Life After People was a programme that recently aired on Channel 4 and I made a point of watching partly through the power of incessant advertising and partly because the content of this programme had been the subject of some of my more morbid thoughts in recent weeks. The programme is filmed in a documentary style although the content is entirely fictional, theorising how long it would be before nature could repair the planet from the scarring of human civilisation.
Starting from day one and progressing at regular intervals up to 10,000 years into the future it tracks the aspects of human technology that would fail first and then decay eventually to disappear beyond the point where you could recognise what it once was. Also included was a view of the animals that live amongst us and the fate that would befall them once we stopped feeding them whether we intended on feeding them in the first place or not! In all it seems well reasoned although I think they still underestimated the impact on the mighty cockroach to whom human civilisation would be a pebble in the road I’m sure, albeit a tasty and life-assuring one. The programme also took a brief tour of Chernobyl to illustrate some of their research into the progression of nature in absorbing a city of a population of 50,000 over the last 25 years and the parallels were realistic.
After some more research it seems this isn’t a unique topic and is a common thought-experiment with many varying conclusions about how the future would potentially pan out. Some describing specific scenarios for the demise of human civilisation and others leaving that out-of-scope; one even goes along with the biblical rapture where mankind spontaneously disappears for judgement although such things are not to my taste. It goes to show though that there are no clear answers to such a broad and complex question and trying to answer it without any distorted pre-conceptions is also a tough one to get right but then this also opens up to a lot of artistic license, as long as you don’t mistake it for hard science.
I would like to believe that the majority of the damage that mankind imprints into this planet’s surface will one day be cleared allowing the next leading character in the story of evolution to start from a clean slate (if there’s any left). This may or may not be a result of the probable destruction of mankind, a genuine and complete exodus to another world or one possibility I enjoy the idea of is a Nox-style society ala Star Gate where mankind elevates itself above the surface to allow nature to run wild and unhindered by man’s structures living in true ecological harmony. Hippyish perhaps but I don’t suppose any of mans actions are in balance with nature, it’s one saving grace is it’s brevity and the hardiness of natures foot soldiers, the plants and I do believe that anything which isn’t balanced with nature can only fall to inevitable decay and ruination of both.
I enjoyed the programme although not so much as the ideas that it gave me following watching it. It was reassuring though because it does appear at times that no matter what we do, in the end we are insignificant to this planet almost as much as we are in the greater universe.
