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00:00What would happen if every human being on Earth disappeared?
00:11This isn't the story of how we might vanish.
00:16It's the story of what happens to the world we leave behind.
00:24In this episode of Life After People, we consider the relentless power of water.
00:30It threatens to destroy everything in its path and erase mankind's greatest masterpieces.
00:37But why will this abandoned mining colony withstand the destructive effects of water and outlast Earth's greatest cities?
00:46And how will the river of oil flowing through the Alaskan pipeline break free?
00:51Welcome to Earth.
00:57Population zero.
01:00Man always struggled to contain and harness the raw power of water.
01:16On a planet where more than 70% of the surface is covered by oceans, lakes and rivers, it was a never-ending battle.
01:25Now, man is gone, and along the planet's more than 220,000 miles of coastline and millions of miles of waterways, a raging force is ready to break free.
01:39One day after people, in the Californian state capital of Sacramento, where an action hero once presided over the eighth-largest economy in the world, there is about to be a watery disaster.
01:57Big enough to rival any Hollywood blockbuster to rival any Hollywood blockbuster.
02:15In 2005, the world witnessed water's devastating power when Hurricane Katrina's storm surge overpowered man-made levees, destroying much of New Orleans.
02:32Sacramento has many of the same vulnerabilities.
02:35Every winter and spring, heavy rains and runoff from melting snow in the Sierra Nevada mountains, transform rivers in low-lying Sacramento into deadly torrents.
02:51We're standing at the confluence of the American River and the Sacramento River.
03:03And these two rivers, particularly in this area, are entirely encased by levees, which are placed right against the river.
03:12And that's why Sacramento is the most at-risk large city in the United States.
03:18But raging water isn't the only villain in this developing disaster.
03:27It has thousands of accomplices already working to worsen the impending disaster.
03:34Rodents are the nemesis of levees out here.
03:37You have ground squirrels that make these networks of burrows, and the worst of them all is the beavers.
03:41In 2008, animal tunnels were believed to be one of the main causes of a levee failure in the town of Fernley, Nevada.
03:53The raging waters flooded 600 homes and caused an estimated $4 million worth of damage.
04:00Sacramento's levees share a dangerous floor with those in Fernley.
04:08The earthen flood banks were originally built by farmers more than a hundred years ago.
04:13Without repairs by human crews, it won't take long for the water to find a way through.
04:18Across the planet, in the Netherlands, more than a quarter of the country is below sea level.
04:30During the time of humans, about 60% of the population, almost 10 million people, lived in these vulnerable areas.
04:38To counter the threat of flooding, the Dutch built a sophisticated flood defence system.
04:50Now, the city of Rotterdam lies empty.
04:53In the Boymans Museum, works by Rembrandt, Van Gogh and other Dutch masters worth millions of dollars still hang on the wall.
05:07But the building sits less than 10 feet above sea level.
05:11A massive storm surge barrier between Rotterdam and the North Sea holds the key to the city's survival.
05:34Two days after people.
05:36Back in North America, the port of Valdez, Alaska, is eerily quiet.
05:43In the time of humans, tankers came here to fill up with oil.
05:49The oil had flowed 800 miles down the Transalaskan pipeline.
05:54If laid out elsewhere in America, it would stretch from Chicago to Dallas.
05:58This man-made river of oil was pumped from Alaska's North Slope, across three mountain ranges and 34 major rivers, to holding tanks in Valdez.
06:13There were up to 9 million barrels of oil inside the pipeline at any given time.
06:18At its peak, the pipeline was moving about 2 million barrels a day of oil down the pipeline.
06:25The production on the North Slope has declined considerably, so it's moving about 700,000 barrels a day down the line now.
06:32The hum of the pump stations along the pipeline stops as their fuel and electricity runs out.
06:41But the gurgling sound of moving liquid can still be heard in Valdez.
06:50It's travelling from a storage tank elevated several hundred feet above the water line to one of the tankers below.
06:56It's here where the river of oil breaks free.
07:04If a ship were loading, then it could continue to load the tank's gravity feed down to the ship.
07:13So they would continue to run and potentially one of the tanks on the ship would overflow.
07:20Millions of gallons of black death drain into the harbour.
07:24The tens of thousands of birds and marine mammals near Valdez have witnessed this before.
07:36In 1989, the Exxon Valdez disaster took place a few miles offshore, in Prince William Sound.
07:44Then, about 11 million gallons were spilled.
07:47Now, this overflowing tanker drowns the harbour with almost twice as much oil.
07:58And as hundreds of millions more gallons sit in the 800 miles of pipeline, another disaster awaits.
08:052,800 miles away, near Chicago, a dangerous fish is continuing its pernicious invasion.
08:21In the time of humans, along vast stretches of the Mississippi River and its tributaries,
08:26the introduced Asian carp terrorised people by leaping out of the water whenever boats came near.
08:32We've heard many times about people being injured down on the Illinois River, broken jaws, broken clavicles,
08:43being knocked unconscious, knocked off their jet ski or personal watercraft.
08:48So, yeah, these are really changing the way people are able to recreate on the rivers.
08:52The plant-eating Asian carp were originally introduced into America from Asia in the 1960s by catfish farmers looking for a cheap and safe way to keep their ponds clean.
09:10But the carp began escaping during floods in the 1980s and started heading north.
09:15Now they're making their way into the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, which leads to Lake Michigan.
09:31Man feared that if the carp made it into the Great Lakes, they would kill off the desirable fish by devouring their food supply.
09:38So it's here that America made its last stand against the Asian carp.
09:46Fish approaching this part of the canal were in for a nasty shock.
09:51A series of virtual fences built by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers created an electric current in the water.
10:00When a fish approaches, the further it goes into the barrier, the larger the electrical shock it feels.
10:06And at some point in time, the fish realises it's getting worse as I move forward.
10:10So it turns around and it goes back the way it came.
10:11But once the power goes out, can anything stop the invasion of this jumping fish?
10:19One week after people.
10:29Half a world away in Australia sits one of the most iconic buildings on the planet, the Sydney Opera House.
10:37During the time of humans, the four and a half acre building used as much electricity as a town of 25,000 people.
10:46The 160,000 tonne building appears to float at the edge of the harbour.
10:52But it's supported by 580 reinforced concrete pilings sunk up to 82 feet below sea level.
11:01The Opera House once hosted around 3,000 events a year.
11:06But now there's just one final long running show.
11:14The slow decay of the building itself.
11:20The salty water of Sydney Harbour causes the most damage.
11:24It attacks the reinforced concrete pilings.
11:26The most vulnerable section of the pilings is known as the splash zone.
11:35In the splash zone, where you have repeated wet dry cycles,
11:40the worst conditions are present because you have the sulphates attacking the cement paste on the outside.
11:45And you have chlorides that are coming in contact with oxygen to help get the corrosion of steel going on.
11:55The building is best known for its distinctive roof.
11:59For now, the soaring ceramic tile covered shells at the top of the Opera House are well sealed from the salty harbour air.
12:07But the design feature that made these elegantly curved sails possible,
12:12now holds the secret to their future.
12:23One week after people.
12:25Outside this nondescript building on the industrial canal near Chicago,
12:30emergency generators have kept the electric barriers buzzing.
12:33But now, the generators have consumed their last drop of fuel.
12:40For the Asian carp, the pathway to the Great Lakes seems wide open.
12:46In the coming days, they'll begin heading towards Chicago and a vast new feeding ground in Lake Michigan.
12:54One week after people, the relentless power of water is slowly beginning to take its toll on the world's most famous buildings.
13:07But this rogue force can also strike quickly, threatening to plunge an entire city underwater.
13:14One month after people.
13:27Coastlines around the world have gone dark.
13:31Moonlight casts an eerie glow across the ocean.
13:34But in the surf off Los Angeles, strange lights twinkle in the sea.
13:45On the Santa Monica Pier, the Ferris wheel still blazes with 160,000 LED lights.
13:52First installed in 2008, they flash in computer controlled patterns that can be seen from more than 10 miles away.
14:04The Ferris wheel on the Santa Monica Pier is run on solar power.
14:07And as long as those solar panels are active, they can keep powering those LED lights.
14:15But now that people are gone, how long will the light show last?
14:19And will the pier be able to withstand the relentless pounding of the waves?
14:30In the Netherlands, evidence of man's long struggle to control water is all around.
14:35From small dikes and quaint windmills to massive coastal barriers.
14:43The largest barriers, often equipped with huge metal storm surge gates,
14:48were built after a devastating flood in 1953.
14:54In that one storm in 1953, there were 2,000 people that drowned.
14:59There was about 10,000 buildings that were flooded and damaged.
15:02Tremendous amount of devastation to the infrastructure.
15:12Rotterdam is one of the most vulnerable Dutch cities.
15:17Near the city centre, priceless works by Rembrandt and Van Gogh hang in the Boymans Museum just a few feet above sea level.
15:24In the time of humans, two massive floodgates protected the city by shutting out any storm surges from the North Sea.
15:34They're some of the largest moving structures on Earth.
15:38Each gate is 70 feet high and almost 700 feet long.
15:43They're connected to enormous ball joints by steel trusses so massive that it's as if two Eiffel towers had been re-engineered to move the mammoth gates.
15:48But now, as a new storm slams ashore, the gates sit idle.
15:51Rotterdam fills with water from two directions.
15:54The rivers are flowing to the North Sea, and the surge is raising up the elevation of the water in the North Sea, and so what's coming down has no place to go.
16:00And it just continues to raise higher and higher.
16:01The surge is rising up the volcano over the North Sea, and the surge is rising up the elevation of the water in the North Sea, and so what's coming down has no place to go, and it just continues to raise higher and higher.
16:30Water infiltrates the museum and washes away some of mankind's greatest cultural treasures.
16:52One year after people.
16:55Near Chicago, the electric barrier keeping the Asian carp out of Lake Michigan is gone.
17:03In the time of humans, the carp seriously injured people by panicking and jumping out of the water when boats came by.
17:13Now, the electric barrier has been gone for almost a year, and yet the marine invaders haven't taken over the lake.
17:22There are other man-made barriers blocking their way to the Great Lakes, the largest freshwater system in the world.
17:31The main one is the Chicago Harbor Lock, designed to let boats pass while keeping the Chicago River from flowing into Lake Michigan.
17:39Two sets of gates reach all the way to the bottom, 35 feet below.
17:48The lock gates are 71 years old, and they're just made out of steel, riveted steel.
17:56Below the water line, the lock gates are in a very stable environment.
18:00They're in fresh water, so they tend to be in fairly good shape.
18:04Roughly below the water line, going up past the water line or close to the air, other parts that tend to corrode a lot.
18:09The invaders are turned back at the gates, for now.
18:18Three years after people, in Sacramento, there's no action movie star to come to the rescue.
18:33The city is on the verge of a blockbuster disaster.
18:42Without maintenance, the earthen levees are threatening to burst.
18:46An area south of the city centre, known as the Pocket, is particularly vulnerable.
18:51In this neighbourhood of Sacramento, the houses are extremely close to the levee.
18:58In some places, they're right up against the levee on one side.
19:01We don't have much land on the water side, so the water is right up against the levee on the other side.
19:10As the river level rises during a winter rainstorm, the first signs of flooding come not from above, but below.
19:17One way that levees can fail is if water seeps underneath the levee.
19:24And the land in this area has a much coarser material under the levee that allows water to seep through very easily.
19:32Water bubbles up near the homes.
19:36Without maintenance crews to shore up the weak spots, disaster strikes.
19:40It actually lubricates the area underneath the levee and makes a material that it can slide on.
19:47And the entire levee in that section could actually slide landward.
19:51We would have such a massive amount of water flowing through very quickly that the houses near that would be completely wiped out and ripped from their foundations.
20:00In other areas of Sacramento, water spills over the levees.
20:08Breaches quickly spread.
20:13To the north of the city, Sacramento's airport is inundated by more than ten feet of water.
20:18So you come out to the airport after this flood where everybody's disappeared.
20:25The water would be up to the wings, over the wings of the airplanes.
20:28I mean, you might see the tails sticking out.
20:30The downtown area is more elevated, but there's still about five feet of water surrounding the state capital.
20:46For some of the dogs that have managed to survive the first three years after people, this new water world presents a deadly challenge.
20:53In 2005, Hurricane Katrina killed or left homeless an estimated 600,000 animals, including thousands of dogs.
21:08Many of the dogs were trapped inside flooded houses.
21:13For those breeds with short limbs and barrel chests, the chances of survival were very slim.
21:21A good example of this would be the bulldog.
21:24They have oversized heads and chests, and they're a flat-faced dog with a reduced respiratory system.
21:31So it's very unusual for a bulldog to exercise in long distances or swim for long distances.
21:38Now, with most of Sacramento underwater, retrievers, Labradors and other well-proportioned swimming dogs adapt easily to the city's repeated floods.
21:47But other specialized breeds have been wiped out.
21:57Twenty miles away, there's another watery disaster building in the foothills above Sacramento.
22:04It threatens to deliver an even greater wave of devastation.
22:07Three years after people, the introduced Asian carp is trying to enter Lake Michigan at the Chicago Harbor Lock.
22:28These fish were viewed as such a menace that in 2009 American officials tried to eradicate them by pouring poison into a canal where they bred.
22:41Enough to kill 100 tons of fish.
22:44Now, if these invaders can make it past the huge steel barriers, they may finally rule the largest freshwater system on the planet.
22:58The Great Lakes.
23:04And after several changes of season, a weakness in the very center of the lock gates is providing an opening.
23:10The things that would probably break down first on our lock gates would be the rubber seals.
23:16Ice causes a lot of damage and actually rips the seals off without much of an effort at all.
23:21Where the seals were, thousands of smaller carp now stream through a six-inch gap and into the lake with its enormous new food supply.
23:32With each female capable of carrying two and a half million eggs at a time, is there anything left on Earth that can stop this marauding invader?
23:42Four years after people.
23:55In Sydney Harbour near the Opera House, trouble is brewing for another engineering marvel.
24:01The Sydney Harbour Bridge, nicknamed the Coathanger by locals, is one of the tallest steel arch bridges in the world.
24:12It was built with the ability to expand and contract.
24:16The bridge towers 430 feet above the harbour water, but in Australia's extreme heat, the steel arch grows by about a foot during the day, shrinking back to its original size at night.
24:31After four years in the strong sun and salty air of Sydney Harbour, signs of corrosion are everywhere.
24:41And corrosion in one particular area could eventually spell doom for this massive structure.
24:50The Coathanger has hinges to allow the bridge to expand as it heats up.
24:55The hinges are at each end of the massive single arch.
24:58But corrosion may soon cause the hinges to lock together.
25:09What will happen if the bridge loses its ability to expand and contract?
25:22Back in Lake Michigan, a year after Asian carp began streaming in,
25:25they haven't taken over as expected.
25:29An ancient threat was waiting for them.
25:36The sea lamprey is a freakish-looking, jawless fish.
25:40It attaches to its prey and sucks out their blood and other bodily fluids.
25:44It entered the Great Lakes when Lake Erie was connected to the St. Lawrence Seaway.
25:51During the time of humans, enormous efforts were made to keep the sea lamprey from devastating the sport fishing population.
25:58The Great Lakes Fisher Commission and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service currently spend about 16 to 19 million dollars annually controlling the numbers of these fish.
26:11If that control went away, their numbers would increase greatly.
26:19So instead of taking over the Great Lakes, the Asian carp come face to face with the sea lamprey.
26:25For years, people tried to control which types of fish thrived in these waters.
26:32Now, two species accidentally introduced by humans have taken over.
26:37Ten years after people.
26:54On the Pacific coast, the famous solar-powered ferris wheel on Santa Monica Pier is still lighting up the night.
27:00But during the day, the pounding the pier has taken over the years is showing.
27:10In the time of humans, maintenance crews constantly replaced damaged planks.
27:17Ten years down the road, definitely see the deck deteriorate.
27:22We can have some sinking buildings.
27:24The elevation of those buildings sinking through the pier.
27:26Not all at once, but a corner here, a corner there, a side here, half of it there.
27:32And little by little, these buildings could basically just sink through the pier.
27:41Finally, the nightly light show from the ferris wheel comes to an end.
27:46The solar panels and most of the LED lights could be expected to last 20 to 25 years.
27:51But after a decade without maintenance, the system's inverter, which converts the solar power's DC current into usable AC electricity, finally stops working.
28:04Three years after people, the failed levees of Sacramento created a catastrophic flood on a scale matching Hurricane Katrina's destruction of New Orleans.
28:22But now, ten years after people, an even greater wave of devastation looms.
28:29Twenty miles away, the water level at Folsom Dam is dangerously high.
28:36Without people, the 1950s-era dam has accumulated silt and debris around the flood gate.
28:41The water is now about 400 feet higher in elevation than Sacramento.
28:48And a new winter storm is adding water faster than it can flow out.
28:56If the dam over top, then as the water flowed around the sides of the dam, it would start eroding the abutments to the dam.
29:02And could very likely result in a failure of the dam itself.
29:09As the churning storm waters erode the earthen sides of the dam, they undermine the rest of the structure.
29:19The avalanche of water and debris soon reaches Sacramento.
29:23The levees would be completely destroyed and overtopped.
29:28Water would flow through the entire city of Sacramento.
29:32And probably all infrastructure within the city would be completely destroyed.
29:37At the airport, decaying planes become projectiles, slamming into the surrounding buildings.
29:43But as water destroys some of man's cities, could this abandoned site in the middle of nowhere become the last surviving town on the planet?
30:02Of towns with more than a few hundred people, Pyramiden on the Norwegian island of Svalbard was once the northernmost on earth.
30:17It's just 800 miles from the North Pole.
30:23Reaching this remote town requires an epic journey.
30:27A four-hour flight north from Oslo, followed by another four hours through the choppy, cold Arctic sea.
30:39And for those adventurous enough to reach Pyramiden, the dangers don't end there.
30:48Any group going ashore must be armed with a rifle to fend off marauding polar bears.
30:54You could get killed.
30:56The last year was 1995.
30:59Two different people got killed in two different locations.
31:02So they are potential very, very dangerous.
31:08500 miles north of the Norwegian mainland, between the chilling waves and sharp mountain peaks, lies the abandoned former Soviet mining town.
31:17I'm sitting in what was essentially the town square of a mining community.
31:32There were once about 1,400 people living here.
31:35This was, until 1998, an active coal mine.
31:39The Russians bought it from the Swedes in 1927, and they still own it.
31:46The mine is called the Pyramiden coal mine, or pyramids, because the mountain peaks around us take the shape of pyramids.
31:54For the workers and their families, life in Pyramiden was one of structured isolation.
32:05They had six days working week, and normally they had Sundays off.
32:11And they did that for two years.
32:13They eat at the mess hall.
32:15They got everything they needed here.
32:16Beyond Lenin's gaze in the town square, the abandoned buildings sit frozen in time.
32:26There are no families to enter or leave the once crowded dormitories.
32:35No workers to operate the industrial machinery.
32:37No one to use the sports equipment still standing in the gymnasium, next to the dry tiles of the indoor pool.
32:54There's still coal in the mountains above Pyramiden.
32:58But retrieving it proved to be more trouble than it was worth.
33:01People here left because it was no longer economically feasible to mine the coal.
33:08The coal mine itself, the seam of the coal, was way up near the top of those peaks.
33:16And it was a fairly thin seam of coal, so the Russians could not make a commercial business out of it and closed it down.
33:23The empty buildings of Pyramiden are now waging their own cold war for survival in the freezing Arctic climate.
33:35But there are certain advantages to being in the land of the polar bear.
33:39The Arctic temperatures are preserving the man-made structures here.
33:45Basically, time slows down.
33:48Think of the food in your refrigerator.
33:49You put food in the freezer and its deterioration rate slows down.
33:55Doesn't stop, but it slows down greatly.
34:01Although Pyramiden is on the coast, the low temperatures keep most of the moisture out of the air.
34:06In a temperate climate, water gets into buildings.
34:12It then freezes, expands, cracks the building system, cracks the walls, cracks the bricks.
34:20It allows mold to grow and then fungi and then plants themselves.
34:25Here, that's going to happen over decades rather than over a few years.
34:30The buildings around me have not been occupied since 1998, but they're in almost perfect condition.
34:39So how long will this abandoned mining town last?
34:44It's possible that someday Pyramiden could become the last town on Earth.
34:58Even 200, 300, 400 years from now, this building will probably be recognizable as a building.
35:03And it would not be recognizable as a building in a temperate climate.
35:13It would literally be a little pile of rubble that an archaeologist, maybe coming from another planet, would have to dig through and find that there was once a building there.
35:22But in far less than 200 years, the salty water and moist air of Sydney Harbour will unleash the destructive forces hidden within one of the city's most famous landmarks.
35:3650 years after people.
35:51The devastating waves of a winter storm are tearing into the crumbling Santa Monica Pier.
35:57The solar-powered ferris wheel lighting system stopped working about four decades ago.
36:02And now the rest of the rusting wheel is in trouble.
36:09Powerful waves and strong winds tear away most of the wheel.
36:13But the A-frame base remains.
36:16It's the same principle behind the incredible longevity of the Egyptian pyramids.
36:25A wide base and a narrow top make for an incredibly sturdy design.
36:29Even if the ferris wheel left, that A-frame, I believe, would still be there for, I'd say, a hundred years.
36:36It's such a stout structure.
36:39It's an A-frame.
36:40It's just very strong in that shape, a triangle.
36:4375 years after people.
36:44In Sydney Harbour, the Opera House is becoming unstable.
36:46Hundreds of feet above the crumbling pilings in the harbour, the moist, salty air has slowly eaten away at the building's signature shells.
37:12The iconic roof was built using an innovative technique that made the curved shape strong.
37:19It's a system known as pre-cast, pre-stressed concrete.
37:24Cables are laid in a setting area, stretched as much as six inches over 100 feet.
37:32And as soon as the concrete has cured to the design strength, the cables are cut.
37:37And what happens, it's much like a rubber band.
37:39If you stretch it and let go, they want to snap back together.
37:42But now, the very technique that gave the shells their strength is working against their survival.
37:54It's a steel cable under pressure. It's going to snap.
37:57And as soon as one snaps, you're adding the pressure and the force from that area of the building to another area.
38:04An entire shell rapidly rips itself apart.
38:12As the crumbling shell slams down onto the main deck, the pilings most exposed to the salty water fail and the rest of the structure collapses towards the harbor.
38:24One of the most iconic buildings in the world is headed down under.
38:32One hundred years after people.
38:43Within sight of where the majestic opera house once stood, the Sydney Harbour Bridge is nearing its own demise.
38:50The aging steel is under tremendous stress.
38:53The hinges at each end of the arch once allowed the bridge to expand during hot Australian days.
39:00But they became corroded and locked long ago.
39:04The resulting pressure and severe corrosion finally cause a cascade of crumbling supports.
39:13The bridge collapses into the harbour.
39:35Two hundred years after people.
39:38Inland sections of the Alaskan pipeline have corroded slowly in this cold climate.
39:44But here, it takes more than rusting steel to open the pipeline.
39:50In the time of humans, the many elevated sections of pipeline and their supports were designed not only to withstand the elements, but also strong Alaskan earthquakes.
40:01But two centuries later, the corroding structures are vulnerable.
40:05I imagine you will get an earthquake, and the pipeline, if it's in the line of the earthquake, it's not going to survive.
40:15It's going to have cracks in it.
40:17And when the cracks occur, then you're going to spill everything out.
40:21But because the pieces of pipeline are in one of the coldest parts of the world, away from the devastating effects of water, they may be some of the last remnants of man.
40:31I would say that's going to be one of the long-lasting artifacts of people left behind.
40:37I did a calculation if you had a really low corrosion rate.
40:41Many steel products would last over 2,000 years, 2,500 years.
40:45Five hundred years after people.
40:59Cities in temperate climates have virtually disappeared as they crumbled and became overgrown by plants and trees.
41:06But the abandoned mining town of Pyramiden, on a Norwegian island, just 800 miles from the North Pole, is still recognizable.
41:19Due to the cold, dry climate, it's one of the best preserved towns on the planet.
41:26Unlike the many places where water has unleashed its power for destruction.
41:36Part 2
41:56III
42:00II
42:02You
42:04You
42:05You
42:06You
42:06You
42:06You
42:06You
42:06You
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