Have you ever wondered what the world would look like without people? This coming Monday night, January 21st, the History Channel will premier "Life After People", a 2 hour movie painting such a scenario. Similar to "Earth Before People", an article in Discover magazine (2005), the movie portrays a world where people disappear and, as a result, nature and wild animals take over. In order to create a realistic setting, the movie was produced with the help of expert engineers, archeologists, geologists, botanists, ecologists, climatologists, and biologists.

Over the course of centuries, civilizations have disappeared because of diseases, like the Ancient Maya in Guatemala, or because of "accidents", like Chernobyl. In fact, the area around Chernobyl is a strong illustration of what the world would be like without humans, even after 20 years. "From a distance, you would still believe that Pripyat is a living city, but the buildings are slowly decaying," says Ronald Chesser, director for the Center for Environmental Radiation Studies, "The most pervasive thing you see are plants whose root systems get into the concrete and behind the bricks and into doorframes and so forth, and are rapidly breaking up the structure. You wouldn't think, as you walk around your house every day, that we have a big impact on keeping that from happening, but clearly we do. It's really sobering to see how the plant community invades every nook and cranny of a city."

I find the concept for this movie a bit harrowing and pessimistic, though there seems to be growing rhetoric that the world would fair better without so many humans populating the earth.

What do you think?

Tags:: archeology | population | earth | population control | History Channel | History