life after people got it facts right?

[drychlick]

i like the tv show life after people on the history ch. What i am asking is what they said is right? Would that happen if every 1 was dead? If 6 billion die at the same time what wound all the dead people do to the earth? would airplane fall form the sky! would car go on till they run out of gas! thank for your time love dr

 

[Canadave]

would airplane fall form the sky! would car go on till they run out of gas!

Of all the things to wonder about the factual accuracy of in Life After People...

 

[darkwing_duck1]

Eh, I'll play along.

Essentially, yes.

If something happened to instantly remove all people, whatever machinery and equipment was operating would continue to operate until something happened to stop it. Cars would go out of control and crash pretty much right away. Airplanes on autopilot would remain airborne until fuel exhaustion (like what happened to Paine Stewart's plane).

Appliances like refridgerators would continue to operate until something happened to the electrical supply or they broke down mechanically (whichever happened first). Power plants likewise would continue to operate until fuel exhaustion or malfunction.

Haven't seen the show yet, but have read the book it's based on. Good read, if more than a bit creepy.

 

[steve1961]

Wont happen like that. If life ends everything goes! Animals,Insects,People and Plants. Everything goes! This is more likely how the world is gonna end
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQ0BQ_uFyBQ&feature=related

 

[darkwing_duck1]

Wont happen like that. If life ends everything goes! Animals,Insects,People and Plants. Everything goes! This is more likely how the world is gonna end
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQ0BQ_uFyBQ&feature=related

Uh, no...there are scenarios wherein the human race could be either effectively or entirely eliminated without ALL life ending. A global pandemic of a highly virulent disease, for example. Or the sudden loss of advanced technology, such as that feared possible if we got pegged by a solar flare or magnetic surge.

 

[Squiggy]

i like the tv show life after people on the history ch. What i am asking is what they said is right? Would that happen if every 1 was dead? If 6 billion die at the same time what wound all the dead people do to the earth? would airplane fall form the sky! would car go on till they run out of gas! thank for your time love dr

They mention this in the original special that the series is based on.

1. Moving vehicles would crash. Some will burst into flames and extinquish themselves when their fuel is exhausted. (1-3 hours)

2. Stopped running vehicles would remain running until their fuel is burned (a few hours to a few days depending on the car and fuel supply)

3. Domestic electrical power would fail in most areas after a day or two when power plants go into fail safe mode. Hydroelectric plants would last a few days longer. There's a billboard in Times Square that's powered by wind and that may last for a couple of years and would probably be the last electrical light on Earth.

4. Oil refineries/chemical plants would fail after a week or so...some of not most will explode and their fuel supplies would burn for weeks, maybe months.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

One of the more interesting tidbits in the show was the inundation of the New York subway system by water within a few weeks and the resulting widespread damage to city structures.

 

[Jadzia]

I imagine fire would take a lot of buildings within the first few days. A lot of appliances aren't designed to be left on full power and then abandoned. A small number of them would cause fires, and many of those fires would grow and spread without prompt action. Consider vehicles crashing into buildings and burning, or cookers with food being incinerated and bursting into flames.

The chances of a fire starting in a city is higher, so I expect most cities would see fires, that would spread and destroy those cities within a few days.

 

[Scout101]

They were good with some of it, and other parts were kinda retarded. Cats moving into high-rise buildings and learning to fly to hunt birds (all in the couple hundred years it would take for the buildings to all come down) was particularly retarded.

A big problem, that they couldn't really avoid, was dealing with HOW all the people disappeared. They are showing a "Rapture" kind of situation, where everyone just up and vanishes with everything in place, but they don't get into it. They talk about disease as a possible way to get into this "Life after people" situation, but you'd have to deal with all the dead bodies as part of it, which would have a large impact on how things go. With so many of the things they talk about, the WAY the earth becomes depopulated would factor into what happens next.

The whole show is kinda schitzo, anyway. They either needed to focus on a specific element (animals and wildlife, buildings, utilities, natural disasters and reclaiming land, etc) or pick a specific timeframe and hit ALL of those areas. Every unique show feels like a repeat, because they cover the same timeframe, and just bounce around locations or problems, there's no order to it. Or one time you're watching buildings deteriorate in NYC, next time you're in New Orleans at that time period. Would have worked better for me if it was either organized by time ( 0 Hour to year 1; year 1 to year 5, etc) or done like Planet Earth, and pick a topic and follow it through. It's just too all over the place to watch more than 1-2 episodes, because they all feel like rehashes...

 

[Lindley]

Airplanes on autopilot would remain airborne until fuel exhaustion

Or until CFIT, if they're low enough.

 

[ThunderAeroI]

Airplanes on autopilot would remain airborne until fuel exhaustion

Or until CFIT, if they're low enough.

In some cases those planes would land safety on the runway and then collide with the other plane that landed onto the runway.

Autopilot isn't just a crowbar anymore, there are some fancy systems out there with auto land.

 

[Jadzia]

Aircraft can already take off, fly a thousand miles and land themselves on autopilot. The pilot can input destination and landing runway into the plane's autopilot computer and then sit back. Quite often, the pilot's greatest role is to reassure the passengers that a human is in the loop, more than actually flying the plane.

I wouldn't be surprised if within this new decade we see some commercial flights taking place with no pilot at all, just having air traffic control issuing the flight plans electronically.

 

[Lindley]

I would. The FAA has never been all that quick to embrace new technology.

Besides, autopilots can't make critical in-flight decisions yet, and ATC can't see every bit of weather out there from the ground. An unexpected encounter with unforecast extreme icing or severe turbulence isn't beyond the realm of possibility.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

A big problem, that they couldn't really avoid, was dealing with HOW all the people disappeared.

There was no reason to deal with it; that lay outside the scope of the premise. The premise of the book was simply a kind of thought experiment - eliminate human beings suddenly, and what happens to our physical culture - and nothing more than that. It wasn't intended to be narrative fiction. Any accounting for our sudden disappearence that in any way set parameters for the aftermath - disease, for example, with billions of unburied dead - would have been a complete distraction from the main idea. The complete, instantaneous removal of human influence was central to it.

 

[Scout101]

Yeah, I know, and it would have changed things by picking a way we went, but it just changes the whole game either way.

And if they were trying to avoid that part, they spent a lot of time talking about family pets trapped indoors, things like that.

Even if it forced them down one road or another, would have been more interesting, IMO, for them to pick a scenario to work off of. Everyone just being "beamed up" at once seems like about the least likely way to get into this situation. Creates problems if you intorduce a plague, or something, but it's at least a believeable scenario, and the bodies would all be gone in short order anyway. Wouldn't affect the show long, as it went thousands of years into the future, and the structures, roads, and other man-made objects were the interesting part anyway. Just more a pet peeve, I understand why they didn't tie themselves down on it; they just spent a lot of the first bit describing problems that likely wouldn't have happened, given any normal explanation for what happened to the people.

the rest was just scatter-brained ADD story telling, and jumped around too much for me. Each of the shows was interesting, but they didn't break it up logically, so always feels like a repeat.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

I wouldn't be surprised if within this new decade we see some commercial flights taking place with no pilot at all, just having air traffic control issuing the flight plans electronically.

Seriously? You would want to fly on a plane like that? Where you KNOW there is no pilot? Assuming the passengers would in fact know. And I think they would have that right.

That doesn't scare you just a little bit? It would sure creep me out. I would never willingly fly on a plane that I knew had no pilot. (If I found out later, I'd seriously consider suing the airline.) What if something goes wrong? Bad weather has already been mentioned. What if communication between the ground and the plane is disrupted somehow, intentionally or accidentally? I would definitely feel more secure if I knew there was a living breathing human being at the controls of my plane at all times.

Similarly, I would also be very uncomfortable with cars that drive themselves. In both cases - driverless car, or pilotless aircraft - the principle is the same: The computer systems that would presumably be in control can be hacked, or can malfunction. Communications to and from the vehicle can be interrupted. Bad weather can occur, which of course can't be planned for. In fact it would be much more dangerous with a pilotless aircraft, since if your plane goes down, you will die. It's pretty much unavoidable. A plane crash means instant death, but at least a car crash could be survivable...

 

[PorthosShadow]

I don't believe this series is specifically based on the book "The World Without Us" by Alan Weisman but it's certainly along the same lines. Anyway it explores and interesting premis but I have to admit that I have hard time just believing that six billion plus human beings simply vanished into thin air. However, I understand it's nessessary to get to the real point of the series.

So I watch LAP whenever it's on and all I can say is I'm glad my home town of Phoenix AZ hasn't been covered yet

 

[Squiggy]

Phoenix has been covered.

 

[PorthosShadow]

Phoenix has been covered.

Nooooooooooooooooooooooo! To quote The Tick "That's where my stuff is at!"

 

[Lindley]

if your plane goes down, you will die. It's pretty much unavoidable. A plane crash means instant death, but at least a car crash could be survivable...

It's not as certain as you're making it out to be.

Of course, to a certain extent it depends on the aircraft. What you might mean is that anything severe enough to affect a 747 probably won't leave much margin for a safe emergency landing. Especially anything which is able to overcome the autopilot anyway.

But only 5% of all aircraft accidents inflict fatalities.

Also, among all of the various things which could go wrong with a pilotless aircraft, lost communications aren't all that big a problem. IFR procedures spell out lost communications protocols quite clearly, and the plane could detect the fault and follow them. The actual navigation would be done using multiple redundant ground- and sattelite-based systems, so in order to truely have a problem, you'd need some fairly pervasive jamming.