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00:00Imagine our planet without its people.
00:08Imagine that every single human being has simply disappeared.
00:14This isn't the story of how that might happen.
00:17It's the story of what happens to the world we leave behind.
00:23In this episode of Life After People,
00:26man harnessed dangerous substances to control the world he lived in.
00:32But he was playing with fire.
00:35A common chemical turns into a cloud of death.
00:39A spontaneous explosion rocks New York City.
00:43And power plants go nuclear.
00:47Welcome to Earth. Population zero.
00:56Man may be gone.
01:13But the world now faces an assault from the toxic chemicals and deadly substances he left behind.
01:19It's one day after people.
01:37Nuclear reactors across the world begin shutting down into safety mode.
01:41When you lose power from outside the reactor.
01:45The safety systems are designed so it tries to shut down the core.
01:50A mechanical system automatically engages to prevent any nuclear reaction.
01:57The uranium used for fuel in these plants is naturally radioactive.
02:01Meaning it releases energetic particles as it decays.
02:06And there's more uranium at a nuclear plant than just what's in the reactors.
02:11Every 18 months uranium in the core stops producing the amount of energy needed to sustain a nuclear reaction.
02:21And has to be replaced.
02:22At that point the fuel is dangerously hot.
02:28When they pull the fuel from the reactor core.
02:31That's when it becomes radioactive waste.
02:34It's thousands of times hotter than when you put it into the core.
02:38Thermally and radioactively.
02:40So you then take that fuel and you put it in the fuel pools to keep it cool.
02:43Freshly removed fuel rods can reach a scalding 2,000 degrees.
02:51And it takes 40 feet of water maintained below 120 degrees to prevent them from overheating.
03:02The amount of waste in the pool depends on how long the reactor is operated.
03:06The reactors here in the US have been operating between 30 to 40 years at this point.
03:11So you have 5 to 10 times the amount of radiation in the spent fuel pool that you actually have in the core of the reactor.
03:21The cooling pool may look harmless.
03:24But danger is simmering just beneath the surface.
03:32Another threat looms at rail depots like these.
03:36Where trains wait for engines that will never arrive.
03:41In the time of humans 31 million rail trucks carried 2 million tons of cargo.
03:4940,000 of them a common chemical.
03:52Lethal if accidentally unleashed.
03:59Now it's waiting silently for the time to strike.
04:02Five days after people.
04:17One of man's most toxic leftovers is already ravaging the planet.
04:23Raw sewage.
04:24Millions of gallons of man's detritus flows into the rivers around Manhattan.
04:35As electricity shuts down, so do the 93 pumping stations around the city, one by one.
04:42Sewage is piling up and flooding the 6,000 miles of sewage pipes beneath the Big Apple.
04:49It's happened before, during a blackout in 2003.
04:59When the power went out, the sewage system could not pump all of the water through the sewage treatment plants.
05:12As a result, water went right out into the Hudson.
05:14500 million gallons of raw sewage overwhelmed pipes and spilled out into New York's waterways.
05:23Left unchecked, sewage produces methane gas, a nasty by-product of decaying organic matter.
05:29And it's now finding its way into the city's rail and subway tunnels.
05:37All of the tunnels are interconnected.
05:41They're interconnected with each other, and they're interconnected with the sewer lines of the city.
05:48Lighter than air, methane naturally seeks the highest tunnels as it creeps below street level.
05:53The ultimate destination for much of the methane gas is the area around Grand Central Terminal,
06:00because it sits on one of the highest natural points in Manhattan.
06:06Because Grand Central Terminal is such a high point, after people, one of the dangers is collection of gas.
06:14Especially during the spring, when there's a lot of water, a lot of bacterial growth.
06:19So you will get small amounts of gas collecting naturally in the platform area and in the terminal itself.
06:28Ventilation intakes inside the terminal would normally clear the air of dangerous fumes.
06:35But without power, they are no longer working.
06:40And wherever flammable methane flows unchecked, the risk of an explosion follows.
06:46You should really think of the city as a machine, not as a pile of static structures.
06:56And that machine is in mortal danger once the people leave.
07:01One week after people.
07:12The stench from rubbish left behind is a sure sign that this nocturnal rodent has a delicious meal in store.
07:20Raccoons are really attracted to things that smell really bad.
07:24Something that would repel people is an attractant for raccoons.
07:32The average raccoon weighs about 15 pounds.
07:36But those with easy access to human scraps can balloon to over 60 pounds.
07:41The raccoon is the ultimate omnivore. Basically, they'll eat anything.
07:45Without people, raccoons are continuing to exploit the structures that resemble their natural habitats the most.
07:56Our chimneys function a lot like hollow trees.
08:00That's actually one of the favorite refuges for raccoons.
08:04And so they can easily climb up the outside of a chimney and then come down through the bottom.
08:09Raccoons seek interiors because they offer protection from weather and predators.
08:20But nothing beats the allure of free food.
08:24That sense of smell is going to draw them into the kitchen and any other place where they have garbage in the house.
08:29For a raccoon, this is paradise.
08:32A very highly developed sense of touch means that their long fingers and toes are a raccoon's first point of contact.
08:42Their brain is connected to their feet, basically.
08:44They forage with their feet or their hands instead of with their nose and with their eyesight like a lot of other carnivores.
08:51They can open up cabinets. They can open up your refrigerator.
08:56They devastate the kitchen. They devastate it.
08:59For these masked little bandits, shoplifting has never been easier.
09:05They'll literally simply walk from their den site to that refuse site and eat, get a little bit to drink and simply walk right back and go back to sleep.
09:17And that's pretty much it.
09:19Actually, they become couch potatoes very quickly.
09:22It's ten days after people.
09:32Discarded fuel rods are primed for a toxic reawakening.
09:41In the time of humans, spent fuel rods were kept below water for up to ten years until they were cool enough to be removed safely.
09:49But now, with power lost to the cooling pools, heat from the rods is causing the water to boil away.
09:59Once the water level dips below the tops of the rods and their temperature hits 700 degrees, the entire pool becomes a bonfire.
10:09And that would help propel all the radiation, ten, twenty cores worth, that are sitting in those spent fuel pools, out into the environment.
10:19So whichever way the wind blew, those are the areas you'd be contaminating.
10:22An invisible killer has been unleashed, and nothing is safe for miles in every direction.
10:31One month after people.
10:44The 170-foot Niagara Falls on the American and Canadian sides of the Niagara River continues its spectacular show.
10:51Once a destination for honeymooners and tourists, Niagara Falls also conceals a toxic secret.
11:00It's one month after people.
11:15One and a half million gallons of water continue to gush over Niagara Falls every second.
11:22But this spectacular natural wonder is hiding a very unnatural past.
11:31One of the surprising things about the Niagara region is that it was always very industrialized.
11:36One of the signs that you see is a large number of landfills.
11:39Perhaps the most lethal is the one at Love Canal, where 20,000 tons of toxic waste lies buried.
11:54A hazardous waste landfill is lined usually with plastic or with cement.
12:00The fluids that leak out are constantly monitored and leaks are adjusted and corrected and repaired.
12:07In a life after people, none of that is going to be happening.
12:14But it's not the small leaks of toxins that will cause the most damage.
12:19It's the massive surges of water that are about to wreak havoc on Niagara Falls.
12:28In the time of humans, the region attracted heavy industry because of access to inexpensive hydroelectric power.
12:37Seven miles from the falls and a month after people, two plants are still generating electricity.
12:47Hydroelectric plants don't require humans to load the fuel into the plant the way, say, a coal plant requires humans to load the coal in.
12:54So the water would continue to flow into the plant and would continue to spin the turbines, even without people there running it.
13:03Enormous intake tunnels continue to draw water into the turbines and divert it away from the falls.
13:12But all that's about to change.
13:20In a life after people, there won't be people using electricity, so there won't be a need for electricity.
13:25The substations that accept the electricity coming from the Niagara power plants will then speak back to the power plant and say,
13:35don't send me any more power, and Niagara would automatically begin to shut down.
13:41As the plants cease to operate, the intake tunnels close.
13:45The tunnels will no longer be pulling water out of the river, and that will be a very interesting moment.
13:58The river rises 13 feet almost instantly, doubling the flow of water over the falls.
14:05Downstream, the Maid of Mist docks, the launch point for close-up views of the falls for over 150 years, is swept away.
14:16Two months after people.
14:35The free ride for urban raccoons is coming to an end.
14:42Rubbish bins aren't providing the bounty they've grown used to.
14:47But access to water is keeping some raccoons close to empty homes.
14:56Gardens also provide a lifeline.
15:01They do take advantage of the fruits quite a bit.
15:04So that would continue for some period in time.
15:07But that probably is not enough to sustain them over the long haul.
15:11Raccoons moved into the cities in the early 1900s as they discovered the good life near man.
15:20In peak conditions, one square mile of urban space can support over 200 raccoons.
15:26But without the sustenance supplied by people, fewer than one in ten urban raccoons will survive even a year.
15:32So they're going to have to start looking and actually working for their food, which means chasing their prey.
15:40They're going to eat clams, crayfish, that type of thing.
15:44So they will go back to eating the things that they're really supposed to be eating anyway.
15:48Life's no longer a picnic.
15:53And although many will die, the species will ultimately survive.
15:57One year after people.
16:08At nuclear plants where overheated fuel rods burst into flames, miles wide dead zones have left a gaping scar.
16:17A radiated ring of death occurred once before, in the time of people.
16:26It was caused by a malfunctioning nuclear reactor at Chernobyl in the former Soviet Union.
16:33Radiation decimated pine forests within a two-mile radius.
16:38This is the damage wrought by the failure of just one power plant.
16:42In a life after people, there are hundreds of sites where spent fuel rods will unleash their deadly radiation.
16:50What you're looking at are 440 commercial reactor sites plus the military sites that would become basically irradiated dead zones.
17:12Five years after people, and an abandoned freight ship still plies the waters of the Great Lakes.
17:22In the time of humans, vessels of all types shuttled 162 million tons of cargo through the region each year.
17:33There are a lot of ships on the Great Lakes. These are very large tankers. They are up to a thousand feet long.
17:39And all vessels still floating on the Great Lakes are headed in the same direction.
17:47Niagara Falls.
17:51The falls are almost like a bathtub drain.
17:54They're pulling all of the water out of the Great Lakes through and into Lake Ontario and ultimately out to sea.
18:00So everything that's in the Great Lakes is moving towards Niagara Falls.
18:06But the International Railway Bridge near the entrance to the Niagara River bars the way.
18:14No ship taller than 22 feet can pass underneath.
18:18Built in 1873, the bridge holds for now.
18:24But more ships are on the way.
18:26It's a decade into a life after people.
18:39Grand Central Terminal, once visited by half a million people every day, is now just a gathering place for owls.
18:48Methane gas has been building up in the rail tunnels below.
18:54But it's not Grand Central that's in the most danger, because the tracks don't actually run under the station.
19:01The tracks are under the MetLife building, but they're beside Grand Central Terminal.
19:10People don't realize the original railroad terminology.
19:14A terminal is where tracks end.
19:17In the tunnels below the MetLife building next door, other toxic fumes are mixing with the methane.
19:32There are a lot of volatile materials.
19:35There's a fair amount of oil and residue on the tracks below.
19:38These areas are very well maintained right now.
19:43But after people, you're going to see a fair amount of kerosene fumes, gasoline fumes, alcohol fumes,
19:52all the cleaning materials that are used to keep the tunnel dust free and grease free.
19:57And all of these things are in metal cans.
20:01The metal cans are subject to corrosion.
20:02Constructed above the tunnels, the MetLife building is absorbing a lethal cocktail of gases.
20:12Volatile material itself, in the presence of oxygen, begins to oxidize and heat up.
20:20And at some point, explodes into fire.
20:25A ball of flame erupts from below and shatters the silence of the abandoned city.
20:32The
20:4220 years after people.
20:45There's a massive pileup of huge ships and tankers at the International Railway Bridge.
20:51And it's not just the boats bearing down.
20:53In most winters, lake area freezes.
21:02Typically 2% of that ice works its way towards the upper Niagara.
21:06Now that's 200 square miles of ice wanting to go down the river and find its way to Lake Ontario.
21:16In the time of humans, a boom laid out on the lake every December stopped the ice from colliding with the bridge.
21:25So far, it's lasted 20 years without help from people.
21:33Can it stand forever?
21:33I would say no.
21:34And the reason is ice coming off of Lake Erie.
21:38There's no boom anymore after people to stop it or deflect it.
21:43In 1938, the so-called Honeymoon Bridge over the Niagara River collapsed after a hundred foot high ice pileup plowed into it.
21:51Now, the railway bridge collapses under the pressure.
22:04Massive ghost ships begin a new voyage.
22:08And the way to Niagara Falls, just 20 miles downstream, is wide open.
22:22In the decades ahead, some areas will be visited by three forms of toxic revenge.
22:28In this American town, it's a future that's already happened.
22:38Forty years after people, and the toxic wind blows through the abandoned streets of Middle America.
22:48It's a future that's already happened here.
22:51In Pitcher, Oklahoma, the most toxic town in the United States.
23:01The residents were evicted not by one, but three forms of toxic revenge.
23:06All caused by the very thing that built this town.
23:11Mining.
23:15Pitcher, Oklahoma, was once at the center of the largest lead and zinc deposit in the world.
23:21Now, all that remains is poison that can't be removed.
23:26And a land that can't be fixed.
23:28Things were different in the first half of the 20th century.
23:35As the world plunged into two world wars, tanks, guns and ammunition created a huge appetite for lead.
23:45But the wars ended, and in the 1950s and 60s, the mines shut down, one by one, with the last closing in 1970.
23:59It was a one commodity town.
24:04They were based upon lead and zinc.
24:06So, like in other industrial towns, once that goes away, the population decreases.
24:13At its height, as many as 30,000 people lived in Pitcher.
24:25Now, it's almost entirely abandoned.
24:28Only a few dozen souls remain.
24:30Pitcher was a lot like a lot of small towns in the middle part of America.
24:35You know, these were hard-working folks.
24:37They had a mining history.
24:38The salt-of-the-earth folks you hear about.
24:41They raised their families and they made do.
24:44While the mine closures drove some of the residents away,
24:50it was what the mines left behind that killed the town for good.
24:57Mountainous gravel mounds known as chat piles.
25:04The chat pile is the material that was left over after the minerals were processed.
25:08So, it's a gravel-like substance.
25:10The material that was recoverable was taken.
25:13This was the waste.
25:14No use for it.
25:15It sat on the surface for the better part of a century.
25:20The chat piles contain toxic doses of lead, zinc, and other metals.
25:27Gusty winds blowing over the plains of the Midwest
25:30scatter dust from the 75 million tons of noxious gravel piled up.
25:36One of the casualties was this baseball field, still in use for years, even as residents fled the town.
25:44The kids came out here to play.
25:54You know, everybody was using it.
25:57You know, it was just kind of a playground.
25:59Picnic tables, you could go have a picnic over there.
26:02This was just a hangout.
26:08And now, a dozen years after people, a tree claims the pitcher's mound.
26:17And native prairie grass, displaced for decades, is returning.
26:20The seeds for the old prairie are still in the dirt.
26:28That doesn't go away.
26:29You can burn it.
26:30You can till it.
26:32Those seeds will always be there.
26:34And if you give them the right conditions, you know, they're going to come back.
26:38Pictures Main Street has been abandoned for more than 30 years.
26:47It wasn't closed by poison dust wafting from chat piles, but another form of toxic revenge.
26:54The underground void created by the removal of all that rock.
26:58Main Street initially was shut down because of a collapse.
27:04The ground gave in over on the left side of the street.
27:09In the process of digging an estimated 300 miles of tunnels, miners removed so much rock and soil from beneath the main street,
27:18that sinkholes started forming and actually swallowing parts of the town.
27:22Some of these underground workings were 100 feet from floor to ceiling.
27:28They mined too close to the surface in a lot of areas.
27:32In some areas, they mined all the way up to the tree roots.
27:38This area could cave in any time.
27:44Grass now springs over the pavement where miners and their families once looked for supplies.
27:52And where shopkeepers once welcomed customers, saplings now stand guard.
27:59There was a Sears over here.
28:01There was a JCPenney's, you know, over there.
28:04Trading post, hardware store.
28:07This is where you came to get, you know, what you needed.
28:10Even if it was a drink or if it was a shirt, you know, or a new pair of boots.
28:15You know, you had it pretty much all right here.
28:18You didn't have to go anywhere else.
28:19It's all still there.
28:23A pair of shoes, magazines and supplies.
28:29Antiquated cash registers still stand by, waiting for customers that will never appear.
28:36It wasn't until ten years after the last mines closed that the underground caverns opened up by mining delivered a third toxic shock to Pitcher.
28:51Poisoned groundwater.
28:52To reach the underground deposits, miners had to puncture a natural groundwater reservoir.
29:02During mining operations, they pumped about 55 million gallons a day of water out of the underground workings.
29:08Once mining ceased, they shut those pumps off and natural groundwater began to fill the mines.
29:15It's coming literally out of the mine shafts because the aquifer here is what they were mining in.
29:26By some estimates, there's enough polluted water below ground to fill over a million residential swimming pools.
29:35We'd be hard pressed to find another human activity that causes quite as much damage as mining can.
29:44And we open up the earth, remove what we want and leave it when we're finished.
29:47And that's what's happened here.
29:52Mines built the town.
29:56But toxic water, waste piles and sinkholes destroyed it.
30:06The lead was used to bomb Germany and Japan.
30:09You know, what can you say?
30:10You know, what we use to destroy those places destroyed this place.
30:24And it's destroyed today.
30:35It's five decades into a life after people.
30:40Trains loaded with cargo are deteriorating rapidly.
30:46Some of them carry chlorine.
30:50In the time of humans, it was used for disinfecting drinking water and swimming pools and manufacturing plastics.
30:59But chlorine can be deadly.
31:02And these aging cargo trains aren't well protected.
31:05The outer steel shell is only one tenth of an inch thick.
31:10The insulation, four inches of plastic.
31:15Half of them are already over 20 years old with a life expectancy of about 50 years.
31:21That assumes, of course, that they're constantly inspected, they're constantly maintained and cleaned.
31:27Weakened by corrosion, the undercarriage gives way.
31:37Most of that car empties in a matter of less than an hour.
31:41And that means that the cloud of chlorine would be very, very dense and therefore extremely deadly.
31:49Heavier than air, chlorine gas advances over ground like a killer fog.
31:55Immediately, instantaneously, you can't keep your eyes open and you can't breathe any longer.
32:02And, of course, wildlife would have no clue.
32:05And if chlorine gas touches water on a tree, in a lake, or even on an animal, it immediately turns into acid.
32:16It would continue to acidify that water and not only kill the fish and turtles and other vegetation in the water,
32:24but probably result in a long-term death of that system and the aquatic life in it.
32:33In 2005, a rail accident in Graniteville, South Carolina, released 90 tons of chlorine gas into the environment,
32:41about half the cargo load's capacity.
32:44Nine people died and another 250 had to be treated for chlorine exposure.
32:49Specialist teams needed two weeks to decontaminate a one-mile radius around the site.
32:58The gas was only, again, partially released and it wasn't in a populated area.
33:03Even those that survived were horrified.
33:08Without people to maintain the cargo trains, these deadly vapours will continue to be unleashed around the world.
33:1960 years after people.
33:30A freight ship grounded in the Niagara River is leaking iron ore, releasing a red stain into the water.
33:41In the time of humans, no commodity was carried over the Great Lakes more than iron ore.
33:46The largest ships, known as lakers, can hold 75,000 tons.
33:53But they also draw more than 30 feet of water when afloat.
33:59Too deep for parts of the river closest to the falls.
34:07Five decades after people, a laker is heading towards the falls.
34:10But this one won't get caught in the shallows.
34:14The ones most likely to make it towards the lip of the Niagara Falls are ships riding high, like this one, out of ballast and carrying no cargo.
34:26That means they're hardly drawing any water, maybe five or ten feet.
34:29It approaches the edge, once a famous spot for newlyweds.
34:37For this ship, the honeymoon is over.
34:41They're not armoured. They're not like a battleship.
34:43In fact, the shells are quite thin.
34:45As it reaches the edge, the front half sheers off and tumbles over.
34:49The back soon follows.
34:53Incredibly, the 200-foot ship is actually longer than the falls is high.
34:58350 miles to the south, the MetLife building is also falling to pieces.
35:12When it opened in 1963, the building's 58 floors meant it stood as the seventh tallest in the United States.
35:23It will soon give up its place on Park Avenue.
35:27Because it's built in a rather exposed area, it's going to get more wind, it's going to get more rain than a typical New York City skyscraper.
35:36Already weakened by the methane explosion at its base, six decades of neglect have also assaulted the building's steel and glass facade.
35:51Death will come a piece at a time as sections of the framework peel away.
35:58This means the neighbouring Grand Central building is in the line of fire.
36:02Grand Central Terminal has a near mortal enemy right next door.
36:09And I certainly expect to see sections of the facade of the MetLife building actually falling onto the roof.
36:16As glass and steel rain down, has Grand Central Terminal reached the end of the line?
36:24150 years after people.
36:39In New York City, after a gas explosion and having gradually lost the steel from its top floors over a period of decades,
36:45the MetLife building finally begins to collapse.
36:52A giant section falls southwards, tumbling onto the roof of Grand Central Terminal.
37:00Despite the attack, Grand Central's four granite walls still stand.
37:05The outside walls are actually very thick granite. They hold themselves up.
37:13The granite itself is the structure of the building.
37:20Here you have a building, Grand Central Terminal, that was more than 50 years old when the MetLife building,
37:26originally the Pan Am building, was built next to it.
37:31And yet, even with that head start on ageing,
37:35Grand Central Terminal will still be recognisable as a building 250 years, maybe even 500 years after people.
37:45175 years after people.
37:54175 years after people.
37:59At nuclear power plants around the world, fires in the spent fuel pools burned out long ago.
38:05Still looming over these sites are the iconic cooling towers that symbolized man's mastery over the atom.
38:15Plant life clings to the rusting steel lattice frame that surrounds the concrete.
38:22Many nuclear plants are in agricultural areas.
38:25You're going to get a lot of blowing soil and seeds coming in there very quickly.
38:30A steel lattice ring at the base supports the width of the 500-foot-high concrete structure.
38:37But it doesn't have any strength left.
38:40As soon as a structure of this type begins to fail, it fails spectacularly.
38:46The ring would tilt and the tower would slide right off the ring and collapse in a heap.
38:54It would not come down vertically, it would slide and tip and fail.
38:59Man's once mighty power plants of the future are reduced to rubble.
39:101500 years after people.
39:16The American side of Niagara Falls is undergoing a dramatic transformation.
39:22For centuries, the Niagara River split at Goat Island, creating two cascades.
39:31The American Falls, called Niagara.
39:36And the Horseshoe Falls, on the Canadian side.
39:39Like all waterfalls, Niagara Falls is really not a thing. It's an event.
39:46It's water flowing over a series of brinks that are eventually moving backwards.
39:53As water cascades over a fall, it erodes the rock beneath and moves its brink upstream.
40:00About 900 years ago, there was a single waterfall that went across like this.
40:10And because there is actually a double channel above,
40:14about 90% of the flow of the water came over this side.
40:18The Canadian Falls.
40:22In the time of humans, the Horseshoe Falls eroded away by about a foot a year.
40:27And because much more water gushed over the Horseshoe Falls,
40:32that side eroded much faster than the American side, Niagara Falls.
40:39After people, the Horseshoe Falls are moving backwards even faster,
40:44nearly six feet every year,
40:46because there are no longer any power plants to divert water from the falls.
40:51Once the Horseshoe erodes upstream of Goat Island,
40:55you'll no longer have any water at all going over the American Falls.
41:00For Niagara Falls, life after people will be a life after water.
41:07Earth moves on.
41:11And man's toxic legacy lessens with every passing year.
41:15Buried in the silt, covered over by grass and trees,
41:19and carried away by the tide in a life after people.
41:22and carried away by the tide in a life after people.
41:27life after people, and been in kadere in a life after people.
41:29Episode 1
41:32The
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