"Life After People" and "The World Without Us"

[MoonSylver]

Did anyone watch "Life After People" tonight on The History Channel. Pretty interesting stuff. Reminded me of a book I heard about that was recently released "The World Without Us", both dealing with what would happen to the cities & the world in general if we were to suddenly vanish.

Check out the book here:

(I posted this in Dead Discussion instead of Media Discussion as I think most of the information is relevant to the zombie apocalypse, such as: how long would the power stay on?)

[SRP76]

I watched Life After People (it's on again Wednesday at 8PM). It was great!

It took just about everything into account. Things like wildfires going unchecked, to lack of maintenance on structures.

The "civilization" certainly wouldn't last very long without the people.

Much of that gets ignored under the "zombie what ifs". If everyone's fighting for their lives, who's going to fight the fires and so forth?

[ProfessorChaos]

saw this advertised recently, but i had to work earlier tonight, and i've got class on wednesday evening, so doubt i'll be able to check it out anytime soon.

on a similar topic, anyone ever heard about the plastic beaches in hawaii?

http://www.prweb.com/prfiles/2007/08/31/40978/KamiloBeach2806PlasticPollution.jpg
this is the result of all plastics from the pacific rim being carried to by ocean currents to the northwestern hawaiin islands. pretty sickening stuff. there was a show on animal planet recently, and although i'm not exactly a tree-hugger, it made me much more aware of our impact upon the earth.

[Legion2213]

I'm watching the teasers on the History Channel website right now...by God, this better be on the UK History channel soon. :mad:

I love this sort of thing...the teasers are reminding me of Logan's Run & Planet of the Apes.

[MikePizzoff]

I'm watching the Life After People show now, just turned it on halfway through. So I've still got an hour to watch. Pretty awesome so far.

Professor - that's f'in disgusting. I always recycle and make sure not to litter because of crap like that.

[Legion2213]

Styrofoam cups and most plastics will apparently last for all eternity...I'm not a tree hugger either, but you'd have to be stupid not to be a bit concerned about our impact on the planet...I find these facts far more worrying than a bit of global warming. :(

[MoonSylver]

I watched Life After People (it's on again Wednesday at 8PM). It was great!

It took just about everything into account. Things like wildfires going unchecked, to lack of maintenance on structures.

The "civilization" certainly wouldn't last very long without the people.

Much of that gets ignored under the "zombie what ifs". If everyone's fighting for their lives, who's going to fight the fires and so forth?

One of the things that I didn't expect was how quickly the power would go. A few hours to a few days. Even nuclear would shut down as a safety measure within a couple weeks I think they said.

So no holing up in the mall after all...

[jim102016]

If you're going to hide out in the mall....you'd better hurry up and lock it down before the lights go out!

[Skippy911sc]

Styrofoam cups and most plastics will apparently last for all eternity...I'm not a tree hugger either, but you'd have to be stupid not to be a bit concerned about our impact on the planet...I find these facts far more worrying than a bit of global warming. :(

Thats why I always burn my plastic and Styrofoam... :lol:

[Mike70]

does anyone else live in a town with recycling program at the town level? the one in oxford is close to being madatory because everyone is charged for it in their bill from the garbage company so it behooves you to do it since you are paying for it anyway.

that is certainly one way to get folks to recycle.

i haven't seen this yet. is it similar to the one discovery did a few years ago showing how and what kinds of animals might evolve over the next couple of hundred million years?

[MikePizzoff]

I watched about 45 minutes of the Life Without People before passing out last night. Very awesome. I'm tempted to buy the DVD of it so I can project it on a huge screen.

I'm a cat lover so I enjoyed when they talked about cats becoming the kings of skyscrapers, once they're overgrown with foliage.

[lifelikecarcass]

.I'm not a tree hugger either, but you'd have to be stupid not to be a bit concerned about our impact on the planet...I find these facts far more worrying than a bit of global warming.
Well, they sort of go hand in hand with global warming, no?
I'm sure that anywhere in the universe that life is found this far into the development cycle, those species tread hard on the planet during their period of technological adolescence too.
It's part of the cycle. If it didn't happen, we wouldn't understand it.
What if that's the point of our existence?
What makes you sure that life itself isn't a disease, and humans the anti-body?
In the grand scheme, I don't think there's a difference between a human and a microbe.
It's all one thing. Life.

Traditionally, the "disease" called life had to be wiped out by higher level events such as asteroid impacts.
Now, with us humans here, there's no need because we'll do it ourselves through our "consume-all and move on" paradigm.

Planets themselves have a lifespan. They don't last forever.
Which sort of suggests that any life on any planet, isn't meant to be there forever either.
They either die off, or move on.

The disease we call life could've been on Mars, was wiped out by a natural force of some kind but enough of it escaped and made it here.
Now the process is happening all over again.

So when people are outraged over the way we tread on earth, they don't understand that it's our purpose.
Most people see our existence in a much more romantic manner, and they would never accept such an idea.
Just something to think about.

[Neil]

If anyone spots this on in the UK make sure you PM me please!!