alone at any given moment.
07:06Now, there are none.
07:13This happened only four times in modern aviation history.
07:18Three times in the 1960s,
07:21when the military cleared the skies
07:23to test their radar warning system.
07:28And most recently,
07:30after the attacks of September 11th, 2001.
07:33For three days after 9-11,
07:37commercial flights were grounded.
07:39Scientists noticed a surprising side effect.
07:42Each day the planes were out of the sky.
07:45The average difference between the high and low temperatures
07:48across the United States increased by two degrees.
07:52Why?
07:54Normally, jet plane contrails spread out in the sky,
08:01creating a thin but significant layer of artificial clouds.
08:05Some atmospheric scientists believed this layer
08:08kept the Earth a little warmer at night, like a blanket,
08:11and cooler during the day
08:13because it reflected some of the sun's heat.
08:15In a life after people,
08:18the absence of this artificial cloud cover
08:21could quickly change the climate on Earth.
08:35One week after people,
08:37seagulls and Canada geese flocked to airports,
08:41taking advantage of the peace and quiet.
08:44Canada geese like to graze.
08:49They're basically flying cows.
08:51The thing that attracts gulls to airports
08:53is the big open space.
08:55They like to have what we call loafing areas
08:58where they can sit and rest
09:00and see any danger approaching.
09:02In the time of humans,
09:07the greatest danger was an airplane.
09:11In the United States,
09:13bird strikes happened an average of 20 times a day.
09:17Most famously, in 2009,
09:21when U.S. Airways Flight 1549
09:24suffered complete engine failure
09:26when it ran into a flock of geese just after takeoff.
09:29Only the miraculous landing by pilot Chesley Sullenberger
09:33prevented a catastrophic crash.
09:36But collisions between birds and planes
09:38didn't just start in the jet age.
09:40The first recorded bird strike was in 1905.
09:46The pilot, Orville Wright.
09:54Of all the aircraft that forever revolutionized
09:57the world of man,
10:01possibly the most famous,
10:03was the Spirit of St. Louis.
10:06Piloted by Charles Lindbergh,
10:08it was the first plane to ever be flown solo
10:11across the Atlantic.
10:13Many believe this daring achievement convinced the public
10:16that the skies did indeed belong to mankind.
10:20One week after people,
10:24that plane is still aloft
10:27because it hangs from the ceiling
10:29of the National Air and Space Museum
10:31in Washington, D.C.
10:33Suspended by three cables
10:36that loop through ordinary bolts,
10:38how long before the renowned aircraft
10:41makes its final flight?
10:43One month after people,
10:58the tallest structure in North America still stands.
11:02It's not the Empire State Building,
11:06the Sears Tower,
11:09or Canada's CN Tower.
11:12It's the 2,063-foot-high KVLY-TV Tower
11:17in North Dakota.
11:19Broadcast towers are usually placed on top of hills,
11:23mountains, or existing skyscrapers.
11:25But here on the wide-open Great Plains,
11:30building tall was the only way
11:32to reach an audience of 240,000 households
11:36spread out over more than 15,000 square miles.
11:41The galvanized steel frame was engineered
11:44to withstand severe winter storms
11:46and 85-mile-per-hour winds.
11:50Now, the tremendous height of towers like this one
11:54makes them big targets for nature's arsenal.
11:57It has happened before.
12:00Their failures, and there have been many,
12:03are spectacular.
12:13Six months after people.
12:15Of all the plants growing on the Earth,
12:20the tallest is the Coast Redwood in Northern California
12:26at 379 feet.
12:31With a lifespan that can stretch for 2,000 years,
12:35a tree that was a seedling when Jesus was born
12:38could have been overflown by a plane in the 21st century.
12:43In the time of humans, wildland managers sought to protect them
12:48by suppressing forest fires.
12:52Now, with no firefighters to beat back the flames,
12:56wildfires burn unchecked.
13:00But redwoods are hard to kill.
13:03When fire burns their leaves, it triggers a signal in the trees
13:07to sprout new limbs and shoots.
13:11While their competitors are often destroyed,
13:14redwoods quickly flourish again.
13:21And although man is gone,
13:23some other creatures from Earth
13:26are rocketing toward a new frontier.
13:29One year after people.
13:45The plane that was Air Force One
13:47has begun to rust on the tarmac of Andrews Air Force Base.
13:51The tarmac was once kept pristine by a ground team
13:59that scoured the pavement from any debris before each flight.
14:04Now, Brush has already begun to take it back.
14:11We know this
14:15because there's an abandoned airport in Berlin, Germany
14:18that already shows what life is like.
14:21One year after people.
14:25Tempelhof.
14:28In 2008,
14:29the enormous terminal was closed to air traffic.
14:34But it was once ground zero
14:36for the most massive air relief operation in history.
14:41Six decades ago,
14:43these runways were a frenzy of air traffic
14:46in one of the first major struggles of the Cold War.
14:50The Berlin airlift.
14:56It was a constant sound in the air of those incoming airplanes.
15:03Every 90 seconds there was traffic on those runways.
15:11In 1948,
15:12Berlin was deep inside Soviet-occupied Germany.
15:16The city was divided in half
15:18between the Soviets and the West.
15:21When a struggle for territorial control boiled over,
15:24the Russians blockaded West Berlin,
15:27cutting off all food and supplies by ground.
15:30West Berliners faced starvation or surrender.
15:33The threat for the West Berliners was that we then would have been taken by the Russians,
15:41and would have finally lost our freedom.
15:48The West responded with the airlift.
15:51Fully loaded cargo planes roared in and out of Tempelhof every minute and a half,
15:56ferrying up to 13,000 tons of food and supplies a day.
16:03After 10 and a half months, the Soviets lifted the blockade,
16:08and Tempelhof became known as the airport that saved the city.
16:12Shut down in the 21st century,
16:18after a more modern airport opened outside the city,
16:23its ticket counters are empty.
16:27Its vast hallways are filled only with shadows,
16:31and wild grass obscures signs on the runways that once made history.
16:51Three years after people.
16:55In the wilderness of Yellowstone National Park,
16:57a tiny flying creature that once terrified North America,
17:03has returned.
17:06The Rocky Mountain Locust.
17:11They were a common sight in the 19th century.
17:15Swarms that were often 2,000 square miles
17:18blackened the skies from the Rocky Mountains to the Mississippi River.
17:23Like a biblical plague, wherever they landed,
17:26the ravenous mass devoured every blade of vegetation.
17:31They're pelting you, they're landing, crawling, crawling up into your clothing.
17:36It's like a horrific rainstorm or a hailstorm of locusts as they cover everything.
17:41In 1875, one outbreak was so massive,
17:46it was deemed the largest single gathering of living creatures in recorded history.
17:49Nothing comes close to this enormous swarm of Rocky Mountain locusts in 1875.
17:56That swarm was approximately 1,800 miles long and 110 miles wide.
18:01If we had squared them up, it would have covered the state of Colorado border to border.
18:05But in the late 19th century, settlers began farming on the insects' fragile habitat in the river valleys of the upper Rocky Mountains.
18:18Within 25 years, the locusts disappeared.
18:22Only a few small pockets may have survived in pristine places like Yellowstone National Park.
18:33Three years after people, the population of a surviving pocket of locusts grows in the absence of humans.
18:40Might the ravaging swarms that once terrified settlers return?
18:58Five years after people, although most planes are just slowly deteriorating,
19:04Air Force One has hidden potential for disaster.
19:14One of these is a defense system called false target flares,
19:19which divert heat-seeking missiles away from the plane.
19:25But the electrical circuits that trigger them were never meant to go unmaintained.
19:30The flare circuits, they are a major point of failure.
19:36These things are dangerous if just left in place.
19:40They deteriorate very quickly.
19:43When a circuit fails, it deploys the flares.
19:48The plant growth on the tarmac below becomes kindling for a massive blaze.
19:54And the plane itself has plenty of fuel to feed the fire.
20:00Unlike most planes, Air Force One's 50,000-gallon fuel tanks were kept filled,
20:08in case the President had to be flown out of harm's way at a moment's notice.
20:12But now, there is no one to move Air Force One out of harm's way.
20:18Eight years after people, a spacecraft called Cassini silently orbits Saturn,
20:31750 million miles from the Earth.
20:35In the time of humans, it generated countless revelations about the ringed planet and our solar system.
20:41Now, it is quite alone in the frigid void of outer space.
20:48Well, not quite alone.
20:50In the innards of the Cassini spacecraft, there are probably very, very hardy bacteria which hitched a ride on the mission.
20:53In the innards of the Cassini spacecraft, there are probably very, very hardy bacteria which hitched a ride on the mission.
20:54They are called extremophiles.
20:55In the innards of the Cassini spacecraft, there are probably very, very hardy bacteria which hitched a ride on the mission.
21:04They are called extremophiles.
21:09We know that these extremophiles can survive very harsh conditions. We find them in the dry valleys of Antarctica. We find them in the Yellowstone mud pot.
21:16We find them in basically every environment, no matter how harsh.
21:22These hardy bacteria are in the very, very hardy bacteria which hitched a ride on the mission.
21:27In the innards of the Cassini spacecraft, there are probably very, very hardy bacteria which hitched a ride on the mission.
21:32They are called extremophiles.
21:35We know that these extremophiles can survive very harsh conditions.
21:38These hardy bacteria were believed to stow away on all kinds of space vehicles.
21:43To make sure there'd be no unintended consequences from these microorganisms crash landing on the surface of another world,
21:50NASA planned to end Cassini's mission by incinerating it in Saturn's atmosphere.
21:57Now, without mission control to order its demise,
22:02Cassini and its tiny stowaways are on a voyage into uncharted territory.
22:19Ten years after people, airports are already crumbling.
22:25Many simply weren't built to last.
22:28Architects are quite humble about airports.
22:32A terminal building often doesn't last more than 40 or 50 years before it's massively redesigned.
22:40So we have the ultimate disposable building.
22:43There were some exceptions.
22:46Like the otherworldly LAX theme building at Los Angeles International Airport.
22:53The architectural landmark was constructed in 1961 to resemble a landing spacecraft.
23:00It was called the theme building to usher in a jet age theme for the airport.
23:05By 2010, it was one of the few surviving airport buildings of its era.
23:11Because of a two-year renovation that strengthened it to withstand the test of time.
23:16Ten years after people, its arches dominate the empty airport.
23:26And it will continue to endure.
23:29Because of a surprising form of protection that will keep it safe from nature's most powerful forces.
23:35But there is no protection for the buildings of a little-known enclave that once safeguarded North America from an airborne Armageddon.
23:50Now, it faces an apocalypse of its own.
23:54Ten years after people, the places that once protected mankind from nuclear destruction now face destruction of their own.
24:19It's a future that has already happened here at Edgar Radar Station.
24:27Edgar looked like an ordinary town.
24:29But the entire site was built in 1952 for one sole reason.
24:36To scan the skies for an airborne apocalypse.
24:39The Defense Department realized that the Russians would be able to build plenty of nuclear weapons, put them in bombers,
24:56fly the bombers over the North Pole, and destroy targets in Canada and in the United States.
25:03Situated about 80 miles north of Toronto, Canada, Edgar was large enough to be a self-contained town.
25:14And self-sufficient as a matter of security.
25:18We had everything. Dentists, we had doctors, we had messing facilities.
25:24A recreation center with an indoor swimming pool.
25:27More than 300 people lived and worked on the base that hummed with daily life.
25:35Now, stools at the station's snack bar sit long empty.
25:41A tree branch sprawls across the roof of an abandoned home.
25:45The floor of the old gym is in ruins.
25:55And some buildings have already been entirely demolished.
25:59This is what's left of the single men's barracks.
26:05You can actually see the tile still on what was once the inner floor.
26:10And you can see where the walls and corridors actually laid out.
26:13The entire enclave was built to support a single technology.
26:20Radar.
26:23It scoured the northern skies 24 hours a day for an attack by Soviet planes laden with atomic bombs.
26:30The more that the United States and Canada knew about Russian intentions, the less chance there was for someone to make a mistake and push the button.
26:47Radar's electromagnetic waves could pierce the sky for some 200 miles.
26:51If a plane was in that radius, waves would bounce back from it, providing critical information about where the plane was and how fast it was flying.
27:03That capacity made Edgar part of the first early warning system.
27:08But it also put the base near the top of the enemy target list.
27:14Radar can be homed in on by the coming forces and naturally the Soviet Union would like to knock our eyes out so we couldn't see them.
27:24So we were very vulnerable here.
27:27Life at Edgar was always on edge.
27:30Very tense.
27:31Very tense.
27:32It was very tense for everyone.
27:35For 12 years, Edgar's radar searched the skies.
27:40In 1964, the station was made obsolete by a longer range radar base needed for a new threat.
27:49Intercontinental missiles.
27:51Over the years, as attack times shrank from hours to minutes, the job of advance warning rose to the ultimate vantage point.
28:02Satellites in outer space.
28:07Although the radar operations at Edgar were removed, the remainder of the base was used by civilians until 1999, when it was closed for good.
28:22Ten years of decay has taken its toll.
28:30The movie theater has an audience of none.
28:38A children's playground is conceding its turf to nature.
28:46The single women's dorm has long been empty.
28:48Its entryway has faded.
28:52But not the memories of what once happened here.
28:56She was standing right there and I got down on my hands and knees.
29:01And I said, Joy, will you marry me?
29:05The gymnasium that was Edgar's home court is now home to birds.
29:14Gala celebrations once held here are but distant memories.
29:21This is where Joy and I, my fiancé, went and celebrated our engagement at the New Year's Eve ball for the rest of the base.
29:32Now, the floors have buckled almost beyond recognition.
29:37The green line here is the out-of-bound line for basketball court.
29:45A very small amount of water has actually caused this damage.
29:50If you think about it, these little drops of water have created a wave of wood.
29:55The community that once watched the skies for an attack is now under assault from above.
30:08In this new war, the buildings of Edgar are defenseless.
30:20As life after people continues, what secret will be revealed on the highest mountain in the world?
30:27You're listening to KTOW's 1019.
30:41Fifteen years after people.
30:43It's the cleanest sound on Earth.
30:45Powered by the sun, the radio station KTAO broadcasts some of the last human voices to be heard on the land.
30:54Sweet sounds from all over the world.
30:56This is KTOW's 1019.
30:59But inside the computer that automatically plays the music, the bearings of the cleaning fan grind to a halt.
31:06Across the windswept hills of the southwest, birds still chirp.
31:14Coyotes howl.
31:17But as the station computer overheats, the music of mankind falls forever silent.
31:28Ever silent.
31:39Twenty years after people.
31:44The Cassini spacecraft continues to orbit Saturn.
31:49But Saturn also has more than 50 moons.
31:53Making any orbit fraught with peril.
31:58Now, the spacecraft smashes into one of these moons.
32:05It should be the last of Cassini.
32:08But this moon has something that was never expected in the rigid depths of space around Saturn.
32:15Thirty years after people.
32:26On the distant horizon of the prairie, a dark cloud blots out the sun.
32:33Within minutes, a frenzied crush of insects from a swarm big enough to cover the entire state of Delaware pours out of the sky.
32:46Once so few in numbers many scientists believe they were extinct, the Rocky Mountain locust has returned.
32:54We're hesitant to use the E-word in ecology and entomology, that E-word being extinction.
33:03And the reason is what we call the Lazarus effect.
33:05The Lazarus effect is when any species thought to be gone forever is found, as if it came back from the dead.
33:16The return of the locusts is tied to their cousins that live just outside Yellowstone Park, grasshoppers.
33:23In a life after people, grasshoppers are no longer controlled by pesticides, and their numbers explode.
33:33Birds that kept locusts in check for decades now gorge on grasshoppers instead.
33:40For the first time in more than a century, locusts flourish.
33:45And it's when they sense their territory is becoming overcrowded, that instinct tells them to take to the air en masse in search of more food.
33:57Thirty years after people, the Rocky Mountain locust swarms into the skies of the American Midwest once again.
34:15Thirty-five years after people, some of the highest glaciers in the world inch down Mount Everest.
34:28Entombed within the ice is refuse that climbers once tossed away.
34:36They believed the colossal ice would crush it to smithereens.
34:41There was this theory that the glacier, with the millions of tons of ice, would just grind up whatever trash was dumped into the crevasse into dust.
34:52But they were found, you know, 30, 40 years later, things came out at the foot of the glacier relatively intact.
34:59Thirty-five years after people.
35:03A length of rope, with a climber's gloves still curled around it, emerges from the glacial ice.
35:13But the frozen citadel has yet one more secret, inching its way down the mountain.
35:20Fifty years after people.
35:34The KVLY Tower, the tallest structure in North America, still soars the equivalent of more than 150 stories into the North Dakota sky.
35:46It was built to withstand almost all forms of extreme weather, except severe ice and wind.
35:57Just like the second tallest structure in North America, the TV tower of a sister station, KXJB.
36:05Less than ten miles away, it was just three feet shorter.
36:09In April 1997, when a severe ice storm struck, the fierce wind and weight of the ice sent the second tallest structure crashing to the ground.
36:25Five decades after people, an ice storm blows in again, buffeting the nearly 900,000 pounds of tower.
36:33As the ice builds up, it adds hundreds of thousands of pounds to the structure.
36:40The huge stress of the extra weight shears section bolts right off, snapping the tower in the middle.
36:48The top of the tower plummets for more than ten seconds, and can accelerate to nearly 250 miles an hour before smashing into the earth.
36:57It's rain as the tallest structure on the continent is cut short.
37:12Across the country, the spirit of St. Louis rocks in the wind that whistles through the National Air and Space Museum.
37:20In 1976, curators had the plane carefully inspected.
37:28Apart from minor rust and small tears in the cotton fabric of the fuselage, the aircraft was perfectly fit to fly.
37:36The weakness now is not with the plane, but the system that holds it aloft.
37:44The three cables and clamps that secure it to the ceiling are strong enough to hold five times the weight of the plane.
37:55But the cables loop through standard steel bolts never designed to withstand decades rocking in the wind.
38:01Exposure to the elements combines with the chafing of the cable to weaken the bolts until each fails.
38:11And the plane that so sensationally opened the doors to global air traffic makes one final flight.
38:18The fate of high-flying relics is just one of civilization's many falls.
38:29Yet one otherworldly crash will plant some shocking new seeds.
38:35One hundred twenty-five years after people.
38:50The only two buildings remaining at the Los Angeles airport are the steel reinforced control tower and the LAX theme building.
39:00In the time of humans, seismologists discovered a major fault line just a few miles away.
39:09They calculated that the odds of a massive quake were just one in eight in the next hundred and twenty-five years.
39:16As a part of the overhaul of the theme building in 2010, engineers installed 1.2 million pounds of steel on rubber rollers to counteract the devastating shock waves of a quake.
39:31Called a mass damper, these systems are typically placed underneath or inside buildings.
39:37But the space-age architecture of the theme building made that unworkable.
39:43Think about the theme building.
39:45Four stilts not really connected to one another until you get up to the restaurant level.
39:50And you'd want the four stilts to all move perfectly together.
39:55There would be no way to guarantee that in an earthquake.
39:58Instead, it became the first building in North America with a mass damper on the roof.
40:08One hundred and twenty-five years after people, when a violent 6.5 quake strikes at dawn.
40:16The mass damper saves the theme building.
40:20Leaving it the only structure at the airport still standing.
40:25Five thousand years after people.
40:36A glacier on Mount Everest is in a spring melt once again.
40:42What thaws is a shocking remnant.
40:46The frozen corpse of a climber.
40:49We know humans can be preserved in glaciers.
40:55Because of Oatsy the Iceman.
40:59He was found on a melting snow pack in the Italian Alps in 1991.
41:05Some five thousand three hundred years after he died.
41:10His body had been so perfectly preserved that scientists could even determine what he had eaten for his final two meals.
41:17From the contents of his stomach.
41:21Of the more than 180 climbers who died on Everest.
41:25As many as 50 were never recovered.
41:29There have been climbers that have been caught in avalanches.
41:32They've been trapped in the Khumbu Icefall when tons of ice have shifted.
41:36It's likely that most of those people are still trapped on the mountain, if you will.
41:40Entombed in the ice.
41:47Now, the sun and flow of glacial ice have freed one climber.
41:55But there are no scientists to greet him.
41:58Only water and bacteria that make quick work of his remains.
42:02Two million years after people.
42:17The Cassini spacecraft is long gone.
42:20But its stowaways have flourished.
42:24Because the moon they smashed into was a very special one called Enceladus.
42:31It is one of the few places in the solar system believed to have liquid water.
42:36If Cassini were to crash on Enceladus, then it's possible that the bacteria that hitched a ride on the spacecraft could survive in that watery region just below Enceladus' surface.
42:50In a thousand years, you would have a growing colony of bacteria in the Enceladus environment.
42:57And over millions of years, and even billions of years, that bacteria might evolve into a whole ecosystem.
43:04It would be quite remarkable if the final legacy of our technological society here on Earth was the greening of another moon in the solar system.
43:14Where humans reached for the sky, it appears that the sky was not, in fact, the limit.
43:28Cold, dark space has proven surprisingly open to Earth's most unstoppable force, life.
43:38In the next episode, life after people goes underground and underwater.
43:49From NORAD's secret mountain headquarters to a bizarre underground mine, how will the underworld change when man is gone?
43:57And what secrets will be revealed when we unearth the Titanic of the West?