Aftermath: Population Zero

Aftermath: Population Zero
Format	Speculative fiction, Science fiction
Country of origin	Canada
No. of episodes	1
Production
Running time	91 minutes 120 minutes (with commercials)
Broadcast
Original channel	National Geographic Channel
Original airing	March 9, 2008
External links
Website

Aftermath: Population Zero (also titled Aftermath: The World After Humans) is a two-hour Canadian special documentary film that premiered on Sunday, March 9, 2008 (at 8:00 PM ET/PT) on the National Geographic Channel. The program was produced by Cream Productions.

Similar to the History Channel's special Life After People, Aftermath features what scientists and others speculate the earth, animal life, and plant life might be like if humanity no longer existed, as well as the effect that humanity's disappearance would have on the artifacts of civilization. Both documentaries are inspired by Alan Weisman's The World Without Us.

A follow-up 4-part TV series was created, Aftermath, following different scenarios and what happens.

Timeline

The story begins on Friday, June 13, in an unspecified year. The nature of the show and the appearance of certain vehicles suggest that it takes place in 2008, the year the program was first aired (and when June 13 did indeed fall on a Friday).

Day 1 A.H. (After Humans)

The story speculates that humanity has disappeared instantly.

• Empty cars and other vehicles swerve off the roads and crash, causing multiple accidents all across the globe. Those that don't burn out as a result continue to release exhaust into the air until their fuel supplies run out. Airplanes fall from the sky. Some crash just some minutes after takeoff when their crews disappear, whereas others at high altitudes, with their fuel tanks full and autopilots engaged, continue flying for hours. Trains derail. (60 seconds A.H.)
• Coal plants run out of coal. Many cities around the world go out. Some buildings supplied with energy by them, such as Las Vegas casinos, fall into darkness. (10 minutes A.H.) Others switch to generators which, in turn, get their energy from other sources (windmills, dams). The demand proves to be too much for what these plants can provide and produces mass power blackouts (55 minutes A.H.). Within just 85 minutes, only nuclear power plants continue working.
• The permanent loss of power reaches the nuclear power plants, which shut off their reactors. Once that happens, it will trigger numerous catastrophic events later on in time. (96 minutes A.H.)
• Chlorine tanks, which need to remain cold, heat up until release valves are activated, sending the gas into the surrounding environment. Many animals die of suffocation. Also, liquefied natural gas tanks begin to fail, causing many fires and explosions. (6 hours A.H.)

Day 3 to day 7 A.H.

• Needing to be rewound, Big Ben rings for the last time.
• Pet dogs and cats exhaust all the food stored in their owners' homes and break out to search for more in the streets.
• Water pumps fail, leaving sewage treatment plants useless and polluting rivers and lakes.
• In farms and pastures all over the world, dairy cows are struggling to survive as their food and water supplies begin to end. In a cruel twist of fate, 90,000 dairy cows are saved from the slaughterhouse, but they may all die of dehydration.
• Zoo animals escape through useless electric fences and roam free.
• Migration is safer for birds now, as electric lights do not confuse them anymore.
• As days pass, dogs eat all easily-available food and begin to fight amongst each other for supremacy. The bigger dogs make packs and attack the small ones to eat them. Within a week, all toy dogs disappear from Earth. Large packs of dogs will also feed on dead penned up cattle.
• Security measures in power plants fail. The equipment in the spent fuel buildings adjoining nuclear power plants that maintain the temperature level of the spent nuclear fuel rods will shut down because the fossil fuel powered back up power generators will run out. At that time, the cooling pools that prevent the spent nuclear fuel from overheating will start to boil. Radioactive steam will vent into the atmosphere because the water eventually evaporates and the spent fuel would set fire to the building, causing a (non nuclear) explosion, emitting radiation not only in the immediate area of the plant but carried by winds around the globe. This is repeated dozens of times as shutdown nuclear plant spent fuel houses explode.

Day 10 A.H.

Domestic rodents might seize human buildings and multiply their populations for a while in the event of human extinction (in the image, black rats in the Karni Mata, India).

• Hungry dogs from cities flee to the countryside.
• Six days after their water and food supplies began ending, dairy cows have completely finished them and died. Now, their rotting carcasses will do nothing more than sustain hungry dogs. On the other hand, not all cows are dead. Beef cattle survive and form herds that thrive in places like the North American Great Plains and the open pastures in the middle-eastern U.S.
• The last domestic chickens are exterminated by predators, fowl such as some domestic game, gunieas, and peafowl are still alive.
• Spent nuclear fuel for nuclear power plants is generally stored in pools in on-site facilities. Since this water is not replenished, the heat of the fuel rods boils it away and the steam pressure causes the storage facilities to explode. The resulting nuclear disasters spread fallout over large areas. Radioactive clouds cross the skies and rain carries the radiation to the ground. Most plants and small animals within the affected zones die. The bigger ones (like deer) flee to unaffected regions – not because they notice the radiation, but because of the lack of food.
• Mice take over abandoned supermarkets, where their population explodes thanks to the abundance of food there. This pattern will continue for the next few months until their population is regulated again by the reduction of food and the action of predators like cats.
• Squirrels, raccoons, coyotes and skunks begin to colonize human buildings.

3 Months A.H.

• Radiation disappears from the air.
• In cities, air quality and visibility is improved.
• Packs of feral dogs roam the countryside. Desperate for food, they attack anything – even escaped elephants. But they don't have any success in this case. Without humans, elephants have no real predators anymore.

6 Months A.H.

• Winter begins in the Northern Hemisphere. Zoo animals that cannot survive it, like elephants, must migrate to southern latitudes or die.
• Without artificial heating, cockroaches die by the billions in cold houses.
• Animals from the forests like raccoons and skunks seek refuge in human homes to spend winter. During their stay, they cause further damage to the abandoned furniture.

10 to 12 months A.H.

The garden goes wild in an abandoned Victorian house of New Orleans.

• In the spring, trees nearer to power plants can't produce buds, but those farther out recover.
• Spring rains wash away the radioactive particles from the surface and carry it further into the ground, cleaning plants and objects.
• Meanwhile, new plants and trees remove the artificial CO₂ from the atmosphere.
• Without hunting seasons, animals breed undisturbed. Some species in areas with no natural predators, like the white tail deer, see population booms and expand their distribution to new areas, including former cities.
• Moss starts to grow over roads.

3 to 15 years A.H.

• Roads appear degraded and cracked by the ice of multiple winters with no maintenance. Their surfaces are covered by moss and grass grows in the cracks.
• New trees grow in home gardens.

30 years A.H.

• Devastated by solar winds, artificial satellites return to Earth in the form of shooting stars. Some of their pieces make it to the ground and start some fires.
• House roofs collapse, allowing trees to grow in their interior.
• Scoured by hurricane after hurricane, the East Coast of the United States is slowly cleaned of buildings. Southern states like Florida are completely swept away.
• In the ocean, the remains of former ships serve as foundations for the formation of coral reefs.
• Cereal fields are turned into grasslands or overrun by expanding forests. The same happens to cities as grass and trees take root on streets and buildings.
• In New York City, Central Park is getting bigger, taking over Times Square.
• Panes of window glass fall from buildings to the streets.
• Birds of prey make their nests and hunt rodents in skyscrapers.
• Paint is weathered away after years of exposure to rain. Metal in cars and other human structures is exposed to oxidation and disintegration.
• Concrete begins to collapse due to moisture.

60 years A.H.

Without human interference, dog breeds would slowly die out as natural selection makes surviving dogs closer to Australian dingoes (like the one featured in the image) and wolves.

• Skyscrapers around the world begin to collapse.
• Sea life has completely recovered from overfishing and is thriving.
• Though there are still dogs, dog breeds do not exist anymore, erased by generations of free reproduction. Many of the feral dog breeds have died out due to neutering, resulting in a genetic bottleneck in the remaining dogs. Survivors mate with wolves.
• In Europe, the largely decreased wolf population expands into the countries where it was completely exterminated, like Germany. Upon reaching the ruins of cities, wolves come into contact with feral dogs living there, competing with them for food or breeding with them, erasing the last traces left of domestication.

75 years A.H.

• Most cars begin to fall apart.

120 years A.H.

• The oceans and plants begin scrubbing the earth clean of our carbon dioxide.

150 years A.H.

• Winters are colder than in the last days of the human race.
• Remains of ships and bridges form dams in the Thames, flooding the ruins of London and turning the British capital back into the swamp it was before Roman times.
• Imperial Valley, once the biggest producer of fruits in the United States, returns to a sandy desert.
• Dry winds still maintain most of Las Vegas buildings intact. They serve as a refuge for vultures and desert lizards now.

200 years A.H.

• Most of the dams on the Colorado River are destroyed due to excessive water pressure. The Hoover Dam survives, but water passes over it forming a cascade. For the first time in centuries, the Colorado River once again reaches the Sea of Cortez as a flood, not a stream and gives birth to a vast estuary full of animal life.
• The coast of Louisiana is reshaped.
• Old codfish reach six feet long.
• All whale species have recovered to their pre-human populations. Without the interference of noisy naval alarms, they can hear the mating calls of other whales from 2000 miles away.
• Remains of large ships appear on beaches all over the world, after two centuries of errant journeys over (and under) the waves.
• The excess of CO₂ in the atmosphere is completely eliminated by plants and trees.

230 years A.H.

After more than two centuries of abandonment, wind erosion might restore the Great Sphinx to the state it was in the middle 19th century (Bonaparte before the Sphinx, Jean-Léon Gérôme, 1867).

• The upper half of the Eiffel Tower collapses and falls into the new Seine River's marsh. Thousands of feral pigs (descendants of both domestic pigs and wild boars) live under the Tower's legs and are regularly hunted by wolves.
• The right arm of the Statue of Liberty falls to the ground. The head follows some time later.
• The eastern half of North America is entirely covered by thick forests with trees that grow up to 90 feet tall.
• Human structures still survive under forest humus. From time to time rains and rivers wash humus away uncovering concrete beams, plastics, cellphones and stainless steel objects.
• Tens of millions of bison, cattle and horses make up gigantic herds in the Western North American plains.
• The Great Sphinx of Giza is buried again in the sands of the Sahara.

500 years A.H.

• Forests recover the state they had 10000 years ago.

1000 years A.H.

• The Eiffel Tower has lost all but its four legs.
• The Statue of Liberty has fallen to pieces and only its pedestal still stands.

25000 years A.H.

• Earth enters a new Ice Age and glaciers expand south covering most of the Northern Hemisphere. The last traces of New York City are completely erased.
• However, evidence left by Moon exploration missions will survive intact for not only thousands, but millions of years after mankind has vanished. They will be the last legacy of the human race.

Cities featured

• Toronto, Canada
• Paris, France
• Berlin, Germany
• London, United Kingdom
• Chicago, United States
• New York City, United States
• Las Vegas, Nevada, United States
• Tokyo, Japan

Comparison to Life After People

As with Life After People, the similar special feature on the History Channel, Aftermath does not explain how humanity disappeared, but rather what would happen to the Earth after we disappeared. It also shows that humans have disappeared instantly, not a few at a time. Both series depicts the possible fates of famous pieces of infrastructure and buildings. It, too, uses CGI dramatizations to depict the possible fate of such icons as the Statue of Liberty and, in both programs, the Eiffel Tower and Hoover Dam. However, it does not emphasize this as much as Life After People does, following much more closely the effects on the natural world and its recovery after mankind departs the scene.

In addition, unlike Life After People, Aftermath depicts what would happen if various modes of transportation—such as automobiles, planes, and trains—are abandoned in mid-motion when their passengers and operators instantly disappear, not unlike the Rapture in Christian eschatology. Life After People does not show what would happen to these vehicles left in motion.

Also, Aftermath shows what would happen if a nuclear power plant's spent fuel rods are left without the cooling equipment governing its condition. Life After People suggest that nuclear power plants would safely shut down with no ill effects with no mention of what would happen to spent fuel rods in storage. However, in an episode of Life After People: The Series, "Toxic Revenge", spent fuel rods are shown 10 days after people heating up and exploding the reactors containing it. Aftermath also shows that the nuclear power plants themselves would shut down without incident, but the spent fuel rod storage in separate buildings would eventually blow up and spread radiation into the air and the surrounding countryside after the backup safety devices fail, due to lack of fuel a few days after the main power plant supplying power shutdown. Life After People also does not mention the release of poisonous gas from chemical plants when their safety features fail, lacking the fuel to run them. Life After People does however talk about the Hoover Dam still generating power after people, but neither show talks about the things powered by batteries and solar power. In the Life After People episode, "Crypt of Civilization", watches with batteries are shown to last at least a year after us. In another episode, "Waves of Devastation", one of the landmarks the episode centers around is the ferris wheel on the Santa Monica Pier, that features LED lights that run automatically at night, powered by solar power. In another episode, "Sin City Meltdown", Springs Preserve's visitor center in Las Vegas is powered by the sun, and so the recorded voices of man still echo, until ten years after people, where silt has accumulated on the solar panels and the last vestiges of the human voice vanish.

Aftermath does not talk about the International Space Station while Life After People discusses the fate of the Immortality Drive aboard the ISS. Both documentaries make reference to objects on the Moon, although Life After People does this as part of the miniseries episode "Roads to Nowhere". Unlike Life After People, Aftermath does not comment on the Voyager 2 spacecraft. Life After People episode "Sky's The Limit" mentions the Cassini–Huygens Space orbiter. However no other space probes were noted. It should however be noted that the original Life After People documentary made reference to man's radio communications in space.

DVD releases

• Title: Aftermath: Population Zero
• Studio: National Geographic Video
• UPC: 727994753124
• DVD Release Date: August 12, 2008
• Run Time: 90 minutes

See also

• The World Without Us
• Life After People
• Cream Productions
• Aftermath (TV series)

External links

• Official website
• Aftermath: Population Zero at the Internet Movie Database