Life After People Page #2

On things like cardboard, cloth,

Or glue.

I think that if a city

Was abandoned,

The rats would have to go back

To earning an honest living.

An honest living

Means to go back to the wild

And compete for resources there.

eventually, these rodents

Will abandon homes

And buildings,

Which will make them?

Easy pickings for predators.

Although, rats and mice

Will mostly likely survive

In the future,

Their numbers

Will be greatly diminished.

After six months

Into a life after people,

Urban areas

Are already taking a turn

For the wild.

the predators would return

Very quickly in the absence

Of humans

Because we suppress them,

We create conditions

That either work against them,

Or we deliberately go out,

And remove and destroy them.

They would come back

Very quickly.

smaller predators

Like coyotes and bobcats

Always survive on the fringe

Of human populations.

They are the first to colonize

Our abandoned neighborhoods.

Larger carnivores

Will have to wait longer

For the habitat

To recover enough

To support their appetites.

But soon enough, they, too,

Will hunt in what

Were once our backyards.

]

One year into a life

After people,

Towns and cities

Are still recognizable.

But nature

Is beginning to reclaim

Her old turf.

one of the first

Great physical effects

In the absence of people

Would be the transition

Of the impervious surfaces:

The parking lots, the roads

Into places that supported

And then had an abundance

Of plant life.

any place

Where you have sunlight

That's hitting,

You're probably going to get

Some plant growth.

Little seeds

Are going to get stuck

In the cracks and so forth,

And these things

Are all going to start to creep?

Plants are wonderful that way.

They can destroy things

In matters of, you know,

A few years.

without humans

To remove them,

Weeds like dandelions

Infiltrate every crack

In the pavement.

As these weeds die,

Their remnants combine

With ever-spreading moss

And lichen

To create a layer of topsoil.

This sandy soil

Is poor in nutrients,

So only plants like clover

That can pull nitrogen

From the air

Flourish at first.

Formerly manicured yards

Morph into fields

For a white-tailed deer

Forage for food.

Wild animals have also begun

To find their way

Into abandoned cities.

Man's supposed domination

Over nature

Has proven to be quite tenuous.

The signs of our vulnerability

Have always been there.

this is an ailanthus tree.

It seems to enjoy rooting itself

In very inhospitable locations.

And it likes to attach itself

To crevices in buildings.

And when it does so,

It causes damage.

The roots expand,

And the expansive forces of that

Force out mortar

And stone and cause crumbling

Of a facade.

If you get a lot of this

On an entire building facade,

It could cause

Major, major damage.

as nature battles back,

Even manmade goliaths

Like hover dam

Aren't invincible.

To harness the power

Of this river

Took 21,000 men and five years

Of hard labor.

But one year after people,

Its 17 massive and seemingly

Indestructible generators

Are about to be brought down

By an organism

The size of a human thumbnail.

The lake above the dam

Is infested

With an invasive species

Of mollusk

Called the "quake mussel."

This stealthy invader

From Eastern Europe

Had no natural predators

In North America

Other than the humans tasked

With scraping it from the grates

And pipes it colonizes.

the mussels attach themselves

To the inside wall of pipes

And they're very prolific.

They colonize

And rapidly build up

And can grow

On top of each other,

And eventually completely block

The diameter of a pipe.

the small pipes

That brings cooling water

To hover dam's generators

Make perfect homes

For these creatures.

And with no people around

To remove them,

They spread like a cancer.

and in fact,

Those mussels could clog up

The cooling water pipes,

To the point

Where we couldn't keep

These generators cool anymore.

And it would cause

The high temperature alarm

In the automatic control system.

And that automatic

Control system

Would then start

The shutdown sequence

Of that generator.

Well, that would happen

One by one

For all of the generators

Of hover dam,

And eventually

The entire power plant

Would be shut down.

in lass Vegas,

The last glimmers

Of manmade light on earth

Relinquish the night

To its primeval blackness.

With the generators

No longer running,

No water at all

Is passing through hover dam.

And the Colorado River

Downstream begins to run dry.

On the other side of the dam,

The water has nowhere to go

And Lake Mead starts to rise.

it would just keep

Building up in Lake Mead.

And it would eventually

Gets to the point

Of spilling over

Through the spillways

On either side of the dam.

unchecked,

Nature's most powerful elements

Reclaim their supremacy

On earth.

Triggered by lightning strikes,

The wildfires

Those humans once battled

So valiantly

Now rage unchecked.

Cities and neighborhoods

Full of abandoned buildings,

Wild grasses, and debris

Is prime fuel for the flames?

Chicago burns.

San's

Stately wooden Victorians

Are now only useful as kindling.

And just as it did

In the time of the ancients,

Rome is burning again.

As structures

Burn to the ground,

Charred timbers

Release nutrients into the soil,

Providing the next wave

Of plant life,

With the nitrogen

It needs to grow

And thrive.

Five years after people,

The roads of the world

Are disappearing

Beneath a green map

That spreads

Like some relentless monster.

The advance of nature

Knows no boundaries.

The gates

Of London's Buckingham palace

Are easily breached by vines

And moss.

In Moscow, red square

Is becoming very green.

in reality,

Nature will reclaim earth

Very quickly.

These stairs were cleared

18 months ago.

If we came back

In another 18 months,

We'd have a hard time

Finding them.

If we came back in five years,

It would be almost impossible

To find.

man's mastery over nature

Has always been

Just an illusion.

When the Cambodian city

Of Angkor

And its temple complexes

Were abandoned in 15th century,

Jungle trees grew

Indiscriminately

Over its stone structures.

Entangling them in their roots.

Now, without armies of gardeners

And repairmen,

Modern cities are laid bare

To nature's revenge.

In New York's central park,

The great lawns, now untended,

Sprout with saplings.

Five years without humans

Leaves the park

Looking more like a forest.

central park will go bananas.

So all of a sudden

You'll get trees,

You'll get growth.

All the animals and plants

That is there now will go up

In population levels

And they'll start to spread out

Into the city.

the story is the same

In Washington o.k.

The great monuments

Have been swallowed by greenery.

And on what used to be

The national mall,

The sounds of the jungle

Are echoing.

zoo animals

Are really the great unknown.

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes