The End is Nigh?

The "Big Three" of educational TV--The Discovery Channel (and it's offshoots including the Science Channel, Discovery Health, et al.), The History Channel (and of course History International), and National Geographic (and...um..Nat Geo HD...)--always have those "what if" shows. Like what if New York City was hit by a huge hurricane, or Yellowstone National Park turned into a huge volcano (don't laugh, we're overdue for it), or I don't know, a mutated gigantic lizard went to Tokyo and stomped around for a while (laugh).

The thing is, all these 'disaster' specials always end up with humans continuing to you know, live, and do our thing. Suddenly all that's changed.

Over the last couple of weeks, I've seen two specials dealing with the effects of what would happen if humans completely vanished today. Or maybe tomorrow.

The first one, History Channel's Life After People originally aired January 21, 2008. The show's opening lines announce that it "isn't the story of how we might vanish, it is the story of what happens to the world we leave behind." I actually found the entire show on Google Video, so Click Here (pops) to watch it in full. Pretty cool. The show finds some pretty fascinating experts who talk about the power failing, household pets, buildings, bridges, and landmarks falling apart, and the last surviving signs of man--apparently the Hoover Dam is one of them.

The other. National Geographic's Aftermath: Population Zero, which originally aired like last night or something. Maybe two nights ago. Whatever. Problem #1: They talked entirely way too much about how after I disappear my dog will either die slowly trapped in my house, break out and join a vicious gang, or break out and be eaten by said vicious gang. Problem #2: No legitimizing scientist-types. The entire show was narrated by some quasi-legitimate narrator guy. How am I supposed to know what his qualifications are? Problem #3: No full length video to be easily found and linked to.

Overall, while I did watch both shows, and while they did keep my attention, I must say I liked the History Channel show much better. It dealt with the actual collapse of our infrastructure much better. We see why concrete doesn't last as long, how long it takes metal to rust to the point of collapse, etc. The Nat Geo show more focused on the types of wildlife that we were decimating and how they're doing much better now. Though I must say, I learned an interesting fact: the background noise from large sailing vessels' engines can actually interfere with whales' mating calls, even hundreds of miles away. Oops.

I just hope that both the History Channel and Nat Geo don't have some top secret information, and they're just showing us the not-so-distant future. Because, I mean, that would be, like, bad.

Stay tuned next week for a discussion about using your ordinary household cell phone as an emergency flotation device.