Anyone else watching "Life After People?"

[Archae]

On the History Channel.

Good program.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

1. Fascinating, isn't it?

[ThomCat]

2. I was reading an article online about that.

It's depressing to thing that a lot of our waste will still be here at the end of the world, even if we stop producing any more waste.

[MANative]

3. Stunning how much we take for granted about what's

"lasting" and "permanent" in our world. Interesting look at what happened to the Chernobyl cities - a glimpse into a scary future.

[LaStrega]

16. your post reminded me of ...

these photos: http://englishrussia.com/?p=293

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

4. The cats are taking over!

[Fire Walk With Me]

10. I for one welcome our feline overlords.

[Kutjara]

5. Landfill is our legacy.

Be careful what you throw away. It will be how the future judges us.

[alphafemale]

18. And that giant plastic island floating out there in the Pacific.

I'll bet that will remain quite awhile.

[Solon]

6. Its amazing how fast things will fall apart when humans are gone...

I mean, damn.

[Kutjara]

7. Well, just look how fast they're falling apart right now.

And we're still here.

[Solon]

8. Good point, but people don't seem to realize how much of an active part...

we play in maintaining our structures. The Golden Gate would be a rust bucket that would collapse quickly if they didn't make sure it had a fresh coat of paint, and they check it every fucking day. The Effiel Tower gets a fresh coat every 7 years, etc. It seems like most of our structures would collapse if it wasn't for paint.

[Connonym]

9. kind of scary if you think about it

who knew paint was so important?

[Radio_Lady]

11. Good news! I can let the grass grow and not worry about paying the guys who cut it.

Seriously, with an impending dentist visit tomorrow, I don't want to know about Life Without People.

[Name removed]

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[Radio_Lady]

12. I recall a science book I was browsing with my little grandson years ago.

First, it showed the sun shining benevolently on the earth -- everything was beautiful.

Next picture showed the sun dying and EXPANDING OUTWARD in a huge fireball to encompass all of the planets, including earth, scorching everything to a cinder.

The next picture showed the sun IMPLODING and BURNING OUT. The earth and planets were nowhere to be seen and the sun, only a medium sized star, really, was blackened like coal.

Since Michael was only about 6 years old, and I was in my 50s -- and just FREAKIN' scared, I decided not to read the page to him.

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From http://www.frontiernet.net/~docbob/sun.htm

The Death of our Sun

We get up every morning and experience the wonderful light from our sun. We take our medium-sized star for granted and usually don't take the time to think about its life-giving powers. The sun heats our planet, provides the energy for plants and animals to grow, and prevents the earth from becoming a cold, lifeless chunk of rock. It is reassuring to know that during our life time, and the life time of our children, and of their children, our faithful star will continue to shine and support life. However, in the distant future our world and our sun will die a violent death.

Our star, the sun, was born in the heavens about 4.5 billion years ago. Our sun is about 1/3 of the way through its expected life. Scientists are now predicting the following events during the remaining life of our star:

In the next 1.1 billion years, its brightness will increase by 10%. This will super-heat our planet as a result of a severe greenhouse effect. All of the oceans on earth will boil away and all life will be destroyed.

In about 6.5 billion years, our sun will double in brightness and use up all of its supply of hydrogen fuel in its core. This will cause the sun to begin swelling as it uses hydrogen from the layers surrounding the core.

In about 8 billion years the sun will swell to 166 times its present size. This giant star will swallow up Mercury, Venus, and maybe even our Earth. Our sun will then be what scientists call a Red Giant because it will be very large and red in color.

After all hydrogen fuel is used, the sun will begin to use helium as its fuel. This fuel will burn very quickly and only last about 100 million years.

In about 12 billion years, the sun will eject much of its outer layers and become a smoldering, collapsed core that scientists would call a White Dwarf.

This will certainly be a violent end for our sun and the earth. This does not, however, mean the end of the human race. If our science and technology capability continues to advance, we may be able to explore and colonize other worlds. Home, for future humans, may be billions and billions of miles from our home world of earth.

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[SoCalDemGrrl]

14. Awesome & thought provoking!!!

[Phoonzang]

15. Ok, crazy question but..

If 10,000 years could wipe out almost all evidence of our civilization, who's to say that there weren't other intelligent species on the planet in the past? Some intelligent dinosaur race 68 million years ago or something. Not a globe-spanning civilization like ours, but one on a smaller level.

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

19. You mean, like the now-extinct Neandertals?

Intelligent, yet gone.

But yes, there could have been other intelligent species. The TV show focuses on "modern" man, the crumbling of hard artifacts like buildings, roads, sewers, statues.

If an intelligent species were a bit more (what we call) primitive, such as an Amazonian tribe with an oral tradition for knowledge transfer, as opposed to written, then it could vanish without a trace of "civilization". If an Amazonian tribe vanished, and nobody moved into its territory, how long would it take for all traces of it to vanish in the forest? Ten or twenty years? Ok maybe a hundred to recycle the bows, arrows. Another thousand to destroy the pottery. Then it has vanished. So in millions of years, signs of intelligent dinosaurs would be gone. In billions of years, signs of intelligent trilobytes would be gone. In a few Brazillion years, signs of intelligent life in the oval office would be gone.

[alphafemale]

20. Conquered indiginous people may have ONCE had a written language.

It would only require an invader to destroy all physical, written history and then to separate the children from it to remove all memory of a written history within a couple of generations.

[bikebloke]

21. The World Without Us by Alan Weisman

It's speculative science, where if people suddenly vanished, what would happen. Very interesting. I suspect it's the same premise as the film.

*I was checking the spelling of his name and came across this:
http://www.worldwithoutus.com/index2.html