Aftermath: Population Zero

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Planet Earth:
a place of constant

change at the hands of powerful beings:

us.

Hundreds of thousands

of miles into space

and deep beneath the earth's surface

we've created an amazing world,

shaping continents,

creating ingenious monuments

and transforming landscapes.

But the only way to fully

understand the scale of our influence

is to witness the world without it.

If we suddenly disappeared, what

would happen to our highways,

cities,

rivers,

our greatest monuments?

Enter a desolate world;

a world without humans.

One minute from now, every single

person on earth will disappear.

It doesn't matter how

or that it's far fetched.

What's important is what

will happen when we're gone.

Of the billions of people in the world,

half live in cities.

Farms and pastures cover

a third of all dry land.

We've dammed and diverted

half the world's major rivers.

500 million cars clog

the roads and highways.

We've affected the air,

the sea

and the land.

But have we changed the earth forever?

If we vanished, could

the planet recover,

even erase all evidence

that we ever existed?

Friday, June 13th.

In Berlin, it's 1:30 in the afternoon.

Across the Atlantic, stockbrokers

get an early start on Wall Street.

Las Vegas is anything but sleeping,

and in Tokyo, parents

tuck their kids into bed.

Then suddenly, the human

race comes to an end.

Every single person in every

corner of the world vanishes.

Cities transform into ghost towns.

Laughter lingers only to

become a quickly fading echo.

Things come to a shocking halt.

The moment we disappear,

the world starts to change.

There's an eerie silence in cities

that are suddenly, a little cooler.

The average human body puts out as

much heat as a 100-watt light bulb.

Take away eight million

people from New York,

and the entire city cools

down by a fraction of a degree.

Even though we're gone,

the machines we left

behind keep working.

All over the world, hundreds of

planes approach airport runways.

Most descend at over 100

miles an hour, and today,

all with empty cockpits, every

landing will end in a fireball.

Thousands of other planes fly

through the sky on autopilot.

Many will stay in the

air for a few more hours,

but when the fuel runs out, gravity

will pull them back to earth.

In a world without humans,

cities continue to function on

thousands of automated systems.

Computers keep in touch

with hundreds of satellites,

which will continue to transmit

information across the globe,

as long as the power stays on.

Power is generated by more than

50,000 power plants around the world.

In the US, coal-fired plants produce

half of the country's electricity.

To keep the fires burning,

they require a steady supply of coal.

But there will never

be another delivery.

The coal plants start to fail.

The Western grid is knocked

out by a rolling blackout.

The shimmering lights of Las Vegas

will never shine again.

The sun breaks through the clouds in

Pennsylvania, which still has power.

As temperatures rise, automatic

air conditioners turn on.

The need for electricity surges.

This area relies on wind

power in addition to coal.

Even without us, the wind

turbines are still running,

so there's enough power

to meet the new demand.

But at the local power station,

there's no one to decide

that more power is need.

Computers detect a problem and

shut down the entire system.

Pennsylvania is now without power.

Niagara Falls, Canada is home

to one of the world's first

commercial hydroelectric plants.

It provides power to

more than 2 million homes.

A mile upstream, water surges into

tunnels that snake under the city.

When it reaches the power plants, it

drives the turbines and creates electricity.

Less than two hours ago, people

were monitoring this powerful system.

But with no one at the

controls, the turbines flood

and the plant shuts itself down.

Seconds later, blackouts sweep

through parts of Ontario and New York.

The world-wide loss of electricity

reaches the nuclear power plants.

Automated systems detect that

the electrical grid is failing

and they shut off the reactors.

But this is just the beginning.

Six hours after humans disappear

the sun goes down in Europe.

The last power plants go offline.

The dark ages are back.

The sun is still shining on North America

and thousands of cars are still running.

Every gallon of gas

they burn sends 19 pounds

of carbon dioxide into the air.

This greenhouse gas can pollute the

sky for the next one hundred years.

Without us, another source of man-made

global warming is also disappearing.

Planes send out water

vapor in their exhaust

and the cold air transforms

the vapor into clouds.

But as the last planes

fall from the sky,

these man-made clouds

disappear with them.

Fuel-starved jets aren't the only

disasters rolling through this new world.

All over the globe, industrial plants

react to the permanent loss of power.

Some gases need electricity to keep them

cold enough to be stored in liquid form.

If they don't have power, the

cooling units stop working.

Eventually, the liquids come to a boil

and create dangerously high pressures.

Many tanks have relief valves

that vent gas to avoid explosions.

But hundreds of thousands of tanks all

venting at the same time is unimaginable.

The gases spread

wherever the wind blows,

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