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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.
00:15It's the story of what happens to the world we leave behind.
00:23In this episode of Life After People, humanity takes a holiday.
00:27What will remain when Christmas is past?
00:33These turkeys avoid the plate, but will they live to see another Thanksgiving?
00:39And what will happen to mankind's holiday destinations?
00:44This one has already become a holiday hell.
00:49Welcome to Earth. Population Zero.
00:574th episode of Life After People
01:03Throughout history, mankind marked the passing of time with special holidays.
01:13Days of celebration.
01:16Places of escape.
01:19escape. But now, the party is over. One day, after people. It's still Christmas at Detroit's
01:41always Christmas shop. The lights sparkle. The animated Santas and snowmen sing carols.
01:56In the time of humans, Christmas spawned its own economy. Each year, at Christmas time,
02:05spent 154 billion dollars. They imported nearly half a billion dollars worth of Christmas
02:13decorations alone. That's more than it cost to launch the space shuttle.
02:21The most iconic symbol of the season was the Christmas tree. But by the 21st century, more
02:27than 60 percent of families put their presents under trees made of aluminium or plastic.
02:37Because of the chemistry of their main ingredient, plastic trees are destined for a long life
02:42after people. This is a very typical artificial Christmas tree. It's primarily made of two
02:52materials, steel or metal, and plastic. You've got wire rods that are covered in PVC or polyvinyl chloride.
03:00PVC is better known as vinyl, the same material that made records and gave cars that new car smell.
03:15Another artifact of Christmas is a traditional holiday food that was both beloved and reviled.
03:22the fruitcake. Invented in the Middle Ages and popularized in Victorian England,
03:31fruitcakes were built to last. A densely packed loaf that didn't need to be refrigerated.
03:41It was often joked that fruitcakes would last forever.
03:46But because of one key ingredient, perhaps that's not a joke at all.
03:52The twinkling Christmas lights dim as the power grid fails.
04:10Two days after people.
04:11Another Christmas icon is in trouble, reindeer.
04:22Although they may seem like a Christmas invention,
04:25reindeer are a domesticated species that live across the Earth's polar regions.
04:30In places like Alaska, they were bred for milk, meat, and even for pulling sleighs.
04:41How they became part of the Christmas story isn't entirely clear.
04:45But many believe the image of Santa's sleigh being pulled by flying reindeer evolved from pagan images of the Norse god Thor.
04:55With his sky chariot being pulled by flying goats.
04:58There are over 30,000 domesticated reindeer in Alaska alone.
05:09But now with no humans to care for them, there is a threat looming nearby.
05:13Will these reindeer live to see another Christmas?
05:26Three days after people.
05:28Another holiday animal also faces tough times.
05:34Turkeys wander hungrily in their pens.
05:39In the time of humans, turkeys were an essential part of American culture.
05:43In fact, founding father Benjamin Franklin wanted the turkey, not the bald eagle, to be the national bird.
05:50By the 21st century, American farms were producing over 270 million turkeys per year.
05:5946 million of them destined to be eaten for Thanksgiving dinner.
06:07With people gone, these turkeys have avoided the axe.
06:12But something humans have done to make turkeys more appealing will also seal their fate.
06:20Tom turkey for the dinner table, just not going to make it.
06:24Selective breeding has created a turkey with massive breasts that meets consumer demand, but threatens supply.
06:33The turkeys' breasts are too big to allow them to fly, too big for males to even be able to mount their mates.
06:42Farm-bred turkeys are actually produced by artificial insemination.
06:46So in order to reproduce, that's not going to happen.
06:52This generation of Thanksgiving turkey may be the last.
06:57One week after people, steel roller coasters that once echoed with screams are now silent.
07:18Theme parks were one of the world's favorite holiday destinations.
07:22Roller coasters first appeared in America in the 1880s, and for nearly a century they were all made of wood.
07:34Although the first steel coaster was built in 1959, it wasn't until the 1970s that a breakthrough in
07:40engineering resulted in the birth of the extreme coaster.
07:46Looping madly scream machines, like the silver bullet at Knott's Berry Farm in Southern California.
07:53The extreme coasters relied on highly engineered steel.
08:03The steels that go into a ride like this have to have certain characters.
08:06Steel is basically about 97 or 98 percent iron, but then like a good soup, it has a few little things
08:12stuck in there, some silicon in it, some manganese, but the most important element is carbon.
08:18You can increase the strength of the steel by adding carbon. It's really a small amount,
08:22but it's a very powerful addition. Adding as little as half a percent of carbon
08:29can make steel two to three times stronger. But even the toughest steel has an ancient enemy.
08:40Rust. If we get a scratch on the ride here, well we go ahead and sand it up and protect it and re-coat it.
08:49Now, without maintenance, a tiny scratch allows rust to take hold on the exposed steel.
09:02Not far away, a bizarre holiday oasis flourishes in the barren desert.
09:10Golf course fairways glisten, water fountains spray,
09:15and power still flows in the getaway of the stars.
09:24Palm Springs, California.
09:26This seems to me to be a place that really doesn't belong here.
09:34You drive around in Palm Springs and you see lawns, you see all these flowers,
09:40there are fountains and ponds. It just seems like this is a bad place to build a so-called civilization.
09:46Despite being built in a barren desert, Palm Springs was crowded with more golf courses
09:56per square mile than any other place in America.
09:59But now, the golf course sprinklers keep the fairways lush and inviting...
10:12...for no one.
10:14There's another bizarre human artifact towering over the desert floor.
10:24It is the Palm Springs aerial tramway.
10:32In the time of humans, it was a tourist attraction that stretched for a mile across five steel towers,
10:38from the desert floor to a mountain peak 8,500 feet above sea level.
10:48But now, the car sits empty, 200 feet in the air, swinging in a breeze overlooking the vacant resort city.
10:55The traffic lights still blink, and the air conditioners still hum in Palm Springs,
11:07because much of the power is still on.
11:12Due to the city's reliance on a massive forest of wind turbines,
11:174,000 of them still spin just outside the resort city.
11:21As long as the wind pushes the blades, electricity keeps pumping out.
11:30These windmills appear to be very simple, but looks can be deceiving.
11:37A wind turbine is a fairly complicated beast.
11:40There's wind speed measuring sensors, wind direction measuring sensors,
11:44and they actually control the pitches of the blades,
11:47so that you're producing the right amount of power all the time.
11:52But high tech demands high maintenance.
11:55You have to have lubricants, you have to have hydraulic fluids.
11:58It's just like in your car, you have to change the oil every so often,
12:02or your motor is going to seize up.
12:03The same thing happens with these things.
12:05If you don't replenish the oil, the lubricants, and the hydraulic fluids,
12:09they're going to quit working.
12:10One week after people, their blades still spin, generating thousands of kilowatts every hour,
12:21every day, every time the wind blows.
12:31But just over the horizon, the winds of destruction
12:34are beginning to howl.
12:51One month after people.
12:54In a series of steel sheds and concrete bunkers in rural Pennsylvania,
12:58thousands of pounds of explosive power sit idle.
13:01In a fireworks factory.
13:08In the time of humans, over 200 million pounds of fireworks were set off annually.
13:14That's twice the explosive power of the nuclear bomb that destroyed Hiroshima.
13:23But now, those fireworks await a celebration that will never come.
13:28Are these explosives in any danger of going off?
13:37It happened at a fireworks factory in Denmark in 2004.
13:41One person was killed and 17 injured.
13:44Over 200 houses were damaged.
13:52The final explosion resembled a nuclear mushroom cloud.
13:58In America, regulations require smaller buildings,
14:06each containing smaller amounts of explosives,
14:09to prevent a massive explosion like the one that occurred in Denmark.
14:12One month after people.
14:21The fireworks and gunpowder lie dormant, behind blast walls in their bunkers.
14:29There will be no fireworks display this year.
14:32In Alaska, these domesticated reindeer are struggling to survive without their human masters.
14:47And the domesticated reindeer are about to come into contact with their larger wild cousins.
14:52Reindeer and caribou are actually the same species, but with one key difference.
15:02Reindeer are domesticated, while caribou run wild.
15:08900,000 caribou range in massive migratory herds across Alaska.
15:13The caribou can migrate up to 3,000 miles in a year.
15:18The caribou are like the lean, mean running machines, and the reindeer are the couch potatoes.
15:23The caribou are actually built for running.
15:25They got long legs, slender bodies.
15:28The reindeer have very short legs, very heavy bodies.
15:31Although they aren't built to travel long distances, reindeer can't help heeding the call of the wild.
15:37Even in the time of humans, domesticated reindeer often disappeared from Alaskan rangeland,
15:46joining the caribou herds as they swept across the countryside.
15:52When they come out onto the rangeland, being migratory animals, being very closely related,
15:57they do intermingle. And when the caribou goes on through their migration,
16:00the reindeer have a tendency to travel along with them.
16:03Now, without humans to tend them, the once sedentary reindeer will join the caribou herds
16:10and face the challenge of a 3,000-mile migration.
16:21Further south, in Glacier Bay, luxury cruise ships rock silently in the harbor.
16:33In the time of humans, hundreds of these ships sailed the inside passage from Vancouver to Seward,
16:38taking half a million visitors annually on a scenic holiday.
16:46But without maintenance, even the small pocket cruise ships face the creeping effects of Alaska's weather.
16:56I think generally during the summer season when most cruise ships are operating,
16:59the cold weather isn't too much of a hazard. But in winter, when it's very, very cold,
17:04when rain freezes on deck during the winter season, that can be hazardous.
17:11As the snow piles up on the decks, sunshine and daytime warming creates a thick sheath of ice,
17:17covering everything from the portholes to the rigging.
17:19It's eerily beautiful. But snow and ice buildup creates a weight that a cruise ship is not designed to bear.
17:29A ship rarely sits completely even in the water. There's going to be one side or the other where
17:37it's leaning a slight bit. And in the lower recesses is where water and snow are going to build up.
17:44And gradually, they're going to make the ship tilt over.
17:46For this ship, the voyage is over.
18:00Six weeks after people. At the San Diego Wild Animal Park, the lions are getting hungry.
18:08A lion can go for two weeks without eating. But it's now been over a month since their last feeding.
18:21The lions are so ravenous, they are willing to test the electrified fence that surrounds their enclosure.
18:29To their surprise, they don't get a shock, since the power grid failed weeks ago.
18:36Now, the biggest obstacle is the moat. The moats are over 18 feet wide.
18:46But lions have been known to leap more than 30 feet. And now, they're free.
18:57The first thing they would do is go for food, whether it's in the zebra enclosure right next door,
19:02or somewhere throughout the park. They would be timid at first,
19:06because they're used to a very small area.
19:10But soon, they would expand their horizons in a search for food.
19:17There is a new king of the urban jungle.
19:20Six months after people.
19:34Some ski runs are beginning to look the way they did before man claimed them as his winter playground.
19:40But strangely, while some ski runs have already seen pine saplings sprout,
19:52others remain mysteriously free of growth, as if still being groomed by human hands.
19:58One year after people.
20:10The wind turbine farms still tower over the desert outside Palm Springs, California.
20:15The steel towers face a worse enemy than rust.
20:22The wind itself.
20:25These wind turbines are designed for a specific range of wind velocities.
20:30If you exceed that velocity, they're essentially going to fly apart.
20:34That's why these windmills were designed with automatic braking systems,
20:38to shut them down during extremely high winds.
20:45But what if those systems fail?
20:48It actually happened in Denmark in 2008.
20:51Now, after a year without maintenance, acres of power-producing windmills are vulnerable to the same fate.
21:13The first time 100-mile-an-hour wind comes through here,
21:16the rotor's going to be spinning faster than it should.
21:19That's going to create vibration.
21:21The turbine's going to probably start to come apart.
21:26You'd see the thing fly off.
21:29And then when it hit the ground, you'd see dust flying,
21:31parts flying everywhere.
21:33You're going to have all sorts of mayhem.
21:4420 years after people, with the windmill farms destroyed,
21:50the power went out long ago in Palm Springs.
21:58The once-bustling resort town is eerily silent.
22:02It's golf courses have returned to sand.
22:06It's hotels empty shells.
22:12We know this because just down the road from Palm Springs is a place where life after people
22:17need to have stopped.
22:2520 years after people top-class hotels are only checking in vermin
22:38once lush golf courses have turned into acres of sand
22:44and luxury swimming pools are now empty cesspits
22:55this is the fate of the vacation destination once called Palm Springs
23:04we know what Palm Springs might look like 20 years after people because there's a
23:09place just like it only 60 miles away where it's already happened
23:16the Salton Sea is the largest lake in California
23:21conceived as a resort paradise for boaters water skiers and holidaymakers
23:27it was once called the next Palm Springs
23:34instead it became an empty wasteland of foul smells abandoned houses and acres of
23:45dead fish
23:46the Salton Sea is one of the most beautiful places from a distance
23:56and one of the most foul feculent places when you get close up
24:05dead fish a nice odor of ammonia and you think this is really hideous
24:12the heyday of the Salton Sea was during the 1960s and 70s
24:22holiday homes popped up like cactus blossoms
24:28crowds thronged the beaches swimming boating and water skiing during the day
24:35and at night sipping martinis at the yacht club
24:41now the crowds at the yacht club are only pigeons
24:56the holiday homes lie open to the elements
25:02and campgrounds look more like burial grounds
25:09look more like burial grounds
25:14these hookups all throughout the campground
25:17they're kind of like tombstones to the dead campground
25:21what happened to turn this lush oasis
25:27into an apocalyptic wasteland
25:34it began in the 1970s
25:38masses of fish suddenly died floating to the surface by the thousands
25:46the reason for the dead fish was agricultural runoff from local farms
25:52because of all these fertilizers running in there we get this tremendous growth of algae
25:59and as this algae dies it falls to the bottom
26:03and it creates a layer in the bottom of the sea where there's no oxygen
26:06so we have bacteria that are eating all this dead organic matter and creating hydrogen sulfide gas
26:13hydrogen sulfide is a gas that is as toxic as cyanide
26:19causing extreme damage to the central nervous system
26:23eventually destroying the ability to breathe
26:26it was so deadly it was used as a poison gas during the first world war
26:37it's just as deadly today
26:40and at times it can kill millions of fish
26:43a few years ago about seven million fish died at once
26:46the fish continued to die
26:51then the birds that ate the fish also got sick and died
26:57residents claimed they could smell and taste the gas in the air
27:04people stopped coming to the Salton Sea
27:09at its height the population of Salton Sea was around 15,000 people
27:13with thousands more arriving on weekends
27:16but holiday homes were abandoned
27:21resort development stopped in mid-construction
27:26mobile homes
27:30boats
27:32even the yacht clubs
27:34all left behind
27:37today where thousands once lived and played
27:42only a few hundred people remain in each of the tiny shoreside communities
27:47surrounded by the ruins of holiday homes
27:52decades after being abandoned the effects of water sun and salt
27:58are clear
28:05this is an old trailer
28:07I think it's an airstream trailer
28:09and it's been exposed to the environment for 40 or 50 years at least
28:13after people are gone
28:16once one of the doors starts flopping in the wind
28:19or perhaps one of the windows breaks
28:21and the environment enters this trailer
28:24the whole thing just becomes food for the environment
28:32all the materials that are composite or man-made are falling apart
28:37this here is like masonite or particle board
28:39it's decaying much more rapidly than the solid timber
28:42like the people vanishing from the toxic sea
28:49the structural elements slowly disappear from the houses
28:57this is about a 40 or 50 year old building
29:00and although we still have some structure frame in place
29:03there's not much left
29:06once the roof went away the windows are gone
29:08the windows are gone
29:09I don't see any doors
29:10any glass
29:11it's all actually deep
29:12several feet down
29:13underneath the salt and sand
29:22ultimately
29:23it'll go back to being desert
29:25with a lot of garbage on it
29:29but in this desert of a future
29:31time and nature may lead to a bigger than ever fireworks display
29:3620 years after people
29:50vines and trees have covered up or broken through the concrete and steel bunkers
29:55of what was once a fireworks factory
29:57fireworks were a dangerous way to celebrate
30:03in the time of humans on average fireworks injured nearly 10,000 people a year
30:08now it's late summer
30:11dry heat
30:12and a wildfire begins to burn out of control through the woods
30:17the fire reaches the edges of the fireworks factory
30:22for a decade water has dripped or flooded into the steadily deteriorating bunkers
30:31gunpowder easily absorbs water
30:36but wet gunpowder takes on a strange characteristic
30:39after it dries out it becomes more volatile
30:42the finely milled powder clumps together burning less evenly
30:47and sometimes exploding more powerfully
30:49now flames lick through cracks in the walls and the powder ignites
30:56the fire spreads from bunker to bunker where thousands of pounds of prepared fireworks lie dormant
31:06these explosives were destined for over a hundred different fireworks displays
31:13now they all go off at once
31:17across the country real snow mixes with artificial flocking at detroit's always christmas shop
31:28soil has built up on the floor of the showroom
31:33and in a nearby aisle
31:36fruitcakes still rest
31:38they owe their longevity to one key ingredient
31:43alcohol
31:44one of mankind's oldest disinfectants
31:47the combination of rum or brandy with dense flour actually creates an anaerobic environment
31:55an oxygen free interior that inhibits microbe growth
31:59twenty years after people the fruitcake shows no sign of decay
32:06maybe fruitcakes will last forever
32:10but the classic christmas reindeer long ago swept up in caribou migrations
32:16have disappeared
32:20while some have interbred with their wild caribou cousins
32:23most died out quickly after people
32:26although reindeer and caribou are the same species
32:30there's a fundamental difference that caused many of the females to drop out of the herd within the first year
32:36reindeer have their calves one month before caribou
32:41they will start falling behind during their calving seasons
32:45and fall prey to the bear and wolves
32:48the reindeer species is gone
33:09fifty years after people
33:11a mystery remains on the ski slopes
33:14while some ski runs have completely reverted to nature
33:18others are strangely clear
33:20as if groomed just yesterday
33:23the reason
33:25slopes originally cleared without heavy machinery recover quickly
33:29but those that were intensively engineered or graded defy the return of nature
33:37graded ski runs
33:40they're machine graded with heavy equipment like bulldozers and scrapers things like that
33:45a lot of the topsoil is scraped away or buried beneath the subsoil
33:50and the soils are compacted by the machinery
33:52so there's reduced soil depth for plant rooting
33:55as well as the soils being compacted makes it harder for plant roots to grow there
34:01these ski runs will remain just as humans left them
34:04for a very long time
34:10in southern california a new top cat enjoys his spot in the sun
34:18having escaped from the san diego wild animal park
34:21the african lions have spread out and adapted to their new environment
34:28we've got predatory cats that size from san diego to santa barbara
34:32real easy to get places on the freeways get off the freeways into open savannahs
34:36perfect environment for them
34:38there's a lot of ranches in the area
34:40they would be able to take down cows
34:42horses
34:44lions can eat up to 75 pounds at one sitting
34:49that's an entire baby calf from hooves to head at a single meal
34:53they would be an apex predator of southern california
34:59and they might in enough time evolve into a new american lion
35:03a new american lion
35:14eighty years after people
35:18in detroit
35:20at the always christmas shop
35:22it's beginning to look a lot less like christmas
35:25one hundred years after people
35:38the one hundred and fifty foot tall curves of knott's berry farm's silver bullet
35:46are about to reach breaking point
35:48incredibly this coasters doom comes from the inside
35:55due to a surprising feature hidden in its design
36:01to keep this noisy ride from disturbing the theme parks neighbors
36:05engineers filled each of the rails of the thirteen hundred foot long roller coaster
36:09with sand
36:11this actually cuts down the rides decibel level by at least a half
36:16it's actually if you've heard it run it's extremely quiet ride
36:28but hairline cracks in the roller coaster's steel
36:31after a hundred years of neglect
36:34signal the end of this ride
36:37if you get water in there
36:40then you'll trap it in there and that will probably accelerate corrosion on the inside
36:45water
36:47water
36:48trapped by the sand speeds up internal corrosion in the rails
36:52weakening the steel
36:54including
36:55the bolts
36:57it's the connections that start to fail first
37:01that's almost true in any structure
37:02bolts snap
37:06steel bends
37:08and the entire track begins to wave crazily
37:15this extreme roller coaster makes its final plunge
37:17this extreme roller coaster makes its final plunge
37:28120 years after people
37:30the winter resort destination of palm springs has reverted completely to desert
37:37where snowbirds and the retired once lounged by the pool
37:41sand yucca and mesquite cover almost all the remnants of civilization
37:49yet the aerial tramway still stands
37:52five giant steel towers once supported the cable cars that ferried holidaymakers up 8,500 feet
38:04the steel has survived for over a century
38:07but one thing will set up a catastrophic chain reaction
38:11a constant steady corrosion at the base of each tower
38:20the problem begins with the cable itself
38:23the track cables on this tram
38:26are almost three inches in diameter
38:28those are huge those are really big cables and they're not one piece of wire
38:32there are many many pieces of wire wrapped around each other in a rope fashion
38:36but the constant steady pressure of a hanging cable car
38:41and over a century of erosion on the tightly wound wires
38:46finally causes the cable to snap
38:52it is the first of a cascade of catastrophes
38:56the crashing gondola swings down into tower number one
39:00the rust weakened tower cannot withstand the impact
39:03and it begins to collapse
39:06and as that tower fell
39:08its liable to put too much torque on the next tower
39:10which would then pull it over
39:12and then its liable to put too much torque on the next tower
39:14which would pull it over
39:15and so on up the mountain
39:16you'd have that domino effect
39:17if one tower fell then it would daisy chain up
39:22five towers connected by two miles of cable
39:25pull each other down from the bedrock of the mountain
39:28and fall in an avalanche of rubble dust and twisted metal
39:35a hundred and thirty years after people
39:49nearly all signs of human holidays have been wiped off the face of the earth
39:54but like a ghost of Christmas past
40:01the fruitcake lives on
40:04protected by its anaerobic mix of sugar, flour and alcohol
40:11in fact the oldest recorded fruitcake in the time of humans
40:15was more than a hundred and thirty years old
40:17it was baked in 1878 by an elderly grandmother who died shortly after it came out of the oven
40:24and the family couldn't part with it
40:27in 2003 the baker's great-grandson presided over a tasting of the cake
40:34where it was deemed to be still edible
40:38now as fruitcakes continue to defy decay
40:53throughout America wild turkeys continue to roam
40:56these are the descendants of mankind's thanksgiving turkeys
41:00but not the ones eaten by modern Americans
41:03they are the lean and fast native breed that was eaten by the pilgrims at the first thanksgiving
41:13the creature that Benjamin Franklin thought should be the national bird
41:17lives on as a feathered reminder of holidays past
41:22in a life after people
41:25in a life after people
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