a fascinating documentary shown last night on channel four looking at how nature will reclaim the planet if humans were to disappear over night. the mass vanishing of the entire race does involve quite a lot of suspension of disbelief, especially as it seems to me humanity will destroy the world and probably in as environmentally destrucive a way as possible, but once the premise is established the gradual decline of everything man-made is humbling as mother nature starts to do her thing. the program goes through the reclamation in stages; one year, five years, ten years, hundred, etc, and the grip we have on the planet is shown to be tenuous at best and our greatest monuments surprisingly fagile.
without our protection domestic dogs will soon start to dies off, rats, cockroathes and scavaging birds like gulls will see dramtic falls in population without the detritis of humanity to keep them warm and fed them. cities built on a high water table like london and new york will be flooded and even the grandest architectural designs will collapse as plants and the weather quickly undermine the integraty of brick, glass and concrete. within a century the world will be quite a different place, and i think its reassuring to know that our worst efforts to destroy nature are only keeping it at bay for the time being
Was this the one where they claimed the last thing standing will be the Hoover Dam? People were talking about this at work this morning. Unfortunately our TV was out of action last night so we went to the Cinema.
I saw it too. very interesting show. the graphics weren't brilliant, but very enjoyable none the less.
I particularly liked the implication that all of modern media culture would be erased after 100years without human preservation. All that's going to be left come the apocalypse is Hoover Dam, Mt Rushmore and the grand pyramid in Egypt.
If you wanna leave a lasting impression on the earth, its time to start scuplting marble I think! David may well turn out to be one of the last remaining (reasonably accurate) deptictions of the human form!
P
I wonder what a new civilisation would think of Mount Rushmore. I think they would probably think it was sculpted by hand over thousands of years (obviously the detail would have been screwed long before it was 'rediscovered')
