Life After People: Difference between revisions

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{{quote|''Welcome to Earth... population: zero.'' }}

[[Network Decay|Despite being entirely about a purely hypothetical and arguably unlikely future rather than being about history]] (making it more of a nature/ecology program than a history program), the original ''Life After People'' special became History Channel's [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/07/AR2008030703256.html?hpid=artslot highest rated program] ''ever''. Although, of course, one could argue that most of the predicted results are accompanied by historical records of what happened - for example at 20-2520–25 years after people, they showed the aftermath of Chernobyl, which was abandoned 20-2520–25 years before the show aired. Other accounts of shorter periods also quoted records of pets eating their owners' corpses for survival if they were locked inside and could not get out to find food. However, this is only a small portion of the show, and most of it is still speculative.

* [[The End of the World Asas We Know It]]: Actually [[Subverted Trope|subverted]], as the ''how'' is left completely up to the viewer...except that it's quite clear that humanity ''literally'' just disappears from existence overnight without any warning, cause, or methodology beyond [[A Wizard Did It]]. Many of the Anvilicious points made by the show (accurate or otherwise) are a result of this impossible premise--petspremise—pets being locked inside their owner's now suddenly vacant homes, for instance, or oil refineries blowing up because one minute there's no humans on earth to actually run the thing.

* [[Fling a Light Into Thethe Future]]: Subverted. Our TV & radio waves - [[Aliens Steal Cable|once thought to last forever in space]], deteriorate after a few light years. The ''Voyager'' spacecraft and their Golden Records will be dinged up beyond recognition in a few thousand years.

** The [[wikipedia:Crypt of Civilization|Crypt of Civilization]] on the campus of Oglethorpe University in Atlanta is shown on its presumptive opening date of May 28, 8113.<ref>This is the only specific future date given in the series. It is exactly 6177 years from the date the Crypt was sealed (May 28, 1936), which was exactly 6177 years after the establishment of the ancient Egyptian calendar (at the time, the earliest known recorded date in history)</ref>. Sadly, the time capsule is shown to have been compromised by tree roots and the elements long before.

* [[Just for Pun]] - A number of comments about future results have some rather wry connotations, often also invoking the [[Bond One-Liner]]. Two of them include one about a major work by [[Leonardo Dada Vinci]] which has needed restoration over many years including dehumidifiers. Now that people are no longer around to save it from degradation, "How long before nature finishes off ''The Last Supper''?" The second one mentions that the Taipei 101 building, the 2nd tallest building in the world, which "is often said to look like a stack of [Chinese food] take out boxes. How long before nature ''takes out'' Taipei 101?"

* [[Look Onon My Works Ye Mighty and Despair]]: Though the series doesn't really involve any condemnation of man's hubris, what happens to the remnants of human civilization falls under many of the trappings of this trope. Despite the fact that a vast majority of humanity's constructions are ''not designed to last all that long''--because—because their builders know that they're going to get replaced by more advanced technology/constructions, or torn down because it's too impractical and expensive to maintain. Even famous historical monuments undergo preservation actions on a regular basis, not because they are meant to display greatness, but because they are meant to ''evoke remembrance of the actions and sacrifices of those before us''. In other words, they're meant to be [[Due to Thethe Dead]] and [[Crowning Moment of Heartwarming]] to a specific society, not to some extremely distant (temporal or otherwise) civilization. Though never done explicitly, the show evokes this trope through implication, despite the real tragedy being perceived as a lack of people to maintain and appreciate the monuments, not the loss of the monuments themselves.

* [[Ragnarok Proofing]]: Averting this trope is the whole point of the series, showing that this trope doesn't hold much in real life. Even though it goes [[Contrived Coincidence|quite out of its way]] [[Did Not Do the Research|to make this prediction]], often to the point of [[Anvilicious|being rather anvilicious]] and even [[Writer Onon Board|downright]] [[Idiot Plot|infuriating at times]].