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Life Without People
Tuesday, January 22, 2008 There was a lot of Internet buzz over the History Channels new program that aired last night: “Life Without People”.
So I watched it. The first half of the program covered basically what would happen to the Earth in the first 50 years if people disappeared. But the premise was just if the human race disappeared, and nothing else was affected. The program began with an explanation that they will not postulate how it will happen, but that only it could (and will eventually). But the inherent problem with those first 50 years that wasn’t addressed is that, whatever takes us out, will most definitely take out other mammals that we either share a habitat with or rely on our care, aside from the fact that we are no longer there. Whatever environmental impact occurs that takes us out, will more than likely take out our dogs, cats, zoo animals etc. The program discussed that zoo animals and our pets would have to escape the captivity we provided somehow for their survival, but not that whatever took out us mammals, would likely take them out too.
Can anyone think of any possible way our environment could change that would knock out the human race but not the dogs we live with? They require pretty much the same environment we do to survive. An abandoned city near Chernobyl provided an example of what our cities would look like should people disappear, but this really was a horrible example. Why? 1) The city was evacuated... people took their pets with them and zoos were evacuated too. 2) Everything died... including the trees and vegetation. That city was a better example of what may happen after global thermonuclear war, not if people vanished. But then even that idea is flawed, because there are mammals left to reenter the area, where if this happened on a global scale, there would certainly be a different set of life than the deer and owls that have since returned.
The program was interesting with some of the science that was presented, like how certain structures would decay if left unattended. But since the premise started off with an impossible scenario, I really couldn’t watch it with as open a mind as I would have liked.
Now the program before it, spelling out the significance of December 12, 2012, was truly thought provoking. Google the date if you’re really curious.
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