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Life After People (2009) Season 3 Episode 7- Built to Last
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00:00What would happen if every human being on Earth disappeared, no matter how we might vanish?
00:17This is the story of what could happen to the haunting world we leave behind, now on Life After People.
00:25Some of mankind's greatest feats of engineering were built to be indestructible.
00:33But without us, will they stand the test of time?
00:38Or will the elements find a fatal flaw?
00:43New York City's Invincible Freedom Tower outlasts the city it was built in, but nature doesn't give up.
00:51It's designed to withstand things like weather, natural disasters, even attack.
00:56The question is, will it?
00:59An impenetrable stronghold guards all of humanity's greatest treasures, while the elements try to break in.
01:07The door to the vault alone weighs 20 tons, so that's the equivalent of three or four elephants.
01:14And the Torre Mayor faces off against the earthquake capital of Mexico.
01:19Built in the ring of fire, this tower was designed to take all kinds of abuse.
01:26Humanity's unbreakable fortresses go toe to toe with the fury of a world without people.
01:33To find out what falls, and what will be the last structure standing.
01:39Welcome to Earth, population zero.
01:48Fifty years after people, the world is unrecognizable.
01:55In Sydney, Australia, the famous opera house is crumbling into the Pacific.
02:02In New York City, the Flatiron Building is in ruins.
02:07Grand Central Station's roof has long since collapsed.
02:12But among the ruins, one iconic landmark still stands.
02:18A symbol of America's freedom and strength.
02:22It was built to be nearly indestructible.
02:25One World Trade Center.
02:29After 9-11, whatever was going to take the place of the World Trade Center had to be significant.
02:35It couldn't just be a feat of architecture or engineering.
02:39It had to be something that would restore faith, rebuild confidence in the American spirit.
02:45When it was built, the designer specifically chose a height of 1,776 feet to honor the year that the United States declared independence.
02:56The perimeter is framed with about 45,000 tons of high-strength structural steel.
03:02It's fitted with 13,000 glass panels, each of which weighs about 6,000 pounds.
03:08For 50 years, the Freedom Tower has stood tall while buildings all over the city have succumbed to the elements,
03:16thanks to a near-unbreakable concrete core rising from her foundations to her uppermost floors.
03:23The core is 4 feet thick and reinforced with steel barriers.
03:28So you can think of that as the building's spine that's holding everything together.
03:32But the concrete is no ordinary mix.
03:35It's rated at 14,000 PSI.
03:38That is strong enough that just one square inch of it could handle the weight of four cars stacked on top of one another.
03:45It's the most fortified part of the whole structure.
03:48It's a powerhouse of design, built to last, even when everything around it is falling apart.
03:53For decades, One World Trade has weathered storms, floods, lightning and wind.
04:06A towering beacon of strength and engineering.
04:09But all around her, other towers aren't as lucky.
04:13Surrounding buildings like 200 Vesey and 225 Liberty were built in the 1980s.
04:19But neither tower is nearly as robust as the Freedom Tower.
04:24In the time of people, the building's steel skeletons and concrete foundations
04:29received regular inspection and repair.
04:32But after half a century without maintenance, 200 Vesey shutters...
04:41...and chunks of her facade give way.
04:44The building is less than half the height of the Freedom Tower.
04:49But chunks of concrete and glass would crash into the lower third of the building and slam into its base.
04:55The Freedom Tower's core was built to withstand a pressure of 14,000 pounds per square inch.
05:03But a 10-foot chunk of concrete falling 300 feet could generate double that depending on how it falls and how it lands.
05:11The damage isn't fatal, but it leaves the tower vulnerable.
05:16And an ancient enemy has been lurking beneath the tower all along, waiting to exploit any weakness.
05:23Turns out, this part of the city was never meant to exist in the first place.
05:27Centuries ago, Lower Manhattan was all wetlands and water.
05:32When construction teams dug out the foundations for the original One World Trade Center,
05:36they actually found the timbers of an 18th century boat.
05:39Because this area was used to dock boats on the Hudson River.
05:43Engineers came up with a pretty brilliant solution.
05:46A massive underground wall.
05:49They dug 90-foot trenches and filled them with a special slurry made of bentonite clay.
05:55Concrete was then pumped in, forcing the slurry out, leaving behind concrete walls that provided a barrier between the buildings and the sea water.
06:06The wall wrapped around the entire 16-acre site.
06:10A sunken ring of concrete holding back the Hudson like an underground dam.
06:16For over a century, this massive concrete barrier held the line.
06:22Without people, the engineering that once defied nature is showing its age.
06:28Each falling building has been an assault, and it's riddled with cracks and fissures.
06:34Finally, the wall gives way.
06:37The river surges in, filling the lower levels of One World Trade Center with 50 feet of water.
06:50Now, typically, operators would man the pumping systems to keep the buildings safe.
06:54But 50 years after people, those systems are long dead.
06:58The water has nowhere to go, and so the salt starts to corrode the steel reinforcements.
07:04Lower Manhattan has returned to its watery roots.
07:08Its foundations drowned, its streets mostly sunk.
07:13As moisture seeps into the cracks in the Freedom Tower's core, how much longer can she stand?
07:21Across the Atlantic, behind concrete walls and iron gates, lies a citadel of secrets.
07:31A fortress built to guard mankind's greatest treasures, the Geneva Freeport.
07:38Priceless art and treasures aren't displayed, they're entombed.
07:42Stored in vaults people were never meant to see, preserved for a future that will never come.
07:49A Freeport is basically a designated economic zone established in a given country where the normal rules don't apply.
07:57The duties and taxes are low or maybe even non-existent. Import and export laws are different.
08:02So this one might be in Geneva, but it's basically like its own tiny country that's in the middle of the city.
08:10Very few people are allowed in or out. Records are hard to find.
08:15The whole idea of the place is that the outside doesn't know what's going on inside.
08:20It sounds like a James Bond movie, but this is actually real.
08:24Experts believe it holds about 1.2 million pieces of art.
08:30But masterworks by artists like Picasso, Da Vinci, Andy Warhol, nearly $100 billion worth of art.
08:40Here, the relics of humanity are sealed away by systems purpose-built to outlast anything, including the end of mankind.
08:51These aren't just rooms. They're vaults designed to withstand really anything nature can throw at them.
08:57Inside, the temperature is a crisp 69 degrees with about 55% humidity. These are perfect conditions for maintaining masterpieces.
09:05Long after mankind disappeared, the Freeport still does the work it was meant to do.
09:12The building was designed with thick concrete walls and no windows.
09:18So even though climate controls have been dead for years, the treasures inside aren't subject to the heating and cooling cycles happening on the outside.
09:28There will be some fluctuations in temperature, but nothing like what would be happening in museums and private collections.
09:35Those places were made to display art. The Freeport is designed to protect it at any cost.
09:42Beneath the Freeport's concrete skin, a critical defense is starting to give way.
09:48For decades, it held the line, keeping secret treasures sealed and safe.
09:54But now, its time is running out.
09:58There's a protective rubber membrane on the roof of the Freeport that's actually flexible enough to expand in the summer heat,
10:06but contract in the winter cold without cracking.
10:09The life expectancy of this kind of roof is 30 to 40 years.
10:14There's an outside chance it could last up to 50 years, but that's the maximum it could possibly hold out.
10:20Fifty years after people, the protective membrane is failing and the roof is expanding and cracking in the heat.
10:28For the first time, the Freeport's defenses have been breached.
10:32And the question isn't if something will be destroyed.
10:36It's what goes first.
10:38Freeport was designed to be airtight, watertight, and nearly impervious.
10:44Now, even a small cracker leak can change everything.
10:48Moisture and humidity seep in.
10:51Mold colonies explode.
10:53Nothing would be safe from decay.
10:55In just 24 hours, mold begins to grow.
11:00Soon, spores and fungus crawl through the Freeport unchecked.
11:05But there's another intruder as well.
11:07One faster, hungrier, and drawn straight to what's most valuable.
11:13Silverfish.
11:14Silverfish.
11:15Silverfish aren't fish, and they aren't made of silver.
11:18They're tiny, wingless insects, notorious for sneaking into buildings through any available crack.
11:25Silverfish have a unique ability to digest cellulose.
11:29That's the starchy part of a cell wall.
11:32So they eat things that other bugs don't.
11:34Things like canvas or paper or glue.
11:38That unique digestive ability means bad news for any collection of manuscripts or paper money or paintings.
11:47Because those all would be delicious meals for silverfish.
11:51The most expensive painting ever sold, a 500-year-old masterpiece by Leonardo da Vinci,
11:57is now under siege as countless tiny mouths tear into the canvas, erasing it from history.
12:05The vault, built to be impregnable, has become anything but.
12:10Now that its defenses have been breached, how long can its treasures survive?
12:23Five decades after people, once one of the most densely populated cities in the world, Mexico City is now a wasteland.
12:33Chapultepec Castle, once the only royal palace in North America, now lies in ruins.
12:40Only the twisted husk of Mexico's largest arena, Benorte Stadium, remains.
12:46Its walls and stands long since shaken apart by an endless string of earthquakes.
12:53Each year, Mexico City and the surrounding area are hit by as many as 100 earthquakes,
12:59measuring at least four on the Richter scale.
13:02That magnitude means you can feel the quake 60 miles away, and it can do at least some damage.
13:08Amid the wreckage of the fallen city, one structure refuses to fall.
13:14It was designed to survive in one of the most seismically active places on Earth, the Torre Mayor.
13:24It's 738 feet tall, about four times the height of Niagara Falls.
13:29It's pretty rare, though, to have buildings this size in this part of Mexico because of all the seismic activity.
13:36Unfortunately for Mexico City, it was initially built on top of a lake bed of soft clay.
13:44Here's the problem.
13:45Unlike solid rock, where the shockwaves would just cause a bit of shaking and dissipate,
13:51this mushy Earth traps and amplifies them, so it can make a slight rumble, turn into a serious shakedown.
14:02The tower was designed to withstand an 8.5 magnitude earthquake,
14:07even though the ground beneath it shouldn't be able to support its weight.
14:11The Torre Mayor was built on reinforced concrete caissons driven more than half a football field into the ground.
14:18Its architects knew that if the Torre Mayor was going to last, they needed to pull out all the stops,
14:24and so they used what's known as viscous dampers.
14:28The viscous dampers is essentially a shock absorber, but a really big one, and it's filled with a fluid.
14:3498 of these are spread throughout the frame of the Torre Mayor.
14:37These viscous dampers don't actually stop the shaking completely.
14:42It just slows it down, so that the building can easily handle it.
14:45Back in 2017, a 7.1 magnitude earthquake struck Mexico.
14:52Nearly 200,000 buildings were destroyed in that quake.
14:55But Torre Mayor was not one of them.
14:56The ground rumbles, and an earthquake turns the Museo Sumaya, once the most visited museum in the entire country, into rubble.
15:08The Torre Mayor brushes away the danger, but another threat is rising.
15:14Popocatapetl, a towering volcano just 43 miles away, growls beneath its ice-capped peak.
15:24What will happen to one of Earth's strongest structures when the sleeping beast erupts?
15:31In Switzerland, 75 years after people, the Freeport that was meant to be an impenetrable vault has cracked open.
15:46Rot and insects have snuck in through the cracks, wreaking havoc on the sections they've managed to worm their way into.
15:53Those million pieces of art, Picassos, Warhols, Da Vinci's, some of humanity's greatest masterpieces are now just decomposing.
16:05Ancient artifacts, once perfectly preserved, are now covered in dirt and dust.
16:12Deep within the Freeport, even 75 years after people, some of the remarkable fortresses' rooms are still sealed.
16:20But the climate controls that once kept them cool have long since failed, and some precious artifacts hide an incendiary secret.
16:31Tucked away in one of these vaults are priceless film archives.
16:36But there's a problem.
16:38These early films were made from cellulose nitrate, essentially gun cotton that was turned into film stock.
16:45Geneva may not be known for heat, but summer temperatures here can hit the 90s.
16:51And now with the ventilation systems long dead, heat seeps in through the cracked roof and stays trapped inside, slowly roasting everything within.
17:00The Freeport's thick concrete walls, originally designed to keep the temperature stable inside, are now working against it, trapping the heat, turning it into a giant oven.
17:11A giant oven.
17:14And here's the scary part.
17:17As nitrate film ages, it releases gases, nitric oxide and nitrogen dioxide.
17:25If these gases build up inside of a sealed film canister, it can cause them to explode if the temperature hits around 100 degrees.
17:34Guess what?
17:36It's already way hotter than that inside.
17:39With a crackle no one's left to hear, one reel erupts in flame, then another and another.
17:48The Freeport has an advanced fire suppression system that essentially sucks the oxygen out of the room and replaces it with other gases, suffocating the fire.
17:59It's designed to put out fires without water or chemicals that could damage priceless artifacts.
18:06The fire suppression system itself doesn't require electricity, so that would work perfectly even decades after people.
18:13But the problem is, the systems that detect a fire are electrical, so all those extinguishers would be sitting there ready to go, not knowing that they're supposed to be turned on.
18:21All it would take is a small current, the twist of a knob.
18:26But 75 years after people, there's no one watching, no one to sound the alarm.
18:32Once nitrate film catches fire, it's like a firestorm.
18:36It gets over 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
18:40For reference, steel melts at 3,000.
18:43Concrete starts to break down at 600.
18:45So 4,000 degrees, the whole vault is in huge trouble.
18:49The building was designed to protect mankind's treasures forever.
18:55But this fortified vault is under assault from the outside and from within.
19:01How long until what was once unbreakable is finally broken?
19:07In New York City, switchgrass rustles where tourists once swarmed.
19:18Turtles bask on the steps of the New York Stock Exchange.
19:23And in Times Square, wild pigs root through moss and shattered neon.
19:28Now there's no native population of feral hogs in New York City today, but they are widespread across several parts of the United States.
19:36They're very adaptable and they can basically eat their way into any place they want to go.
19:41They're excellent colonizers.
19:43These pigs would have decades to migrate.
19:47They've got no people to keep them in check.
19:48So they're going to spread very easily from the south and from the Midwest all across the country.
19:53And they could very easily travel the bridges and tunnels from New Jersey to Manhattan just like commuters do today.
19:59The skyline is completely transformed. Tall towers all but disappeared.
20:05But the Freedom Tower still stands, even as the saltwater submerging lower Manhattan has reclaimed everything around her.
20:14It's almost unthinkable that it's still upright.
20:17That base has been wading in brackish, salty water for years.
20:22It's really a testament to what we built.
20:24The tower is unbroken, but not unscarred.
20:27And 75 years after people, the weight of her own spire is becoming too much to bear.
20:36One of its most iconic features is the spire.
20:40A 408 foot tall steel structure that once served as a broadcast antenna.
20:47The spire was made up of 18 different pieces of steel, each of which was so heavy that many of them couldn't travel by road.
20:55They had to come on a one month voyage by barge down to New York City from Quebec.
21:01The steel was hot dip galvanized in molten zinc to keep rust at bay for up to 75 years.
21:06But now that protective layer has given out.
21:09After 12 decades without maintenance, corrosion has set in.
21:12With a gust of wind, the spire buckles and one World Trade Center's own body now turns against her.
21:20That spire doesn't just fall. It punches through the tower like a steel battery.
21:26Floors 90 to 60 gone in seconds.
21:29It's like watching a sword slice through a stack of pancakes.
21:33Only the pancakes are 30 floors of crumbling concrete and rust steel.
21:37Concrete splinters. Steel snaps like bones. The powerful core that sustains her is now fractured and weak.
21:47How much longer can the building designed to stand forever actually last?
22:02A century after people, earthquakes have turned most of Mexico City into rubble.
22:07Hawks and ospreys now nest where sightseers when strolled.
22:13And bobcats hunt mice and red-bellied squirrels in the remains of the oldest cathedral in all of Latin America.
22:21Through it all, the nearly invincible Torre Maior has held fast.
22:27But now, there's a new rumble piercing the eerie silence.
22:31Boba Catepetl is a large stratovolcano located very close to Mexico City.
22:38It's quite an active volcano.
22:41When Boba Catepetl erupted in 800 AD, it destroyed nearly everything in its wake.
22:46Nearby settlements were wiped out by hot ash flows and mudslides.
22:50There were fast-moving flows of volcanic mud, water, ash and debris that spread for miles.
22:55It essentially destroyed everything within a 21-mile radius.
22:58Devastating eruptions only happen roughly every one to 2,000 years.
23:04But unfortunately, for what remains of Mexico City, it's about that time.
23:09Though there were minor rumblings here and there over the years,
23:12the volcano was actually dormant for much of the 20th century until the 1990s when it became active again.
23:19Occasionally shooting out ash or spilling some lava, reminding us that the threat is still very much there.
23:25With a roar, the volcano erupts.
23:32And a superheated flow of gas, rock and ash wipe out all life within 20 miles.
23:39Vittoria Major is out of reach of the lava, but this kind of eruption sends hundreds of thousands of metric tons of volcanic ash up into the air.
23:51That can spread for hundreds of miles.
23:52At large enough quantities, this amount of ash can actually blot out the sun.
23:58In 1815, Mount Tambora erupted in Indonesia, spewing ash that was so great in quantity, it cooled the average global temperature by 5 degrees Fahrenheit for three years.
24:08What's left of most buildings collapse in the aftershocks, but the unshakable tower still stands strong.
24:18In the aftermath of the eruption, a thick layer of ash settles over it.
24:23It looks harmless, but soon, storm clouds swirl overhead, and the combination could be the key to toppling the mighty Torre Mayor.
24:35Mexico City receives more rain on average every year than even London, which is a city known for its wet weather.
24:41Volcanic ash absorbs rain like a sponge, and then it dries to form this cement-like sludge that is even heavier.
24:51So if you have even five inches of ash on a rooftop, just a little bit of water that's added to that ash, and almost every roof will collapse from that weight.
25:01After a hundred years without maintenance, all it takes is a few days of crushing uneven weight.
25:11Now, her bones are exposed, and the pouring rain isn't just relentless, it's mutating.
25:19Volcanic ash can turn your run-of-the-mill rain into acid rain.
25:23So, Torre Mayor isn't just being smothered in ash, it's being corroded by acid rain.
25:30Once the roof is breached, any additional corrosive element is going to have a much easier time getting to the interior of the building
25:37and to those viscous dampers that are holding everything together.
25:42It's taken a century to expose a weakness in this marvel of human engineering.
25:47But will it be enough to bring it down?
25:58For nearly a hundred years, the Geneva Freeport protected the rarest and most precious treasures humanity left behind.
26:06Now, it's decaying from the inside out, a once mighty fortress scarred by fire.
26:14It wasn't just a normal fire, it was a superheated fire, topping out at over a thousand degrees.
26:21Steel loses about 50% of its structural strength at around 1100 degrees.
26:26So you can imagine how weak it would be right about now.
26:30Despite all that's faced, the Freeport still stands.
26:35But now, winter descends, bringing freezing temperatures and swirling snow.
26:43Wet, slushy snow can weigh anywhere from 25 to 50 pounds per cubic foot.
26:49And ice is even heavier, weighing just shy of 60 pounds per cubic foot.
26:53That's a lot of extra weight and stress on a building that's already been gutted and weakened by fire.
27:01With a shutter, steel snaps, and cement are almost.
27:07All the supports and infrastructures would be so weakened that it crumbles beneath the fallen roof.
27:13The Freeport collapses like a house of cards.
27:16And just like that, a lot of mankind's most cherished treasures are gone.
27:20It's now reduced to rubble.
27:24But what relic of mankind still survives in the ruins?
27:29For 150 years, Mother Nature has worked tirelessly to undo all that mankind had built.
27:45The famous St. Louis Arch has collapsed.
27:49And in Washington, D.C., all that's left of the Lincoln Memorial is broken rocks.
27:57But in Kentucky, there's a secure compound hiding beneath what remains of a sprawling army base.
28:05And it's designed to survive any apocalypse.
28:10Fort Knox.
28:12During the Great Depression, Americans had to turn in whatever gold they had in exchange for paper currency.
28:18When FDR took us off the gold standard, all of that gold had to go somewhere and it had to be protected.
28:25Fort Knox was basically America's bank.
28:27What was inside was the foundation of our entire monetary system.
28:32At one time, it was said to hold more than 4,000 tons of gold bullion, worth as much as $400 million in today's currency.
28:42To protect the nation's fortune, Fort Knox was built to stand up to any attempt to breach its vault.
28:49Including a direct nuclear strike.
28:53The vault's walls are made out of four-foot-thick granite, which are lined with steel, cement, and fireproofing.
29:01The door alone weighs 20 tons.
29:04That's the equivalent of three or four elephants.
29:08And the entire thing is buried underground.
29:11Fort Knox was impenetrable when it was built in 1937.
29:14They used the strongest materials available at that time.
29:19As technology evolved, Fort Knox adapted, adding layers of security like an outer perimeter with motion sensors,
29:28a 10-foot-high electrical fence, virtual tripwires, and landmines.
29:34It's got biometric authentication.
29:37It's got high-res infrared vision cameras.
29:40It even has seismic sensors.
29:42In 2009, the area was hit with a brutal ice storm that caused Fort Knox to go without power for an entire week.
29:49Officials refused to continue being dependent on outside power after that.
29:54Fort Knox has 20 methane wells found deep underground near the base to power all of its operations.
30:01It becomes the first energy-independent U.S. Army base in America.
30:04A tangled web of pipes and valves once moved fuel from nearby tanks to the fort like veins to a heart, powering its independent grid.
30:15In the time of people, the system was closely guarded and carefully maintained.
30:20But now, it has long since failed, and its arteries have been eroding for 150 years.
30:30Without maintenance, the systems that power this place are going to corrode.
30:34And that's going to happen because of the presence of hydrogen sulfide, which is in the natural gas.
30:38Hydrogen sulfide is highly corrosive.
30:42It can degrade metal, making it brittle, and ultimately eating it away entirely.
30:47Some metals are, of course, stronger than others.
30:50But over decades or centuries, even the most robust metals are going to fail.
30:54Toxic gas and leaking fuel have been creeping through cracks in the pipes, coming up through the ground and saturating the area.
31:05With just one spark, one jolt, and Fort Knox's impenetrable defenses will be put to the test.
31:13In New York City, Lower Manhattan is no longer a financial hub.
31:24It's a watery maze of streams and rivers, overgrown and teeming with the animals.
31:31The wetlands of Manhattan have reclaimed their territory, just like they were thousands of years ago.
31:35Now, this once buzzing financial district is literally underwater.
31:40What was once marshland is marshland again, with only some remnants of man's achievements poking up out of the muck.
31:50Once filled with iconic skyscrapers, the city's skyline is nearly empty.
31:56But even after every tower has succumbed to the elements, One World Trade Center still stands above the wilderness.
32:05It bears the scars of 250 years, but it endures.
32:10After centuries of exposure, the steel beams and columns are badly weakened.
32:15And even that concrete core, the spine of the whole structure, has been quietly cracking for decades.
32:21It's been losing the fight with Mother Nature, inch by inch.
32:24The collapse of other towers, and even her own spire, have wounded One World Trade too deeply.
32:32And two and a half centuries after people, with no maintenance or upkeep, her mighty spine finally cracks.
32:39After hundreds of years of high winds and relentless decay, even this giant can't take it anymore.
32:48The top of One World Trade Center shears off at the 21st floor.
32:54The tower has fallen, but will any part of it be spared, or will it all come crashing down?
33:08In Mexico City, the strongest tower in the country still stands, while everything around it has crumbled.
33:24But acid rain has been pouring through its shattered roof for years, eating away at its defenses, including the viscous dampers that have made it earthquake-proof.
33:37The dampers are still functioning because they don't need power, but the steel they're attached to has become corroded.
33:44As steel corrodes, it expands, cracking the welds, loosening the bolts, pulling the damper anchors free from the frame.
33:52The attachment points are giving way.
33:54Imagine the dampers as joints and the steel framework as bones.
33:58The bones are starting to fracture, which renders the joints powerless.
34:01Now, all 738 feet is truly vulnerable for the first time.
34:09At this point, after all these years, it wouldn't even take a massive quake to bring it down.
34:16It's far from its former glory.
34:19The basin rumbles, not with a powerful earthquake, but a string of minor tremblers.
34:26The ground rumbles, and without those dampers running, Torre Mayor sways and sways, and eventually topples over entirely.
34:39The tower finally sitcoms.
34:43Once hailed as one of the strongest structures ever built, now its body lies broken, bones exposed, to be reclaimed by the jungle now growing, unchecked.
34:57Almost no trace remains of the freeport built to protect humanity's treasures.
35:03Deer, fox, and badgers roam, where masterpieces once lay in vaults.
35:11But inside one of the innermost basement storage rooms, there are some relics of mankind that remain untouched.
35:20And in some ways, in better condition than ever.
35:25Bottle upon bottle of the finest wine.
35:28The Geneva Freeport is said to hold around three million bottles of high-quality, collectible wine.
35:35And some of it is still good, maybe even better than ever.
35:38Some wines are actually made to last.
35:41Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot, for example, have high levels of tannins and high acidity, which means they age really well, sometimes for centuries.
35:51And some wines have lasted even longer.
35:54In 2019, in Spain, a 2,000-year-old glass urn was found in a Roman necropolis, still containing liquid wine.
36:01Once the most sought-after vintages on the planet, now these bottles wait for drinkers who will never come.
36:09In Kentucky, centuries after people, the most secure vault mankind ever built, still stands.
36:26But fuel from its long dormant power plant has been seeping through the surrounding ground and spreading like a virus.
36:36You've got gas escaping out of the ground and an environment that's completely overgrown with vegetation.
36:44So you only need one more ingredient to create a truly epic wildfire, and that's one spark.
36:56Kentucky ranks in the top ten states for cloud-to-ground lightning strikes, averaging half a million ground strikes per year.
37:03That's over 1,400 strikes each day.
37:06A bolt of lightning arcs toward a tangle of brush, and it bursts into flame.
37:11What follows is utter destruction.
37:14The flames are spreading and eventually collide with the leaking methane, creating the mother of all Molotov cocktails.
37:24An explosion rips through one side of the abandoned fort, and a fireball tears through the empty columns.
37:33But will it be able to breach the vault?
37:36An explosion has rocked Fort Knox, and a fire has charred its walls.
37:51But buried deep in the earth, the vault built to store America's wealth still guards its treasure.
37:57This scene would look like something out of an Indiana Jones movie.
38:07You would have vegetation concealing the remnants of human activity.
38:12And if you looked carefully, you might see a pile of something shiny in gold.
38:17The thing about gold is that it doesn't rust or oxidize.
38:24It essentially never degrades.
38:26If it ever is exposed to sustained heat, it simply melts and then re-solidifies.
38:32So Fort Knox could look like it was flooded by a river of gold.
38:39It'd be like the lost city of El Dorado, except there's no one left to go searching for it.
38:45Around the world, the mightiest skyscrapers we left behind have crumbled.
39:00Only the ghost of the Torre Mayor haunts the flooded plain that was once Mexico City.
39:07Torre Mayor had redundancies built on top of redundancies.
39:10But nothing is immune to time, especially when nature never stops testing the limits.
39:17The Sydney Opera House is gone with no one to remember it.
39:22These buildings survive because we maintain them.
39:26They're not built to last on their own.
39:28So without people, without that constant upkeep,
39:31these amazing structures are eventually going to crumble back into the earth.
39:38In New York, the Manhattan skyline has been reduced to rubble.
39:44But at the island's southern tip, a reminder of humanity's engineering prowess still stands.
39:51The remaining floors of the World Trade Center.
39:54The bottom 20 stories are still there.
39:57They're practically like a bunker.
39:59Half a million tons of high-grade concrete that can withstand seven times the pressure of regular concrete.
40:04That base isn't going anywhere.
40:08It may not be supporting the mighty Freedom Tower like it once was,
40:11but what's left is still very much a monument.
40:14It's a symbol of human ingenuity.
40:15It is built to stand the test of time, even in a world without us.
40:20For these structures like the Freedom Tower, the point was to be the best we've ever built.
40:26And even when surrounded by ruin, these towers are still hanging on.
40:32Imagine New York City, now mostly forest, just green everywhere.
40:39But this iconic tower still looms over it.
40:43If you're not getting Lord of the Rings vibes from this, I don't know what you're thinking of.
40:48One by one, humanity's footprints are being wiped from the Earth.
40:54In spite of all of our best engineering, Mother Nature is patient and unyielding.
41:01After people, even the fortresses we built to last forever, eventually crumble into dust.
41:12We like to think that we build for eternity, but nature doesn't care about concrete and steel.
41:19Leave it long enough, and even the strongest structures will fail.
41:25Forever's a human idea.
41:27And we forget that Earth has its own clock.
41:30And without us here to fight back, even our greatest monuments become ruins.
41:35Earth is a human idea.
41:36It's not a human idea.
41:37It's a human idea.
41:38It's a human idea.
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