0:06 of all the species on earth humans have left the biggest mark our grader prints can be found high above the planet empty below it we've planted pave and scarred the face of every single continent but to fully understand the scale of our impact we need to see what the world would be like without us if we suddenly disappeared what would happen to our highways the
0:51 cities [Applause] rivers our greatest monuments this is the story of a world you'll never see a world without us one minute from now every single human being on earth will disappear it doesn't matter how what's important is what happens once we're gone [Music] there are 6.6 billion of us half of whom
1:37 live in cities our farms and pastures cover one third of all dry land we've dammed and diverted half of the world's major rivers to suit our needs five hundred million cars clogged the roads and highways we've altered the air the sea and the land [Music]
2:24 if we disappeared could the world repair itself erase all evidence that we ever existed Friday June 13th in Berlin it's 1:30 in the afternoon across the Atlantic stockbrokers are getting an early start on Wall Street as much as it ever does Las Vegas is still sleeping and in Tokyo parents are putting their kids to bed now human history stops
3:14 [Music] [Applause] [Music] the moment we disappear the world begins to change the cities are quieter and
4:01 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've left behind keep working [Music] just sixty seconds since we disappeared all over the world hundreds of planes are approaching airport runways most descend at over 100 miles an hour but
4:46 today without us every landing is a disaster thousands of other planes are sailing through the sky on autopilot but when the fuel runs out gravity will pull them back to earth it's been 10 minutes since we disappeared automated systems keep working even when their masters have vanished computers are communicating with over 800 satellites orbiting the planet power is generated by more than
5:32 50,000 power plants around the globe in Canada coal-fired plants produce 17% of the country's electricity to keep these fires burning they need a steady supply of coal [Music] but after we disappear there won't be another delivery the coal plants start to fail grids in the western states and provinces are knocked out by a rolling block the shimmering lights of Las Vegas are extinguished forever it's now 55 minutes since we vanished
6:21 the Sun breaks through the clouds in Pennsylvania where the grid is still working as temperatures rise automatic air conditioners begin to hum the need for electricity surges this area relies on wind power in addition to call even without us the wind turbines are still running but at the local power station there's no one left to decide that more power is needed Computers detect that there is a problem they shut the whole system down 85
7:07 minutes since we disappeared Niagara Falls Canada it's home to one of the world's first commercial hydroelectric plants and before we vanished it provided power to more than 2 million homes upstream water surges into tunnels that snake under the city when it reaches the power plants the water drives the turbines creating electricity but with no one left at the controls the turbines flood and the plant shuts itself down seconds later blackouts sweep through
7:53 parts of Ontario and New York State it's now 96 minutes since we disappeared the worldwide loss of electricity touches the nuclear power plants automated systems detect that the electrical grid is failing they shut off the reactors six hours after we vanish the Sun Goes Down in Europe the last power plants go offline the dark ages are back
8:44 in North America the Sun is still shining and thousands of cars are still running every liter of gas they burn sends 2.5 kilos of carbon dioxide into the air all over the globe industrial plants are being crippled by the permanent loss of power some gases need electricity to keep them cold enough so they can be stored in liquid form with nothing to
9:37 keep them cold the liquid start to boil creating dangerously high pressures [Music] many tanks have relief valves which meant gas to avoid explosions [Music] the gas is spread wherever the wind blows some are heavier than air a danger to any creature that keeps its nose close to the soil the same chemicals which made the modern world possible are being set loose on an unsuspecting world
10:23 so far emergency backup systems are containing the world's nuclear power plants automatic diesel generators have kicked in [Music] but the diesel fuel won't last forever [Music] all over the world pets are getting hungry the massive power failure reaches the world zoos and safari parks predators are free to explore the new world and its new dangers a cloud of
11:08 chlorine gas has drifted from a derailed train killing a herd of deer problems are growing at some natural gas facilities with the power off it's starting to heat up and some is escaping much of it is burned off an automatic safety feature designed to contain gas leaks at plants but with tanks venting the explosive gas can reach cars left idling when their owners disappeared it only takes a small spark fires like this will burn for days as
11:56 hundreds of chemical plants around the world catch fire in just six short hours our disappearance has triggered a series of time bombs around the world [Music] it's been three days since humans disappeared from the earth without our constant attention most machines have ground to a halt thousands of tons of toxic chemicals have escaped from plants around the planet polluting this new world in London England Big Ben needs to be
12:41 wound by hand every three days without us it rings for the last time human time human history has stopped but life on Earth continues houses and apartments are still inhabited by increasingly desperate pets it's been three days since anyone has fed them in Canada alone over two million dogs were
13:28 trapped when their owners vanished the words pets must break out of their homes or die some man-made lights are still on but these two will soon go dark the light's still glow at nuclear power plants emergency diesel generators began to work as soon as the electricity failed but without power this building will soon cause an unprecedented disaster this isn't the reactor but the
14:14 spent fuel building radioactive fuel is stored in these cooling pools after it's used to make power the pool is 10 meters deep and is filled with 400 tons of spent nuclear fuel split atoms keep on splitting releasing heat and radiation the fuel is contained in circular tubes and they're dangerous they need to stay in flowing refrigerated water for years before they cool off these nuclear storage sites dot
15:02 the western world Canada has eleven there are 75 in the United States alone the fuel is safe as long as the generators stay on and keep the water cool but if someone doesn't refill the diesel generators they will grind to a stop day four of the New World Sukie a city dog used to have her diet supplemented with biscotti and muffins now she's scrounging through garbage for her next meal without electricity pumps
15:51 at the sewage treatment plants have failed raw human sewage is backing up into lakes and rivers we've left behind a world filled with cattle there are 1.4 billion on earth one for every human family now that we're gone 90,000 cattle are saved from slaughter each day in the United States alone each dairy cow needs 45 kilos of food and 95 liters of water every day
16:38 with the electricity gone their water supply is drying up if they don't find water in the next few days they'll all die with the electric fencing off some of the biggest animals have options they're strong enough to break free but most zoo animals are dying in their cages elephants need up to 180 kilos of
17:37 food a day it will be a struggle to find it in the paved suburbs surrounding many zoos predators are also prowling the suburbs these hungry lions have spotted another escapee from the zoo but the Lions evolved skills for hunting on Savannah's not in suburbs climbing plastic is a lot harder than climbing a tree
18:35 with this baboon out of reach they'll need to find some easier prey camels are well-suited to this new world they eat a few mouthfuls from any plant they find deciding which is dangerous and which is nutritious when they discover something they like they dig in leaving no stone unturned in their search for food [Music]
19:39 while the Lions continue their search for food birds are migrated without us around this year many more will survive in previous years Birds faced a deadly obstacle as they migrated through the concrete and steel of cities like New York by day class skyscrapers turned cities into a Hall of Mirrors in the United States 100 million birds died each year by smashing into windows by night birds used the Stars to navigate humans lit the cities to push the darkness back
20:24 Birds confused by the light would often circle buildings all night eventually dying of exhaustion but now migrating birds are flying more safely over major cities millions more will reach their winter nesting grounds on the streets of the cities dogs have gone from pets to predators within a week of losing their human masters dance begin forming packs and battle for dominance the last time this happened
21:10 was in 2005 Hurricane Katrina forced humans to leave many dogs behind in New Orleans the dogs began hunting in packs we created over 400 different breeds some varieties like Suki don't have the size or strength to compete in this new world for very long like wolves dogs will kill their own so now every small dog is a potential mate [Applause]
21:57 [Music] in the next few weeks with smaller dogs will be killed [Music] it's now seven days since we disappeared at nuclear power plants diesel generators are finally running out of fuel with the power off the cool water has stopped flowing the temperature begins to rise it will take days for all of the water to boil off but without
22:48 people to stop it there's no one around to stop the release of a massive dose of radioactive fallout far worse than 500 Hiroshima it's now 10 days after people disappeared [Music] dogs from the city are roaming the countryside looking for food they're hungry enough to drive just about anything [Applause] [Music] they find the fields littered with corpses every dairy cow has died
23:33 our sudden disappearance has killed them humans have been milking cows for 8,000 years long enough to breed out much of their aggression [Music] two weeks ago many of these dogs were eating food from a can not all cows have died in the wide-open spaces of Western North America free-range cattle are thriving but many domesticated animals were trapped in pens when we disappeared
24:20 without us looking after them 1.5 billion chickens have died in the United States alone only free-range poultry are left it's now been 10 days since humans disappeared from the earth with the power off the cities are quiet animals once caged by humans are now free to roam but they're fighting for survival predators aren't the only problem we've left behind a deadly surprise for days now superheated steam
25:07 has been escaping from this spent nuclear fuel building with no emergency power there is nothing to cool the fuel down there's as much radioactivity as 250 atomic bombs swirling through the building this is a nuclear disaster the radioactive genie has escaped and there's no one to stop it
25:55 a deadly stew of radiation spews from the plant some of the elements it contains like strontium 90 will be dangerous for 300 years plutonium will be radioactive for 240,000 years pine trees near the power plant are killed almost immediately the radiation clings to the trees bumpy bark and sticky resin the chlorophyll which makes the trees green is damaged causing them to turn red the last time a forest died
26:41 like this was during the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 radiation contaminated an area of 129 thousand square kilometres almost the size of England in a world without humans this scene is repeated again and again there are six nuclear power plants in Illinois alone radioactive smoke fills the streets of Chicago the site of the world's first self-sustaining nuclear reaction fires break out at more than 30 nuclear plants across the eastern United States each
27:27 one is almost 20 times more radioactive than the Chernobyl disaster most of Europe's 173 reactors also catch on fire carried by the wind the radiation becomes an invisible poison that settles over thousands of square kilometers if we were still on the planet the radiation would cause cancer in millions of people [Music] within a matter of weeks giant plumes of radioactive smoke and particles are spreading across the northern hemisphere
28:14 rain washes some of the radiation from the sky concentrating its deadly effects [Music] large animals flee areas where plants have died from radiation poisoning but small creatures live on the forest floor where leaves and soil are coated with radiation [Music] radiation can only travel half an inch through living tissue when a deer tastes an affected plant the radioactivity will get caught in its fur or in its stomach its heart and liver will be unharmed
28:59 it's different for smaller animals radiation cripples their organs in the worst-hit areas over half of the rodents and insects die for animals in the cities and suburbs there are still sources of food that are much less radioactive and some of it is one-stop shopping city mice can find enough food inside grocery stores to last for generations a female Mouse can give birth to over 70 offspring in a year radiation has killed many of the mice
29:45 outside so this cat heads indoors a cat needs to eat eight mice a day to stay healthy humans require a lot of different kinds of food to get all the fat protein and vitamins we require cats don't they can make their own vitamin C and they can get the rest by eating the brains and innards of mice all over the planet animals begin invading the human world to find food as clouds of
30:30 radiation spread the food we left behind will keep them alive it's now three months since humans disappeared the radiation has now fallen from the skies [Music] cities are quiet and the weather is getting better when humans were around we created a lot of artificial dust clouds used us to create raindrops without our pollution less rain is falling on cities the air is clearer -
31:20 in places like Manhattan and Toronto the view has increased from 30 kilometers to 160 city dogs continue scouring the countryside for food but most of these former pets have little skill hunting if hungry enough they'll try to attack anything once like Wallace dogs hunt by instinct they know that biting the legs or the neck is a good way to bring a large animal down but
32:09 that doesn't seem to be possible this time [Applause] now that we're gone the elephants don't have any predators to fear in just four months pets and zoo animals have become killers in a radioactive world now they must confront the next challenge winter it's been six months since people
32:54 disappeared from the earth it's now what once would have been early December in a world without us former zoo animals and pets have either adopted or died animals that have survived so far now face their next challenge the coming winter the common wisdom is that cockroaches would do just fine without us but cockroaches only spread north as we begin using central heating with the electricity gone and the furnace is off millions of cockroaches will be dead by Christmas for other animals our sudden
33:41 disappearance isn't a problem it's an opportunity animals like raccoons and squirrels already know how to survive the cold sleep through it and this winter they have a new world of possible dens to choose from human homes are drier and safer than sleeping outdoors these squirrels are tree dwellers they head upstairs [Music] skunks on the other hand prefer the ground hibernating animals don't mind the furnace being off their body temperatures can drop almost to the freezing point it's a survival strategy
34:27 their ancestors evolved long ago but evolution hasn't equipped this African elephant to deal with the numbing cold his body evolved to get rid of heat not to keep it in Africa his thin years would have helped him keep cool but now after escaping from a zoo his ears are getting frostbitten if he's going to survive he needs to head south [Music]
35:18 it's now 10 months since humans disappeared after the winter comes a spring unlike any the world has ever seen in the forests near the ruined nuclear power plants it's a silent spring poisoned by radiation evergreens have lost their ability to grow new shoots and branches forever but further from the power plants spring helps repair the damage we've left behind rain washes radioactive dust and debris from leaves and bark the poisonous atoms are
36:07 being driven underground all over the world a major threat to animals has been removed without humans there are no cars no hunter a population explosion begins as animals take over the empty spaces May 11 months after we disappeared in there last year on the road cars pumped 7 billion tons of carbon dioxide into
36:53 the air more than 1 ton for every person on earth this greenhouse gas accounted for half of the impact humans had on global warming but now the carbon dioxide can be cleaned up faster than ever before spring is part of the answer new plants and leaves need carbon to grow they draw it out of the air naturally repairing a polluted planet each hectare of trees will remove as much carbon as 5 cars produced in a year this spring nature finds lots of new places to grow for the past 10,000 years
37:38 we've been imposing our will on the planet in downtown Los Angeles alone two-thirds of the land is covered in roads and parking lots we made our mark in the suburbs - in the United States lawns and golf courses covered an area bigger than Florida but now that we're gone nature is making a comeback millions of kilometres of roads and highways are slowly being reclaimed moss and lichen are the first invaders they can grow in almost any crack and all they usually need is water five
38:23 years after humans the moss has provided a place for grass to grow ten years later a once carefully groomed soccer field has grown wild 15 years after we disappear fast-growing trees have taken root where children once played all these new plants will allow nature to soak up greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide [Music] year by year our grip on the land is loosening but humans have also tried to rule the sky and now even that reminder
39:11 of our time on earth is about to disappear it's now 30 years since humans disappeared from the earth at night the only light comes from the moon and the stars once we created a perpetual daylight that could be seen from space for the past few months there have been hundreds of strange shooting stars [Music] a few make it to the ground
39:57 these are not normal meteorites [Music] these shooting stars are some of the last survivors of the Space Age we left 25,000 objects orbiting the earth most of it was junk from clams to pieces of rockets the garbage of our 50 years working in space and without us there's nothing to stop it falling back home every 11 years
40:44 solar storms erupt on the surface of the Sun their radiation causes the Earth's atmosphere to expand this slows satellites and space junk down satellites in higher orbits have been slowly spiraling closer to the earth for the last 30 years now they plummet to the ground the world has changed since the satellites were last on earth human homes are slowly collapsing [Music]
41:33 for three decades animals have been eating through roofs and walls dirt and seeds are blown into houses living rooms become homes for trees [Music] rain falls into dining rooms and kitchens ceilings and floors rot and fall apart
42:19 schools once taught that humans triumphed over nature but in just 30 years Nature has reclaimed most of what humans had taken away the changes to the planet are especially obvious along the world's coastlines we built many of our cities and homes near the oceans now buildings are being washed away by hurricanes mansions and cottages are erased from Miami to Halifax the oceans are still reacting to global warming
43:08 while houses collapse on land at least 50,000 ships are strewn along seashores or rusting on the sea bottom these shipwrecks become a magnet for sharks and other fish the ruined ships provide thousands of new places for fish to live and breed it took us 10,000 years to force our will on the planet [Music] now nature is invading civilization Citadel concrete jungle it is now 30
43:56 years after people vanished the power has long since failed the jarring screech of cars and jets will never be heard again our cities are still filled with life wild dogs hunt in packs roaming the roads and sidewalks we once roamed New York's massive Central Park is on the move dirt and seeds are blown through the city [Music] they take root everywhere much of the
44:48 world once turned its eyes to Times Square to mark the start of a new year now it's disappearing under a blanket of green nature is reclaiming the world city by city in London young trees are sprouting in Trafalgar Square in Berlin a forest surrounds the Brandenburg Gate separating what was once the division of East and West Germany thirty years after we vanished glass is tumbling onto the deserted streets
45:35 the glass-covered office tower was once a symbol of the modern age there was more glass in one skyscraper than all of the glass made during the Roman Empire but most skyscrapers relied on caulking and metal clips to keep the windows in place after 30 years clips are rusting caulking is cracked and brittle water gets into the cracks the frames are getting weak the city's once sparse hunting grounds
46:21 are filled with prey the concrete jungle is turning into the real thing almost all of the relics of human existence are slowly disintegrating after years of neglect paint peels away raw metal is exposed to the elements rust spreads unchecked [Music] not everything rests plastic molecules
47:07 are so big that they can't be eaten by bacteria or bugs the new world simply buries anything made of plastic but [Music] plastic does have one enemy fire wildfires sparked by lightning destroy any plastic they made whole neighborhoods are consumed the steady march of nature is conquering concrete - this was once a train station crowded with commuters now it's concrete roof is
47:56 falling apart rain is washing out of the limestone used to make it stalactites grow a centimetre every year and then break off slowly weakening the concrete we may be gone but one of our legacies is helping speed this destruction for over a hundred years we burned fossil fuels we pumped tons of carbon dioxide into the air as it returns to earth the carbon
48:44 dioxide mixes with rainwater producing carbonic acid which eats away at the world's concrete we built much of our modern world from concrete cities all over the world are facing the same fate a slow disintegration as nature reclaims the planet without windows nothing stops birds and animals from taking up the
49:30 corner offices we once valued so highly but offices weren't meant to be exposed to the elements ceiling tiles and drywall are no match for 60 years of wind and rain there's rust everywhere [Music] without us around to do repairs paint is peeling unchecked our world is falling apart [Music]
50:22 a city like Paris gets up to 63 centimeters of rain every year the concrete skeleton of this office tower once protected from the elements is now getting soaked by rain the cracks are caused when carbon dioxide penetrates the concrete it now encounters a maze of microscopic pores it winds into the concrete until it reaches the metal that gave this building extra strength this rebar is usually hidden from the outside world but now the carbon dioxide is
51:08 causing the bars to rust the rusted surface expands to ten times its normal size cracks radiates out to the surface they spread like a cancer attacking the building from the inside out cracks are appearing all over the world and there's no one around to fix them when people walked and worked on the planet we'd repair problems like this cracked concrete would be reinforced or replaced [Music]
51:57 but now the process runs unchecked as water turns to ice it expands putting more pressure on the crumbling buildings the constant freezing and thawing helps the cracks grow it takes just one hundred years without us the concrete has become too fractured and brittle to support its load floors collapse crashing down on the weakened concrete below
52:48 our cities once the center of our modern world are disappearing bit by bit the planet is absorbing what we left behind during our time on earth we tried to control nature turn its power to our advantage it's now been 120 years since humans disappeared from the earth many modern skyscrapers have collapsed into heaps of rubble concrete walls have been destroyed by a steady assault of air and rain the weather changes where skyscrapers once stood when we ruled the
53:38 planet asphalt absorb 95% of the sun's heat the cities were hot up to 10 degrees warmer than the forests and fields that surrounded them but now that we're gone black asphalt is being covered by grasses and trees the temperature drops the climate is changing outside cities too global warming is finally ending thanks to the oceans for the past century churning waves have sucked carbon dioxide into the top
54:24 layers of the scenes microscopic plankton and shellfish have been absorbing the carbon into their bodies as they die they sink to the bottom of the ocean taking our carbon dioxide with them 120 years after the last car stopped running much of their exhaust is finally being buried the changes are being felt all around this new world in Berlin young trees attract new life the saplings that grow
55:13 out of the concrete provide perfect food for animals these wolves have come in from the countryside following the dear humans killed off most of the wolves in Germany long ago these hunters are immigrants from Poland 140 years after humans disappeared thousands of wolves hunt across Europe they need to eat every few days so wolves hunt down town following prey the urban jungle has become a new killing ground
55:59 [Music] it's now been a hundred and fifty years since humans disappeared from the planet Earth
56:46 with no black roads or roofs cities are colder than before in northern cities more snow falls and stays longer packs of molds keep themselves fed through these colder winters [Music] we changed the course of two thirds of the world's major rivers this is the River Thames in London England humans tried to tame this River
57:33 for over 1,000 years but now it's breaking free its high tides and storm surges regularly threatened to flood the city one of the world's largest systems of floodgates was built to hold the waters back now the river is out of control tides have sucked boats into bridges creating dams the thames has been forced around the bridges flooding its banks London is returning to the marsh that the Romans found here 2,000 years ago
58:23 [Applause] [Music] [Applause] half a world away the problem is too little water this is the Imperial Valley in Southern California half of America's fruit and vegetables came from here each winter with 350 days of sunshine some crops had four harvests a year but only seven point five centimetres of rain falls every 12 months the dry air keeps buildings intact but it's deadly for crops [Music]
59:09 farmers brought in water from the Colorado River almost 4 trillion liters each year enough to cover every field in almost two meters of water but when we disappeared the irrigation stopped what was once California's farming miracle is once again a desert 500 kilometres northeast lies another man-made oasis Las Vegas
59:54 built in the middle of a desert it's casinos and fountains used water brought in by electric pumps when the power went off the tops went right the desert is reclaiming the city but nature hasn't been able to erase all evidence of our presence this is the Colorado River it hasn't changed much in the 150 years since we left before the modern age this river was much deeper
1:00:41 and stronger it carved the Grand Canyon [Applause] dozens of dams lie along the Colorado River cutting the river down to a stream when it reaches the ocean in Mexico its massive power is locked in the reservoirs we created it's now 200 years since we disappeared from the planet Nature has taken over the world cities but some rivers are still shackled by
1:01:26 concrete monoliths in the American West dozens of dams block the Colorado River the largest of all is the Hoover Dam [Music] as tall as a 70 storey building its base is as thick as two football fields enough concrete was used here to pave a highway from New York to San Francisco
1:02:13 the dam created the reservoir of Lake Mead there's enough water here to cover what used to be the state of New York under 30 centimeters of water much of this mammoth structure is made of solid concrete but even this monument to human ingenuity is in danger the reason lies to the north up the Colorado River near what used to be the border of Utah this is the Glen Canyon Dam this dam was
1:03:00 created to provide an emergency supply of water should reservoirs downstream ever run dry built to last for centuries this dam has a major weak spot its spillways they are like the overflow drain on a bathtub if the river level gets too high the excess water escapes through the spillway tunnels so that nothing can go over the top of the dam but these spillways don't deal well with Center floods the trigger is high in the mountains this past winter they were hit with more snow than normal as it melted a heavy spring runoff swept down toward the Colorado and floodwaters are heading for
1:03:48 the dam after centuries of rust that gates the controlled the spillways have collapsed the water surges through tunnels deep inside the dam and as it does something strange happens low pressure bubbles form in the water they cause large explosions that eat their way through the rock towards the dam itself even without us special concrete ramps in the spillways prevented this from happening but after 200 years there's too much erosion in the tunnel
1:04:47 17 billion cubic meters of water heads downstream a surge is over 16 meters high it sweeps down towards the Hoover Dam the Hoover was built to hold back two hundred and nineteen thousand kilograms per square meter but its designers didn't anticipate this the water pours over the Hoover Dam and sweeps away everything in its path
1:05:35 now at tears southward at 40 kilometres an hour smashing through a dozens of dams in its way [Music] after 18 hours it reaches the Gulf of California for the first time in 200 years the Colorado River reaches the sea as a flood not a trickle the release of the Colorado transforms this part of North America
1:06:21 a vast Marsh once one of the wonders of the Americas will be revitalized hundreds of species find new homes as nature erases one of our greatest achievements all over the world nature is reclaiming the planet in France parts of Paris are Marsh again in California irrigated fields have reverted to deserts and Manhattan has become a forest for the first time since the
1:07:07 Dutch arrived as altered rivers like the Mississippi returned to their natural state silt creates new land south of New Orleans over 647 square kilometers of land takes root lost when humans dammed up the Mississippi our sudden disappearance has being felt in the oceans too we once took two hundred and thirty-five thousand tons of fish from the sea every day now with no trawlers to catch them fish are living longer and growing bigger cod
1:07:57 once just 60 centimetres long have now tripled in size large creatures of the deep are also recovering in our absence [Music] 200 years without people have been a boon to whales they've had a lot to recover from before the petroleum industry whales were a major source of oil for machines and lamps when humans started pumping oil from the ground most whale hunting declined
1:08:46 but then a new problem appeared large modern ships in our last 50 years on earth the number of ships worldwide doubled the noise of ship engines traveled thousands of miles underwater that noise pollution was a huge problem for the world's whales one of the reasons whales sing is to find mates but ship noise interfered with those songs with humans gone whales are once more singing mating songs that can travel up
1:09:32 to 1600 kilometers underwater from Hawaii to Japan after 200 years our impact here is vanishing [Music] but on land there are still relics of humanity that remained when we ruled the earth we seemed driven to build symbols of our power but how long will they
1:10:22 endure [Music] which of our monuments will be the last to fall now that we've disappeared [Music] it's now 230 years since we disappeared and it's becoming increasingly difficult to find many signs that an intelligent creative species once lived here most cities have been swallowed by nature but there are still some hints of human
1:11:08 existence ironically some of the oldest like the Great Wall of China are the ones that remain [Music] more than four thousand years ago Egyptians built the pyramids and carved the Sphinx but can modern structures survive as long without us in Europe stands one of the most well known modern monuments the Eiffel Tower
1:12:01 324 meters tall it was constructed in 1889 for a World Exhibition and was meant to be torn down after 20 years but the French fell in love with her tower and it became one of the most famous landmarks in the world this nineteenth-century artifact was designed by bridge builders this bridge to the sky has outlasted every skyscraper the lattice structure
1:12:51 gives the tower strength without using much metal the entire tower weighs just 7,300 tons when people were still around it was covered in 60 tons of paint to protect the iron from the elements but rain has slowly eaten through the paint more and more of the towers iron is exposed to the air rust has taken hold with every rainstorm a little more of the tower is washed away the weakened
1:13:39 tower is now vulnerable to even moderate winds which are magnified near the top normally the tower bends with the wind but eventually the rusty beams have reached their breaking point [Applause] [Music]
1:14:37 buildings can't adapt they're frozen in time but species can evolve to deal with your conditions most of these pigs are descendants of the pink pigs that used to live on farms in the shadow of the ruined Eiffel Tower they've thrived feral pigs have now bred with the surviving domesticated ones the result is an animal with heavy dark fur a trait farmers had taken years to breed out
1:15:31 they need to be Hardy and tough to survive in the new world without us another symbol of human ingenuity stands on the other side of the Atlantic the Statue of Liberty was built in 1886 three years older than the Eiffel Tower she is made of massive copper plates [Music] since we've gone some parts of her are doing better than before
1:16:18 [Music] pollution coated her nose and cheeks with black grime but now that the soot and grime have been washed out of the skies a new cleaner statue watches over the water but not all of the statue has been thriving since we disappeared a forest has grown up around the statue it's now littered with copper plates these plates are about as thick as two pennies and they can last a thousand years so why is the Statue of Liberty shedding her skin after 230 years the statues arm
1:17:06 was the first part to fail if the copper is the statues skin iron bars are at skeleton and like the iron of the Eiffel Tower these bones have rusted through the shoulder bars became too weak to hold up the arm and it's torch so after two centuries this symbol of freedom is now invisible to all but the local wildlife the statues entire body depends on its iron skeleton [Music]
1:18:04 more than 200 years have taken their toll on some of our most iconic monuments throughout North America signs of the human species are becoming harder to find the eastern half of the continent has become an immense forest the trees don't just tower above old suburbs and roads they bury them after 200 years falling leaves create 3 feet of new soil covering almost everything we left behind [Music] rain-swollen streams occasionally
1:18:50 uncover the remains of human existence this is all that's left of a home [Music] plastic that filled modern houses can still be seen this cell phone is still intact more than 200 years after the last phone call it can survive for centuries if it's kept out of the sunlight most metals have rusted badly but stainless steel is truly stainless this humble kitchen sink may last for
1:19:35 hundreds of thousands of years some must change in the West caribou and deer roam over millions of acres of former farmland and once again thunderous herds of Buffalo can be found here birds can grow by 30 percent a year horses have an easier time their species evolved here long before humans arrived now they have a chance to range unmolested but once again [Music]
1:20:26 in just 200 years North America has gone wild Berrien human homes and cities [Music] it's now 1,000 years since every single human being vanished off the face of the earth in Paris the iron of the Eiffel Tower is almost gone in New York the Statue of
1:21:13 Liberty has fallen into the forest her iron skeleton is completely given way her pedestal still stands however made of solid concrete and coated in granite it will last thousands of years but given enough time the planet will wipe away even these last reminders of humanity [Music] twenty-five thousand years after we disappear a new ice age grips the planet
1:22:00 gradual changes in the Earth's orbit move it away from the Sun the first sign will be when the snow stays for two summers in a row [Music] then a chain reaction begins that causes ice to cover most of the Northern Hemisphere once again glaciers travel south eventually reaching Manhattan they will grind down what's left of the Statue of Liberty and any other sign of human civilization left in the north but
1:22:46 there is one place where our imprint will remain indefinitely it's on the moon unlike the earth the landscape here changes very slowly craters over four billion years old are still preserved along with some human artifacts a car a television camera the only reminders of the human species that will last for millions of years aren't even found on the earth the
1:23:34 planet earth is 4.5 billion years old in that context human civilization is just the blink of an eye it took us 10,000 years to cut down half the world's forests but after we disappeared they grew back in just 500 years we once used one-half of all the fresh water and changed the course of 2/3 of the rivers but thousands of dams were washed away in just 200 years while we lived on the planet we pump 13.5 billion tons of carbon dioxide into
1:24:21 the air each year yet in just a few centuries plants and the sea have scrubbed the earth clean it took just over a century for our major cities to crumble the forests and swamps cover what used to be concrete and asphalt the planet was even able to handle the radioactive legacy we left behind in
1:25:08 just 25 years nature buried it all saving millions of animals from horrible deaths the earth is resilient it cleaned up every mess we left behind all we had to do was get out of the way this has being a thought experiment a chance to discover what difference we
1:25:56 really make on our planet the answer the earth can get by without us but we can't survive without the earth [Music]
1:26:44 you
