Life After People: Christmas Gone Horribly Wrong (S2, E6) | Full Episode | History

what would happen if every human being  on earth disappeared this isn't the story   of how we might vanish it is the story of  what happens to the world we leave behind in this episode of life after people humanity  takes a holiday what will remain when christmas   is past these turkeys avoid the plate but  will they live to see another thanksgiving   and what will happen to  mankind's vacation destinations   this one has already become a holiday  hell welcome to earth population zero throughout history mankind marked the  passing of time with special holidays days of celebration places of escape but now the party is over one day after people it's still christmas at  detroit's always christmas store the lights sparkle the animated  santas and snowman sing carols   in the time of humans christmas  spawned its own economy   americans spent 154 billion  dollars at christmas every year   we imported nearly half a billion dollars  worth of christmas ornaments alone   that's more than the cost  to launch the space shuttle   the most iconic symbol of the season was the  christmas tree but by the 21st century more than   60 percent of families put their presence  under trees made of aluminum or plastic   because of the chemistry of their main ingredient   plastic trees are destined  for a long life after people this is a very typical artificial christmas tree  it's primarily made of two materials steel or   metal and plastic you've got wire rods that are  covered in pvc or polyvinyl chloride pvc is better   known as vinyl the same material that made record  albums and gave automobiles that new car smell another artifact of christmas is the traditional  holiday food that was both beloved and reviled the fruitcake invented in the middle ages and popularized in  victorian england fruitcakes were built to last   a densely packed loaf that  didn't need to be refrigerated it was often joked that  fruitcakes would last forever   but because of one key ingredient  perhaps it's not a joke at all   the twinkling christmas lights  dim as the power grid fails two days after people another christmas icon is in trouble reindeer  although they may seem like a christmas invention   reindeer are a real domesticated species  that live across earth's polar regions in places like alaska they were bred for  milk meat and even for pulling slaves   how they became part of the christmas story  isn't entirely clear but many believe the image   of santa's sleigh being pulled by flying reindeer  evolved from pagan images of the norse god thor   with his sky chariot being pulled by flying goats there are over 30 000 domesticated  reindeer in alaska alone but now with no humans to care for  them there is a threat looming nearby   will these reindeer live to see another christmas three days after people another  holiday animal also faces tough times turkeys wander hungrily in their pens in  the time of humans turkeys were an essential   part of american culture in fact founding  father benjamin franklin wanted the turkey   not the bald eagle to be the national bird by  the 21st century american farms were producing   over 270 million turkeys per year 46 million of  them destined to be eaten for thanksgiving dinner with people gone these  turkeys have avoided the acts   but something humans have done to make turkeys  more appealing will also seal their fate   tom turkey for the dinner  table just not gonna make it selective breeding has created a turkey with  massive breasts that meets consumer demand but   threatens supply the turkey's breasts are too big  to allow them to fly too big for males to even be   able to mount their mates farm bred turkeys are  actually produced by artificial insemination   so in order to reproduce  that's not going to happen this generation of thanksgiving  turkey may be the last one week after people steel roller coasters  that once echoed with screams are now silent   theme parks were one of the world's  favorite holiday destinations   roller coasters first appeared  in america in the 1880s   and for nearly a century all coasters were wooden although the first steel coaster was built in 1959  it wasn't until the 1970s that a breakthrough in   engineering resulted in the birth of the extreme  coaster looping inverted zero-g screen machines   like the silver bullet at knott's  berry farm in southern california   the extreme coasters relied  on highly engineered steel the steels that go into a ride like this have to  have certain characteristics steel is basically   about 97 or 98 iron but then like a good soup  it has a few little things stuck in there   some silicon in it some manganese but the most  important element is carbon you can increase the   strength of the steel by adding carbon it's really  a small amount but it's a very powerful addition   adding as little as half a percent of carbon  can make steel two to three times stronger   but even the toughest steel has an ancient enemy rust if we get a scratch on the right here well we  go ahead sand it up and protect it and re-coat it now without maintenance a tiny scratch  lets rust begin on the exposed steel   not far away a bizarre holiday oasis  flourishes in the barren desert   golf course fairways glisten water fountains spray   and power still flows in the getaway of the stars palm springs california this seems to me to be a place that really  doesn't belong here you drive around in   palm springs and you see lawns you see all  these flowers there are fountains and ponds   it just seems like this is a bad place  to build a so-called civilization   despite being placed in a barren desert   palm springs was crowded with more golf courses  per square mile than any other place in america but now the golf course sprinklers  keep the fairways lush and inviting for no one there's another bizarre human  artifact towering over the desert floor it is the palm springs aerial tramway   in the time of humans it was a tourist  attraction that stretched a mile across   five steel towers from the desert floor  to a mountain peak 8 500 feet above sea level but now the car sits  empty 200 feet in the air   swinging in a breeze overlooking  the vacant resort city the traffic lights still blink and the  air conditioners still hum in palm springs   because much of the power is still on   due to the city's reliance on a  massive forest of wind turbines   4 000 of them still spin  just outside the resort city as long as wind pushes the blades  electricity keeps pumping out   these windmills appear very simple but looks can be deceiving the wind  turbine is a fairly complicated beast   there's a wind speed measuring sensors wind  direction measuring sensors and they actually   control the pitches of the blades so that you're  producing the right amount of power all the time   but high tech demands high maintenance  you have to have lubricants you have to   have hydraulic fluids it's just like in your  car you have to change the oil every so often   or your motor is going to seize up the  same thing happens with these things if   you don't replenish the oil the lubricants and  hydraulic fluids they're going to quit working one week after people their blades still spin   generating thousands of kilowatts every  hour every day every time the wind blows but just over the horizon the winds  of destruction are beginning to howl one month after people in a series of steel  sheds and concrete bunkers in rural pennsylvania   thousands of pounds of explosive  power sit idle in a fireworks factory in the time of humans over 200 million  pounds of fireworks were set off annually   that's twice the explosive power of the  nuclear bomb that destroyed hiroshima but now those fireworks await a celebration   that will never come are these  explosives in any danger of going off it happened at a fireworks  factory in denmark in 2004   killing one person injuring 17  and damaging over 200 houses the final explosion resembled  a nuclear mushroom cloud in america regulations require smaller buildings  each containing smaller amounts of explosives   to prevent a massive explosion like  the one that happened in denmark   one month after people the fireworks and gunpowder  lie dormant behind blast walls in their bunkers   there will be no fireworks  displayed this year at least not yet   in alaska these domesticated reindeer are  struggling to survive without their human masters   and the domesticated reindeer are about to come  into contact with their larger wild cousins   the caribou reindeer and caribou are actually the  same species but with one key difference   reindeer are domesticated while caribou  run wild 900 000 caribou range and massive   migratory herds across alaska the caribou  can migrate up to 3 000 miles in a year   the caribou are like the lean main running  machines and the reindeer the couch potatoes   the caribou are actually built for running they  got long legs slender bodies the reindeer have   very short legs very heavy bodies although they  aren't built to travel long distances reindeer   can't help heating the call of the wild even in  the time of humans domesticated reindeer often   disappeared from alaskan rangeland joining the  caribou herds as they swept across the countryside when they come out under the rangeland being  migratory animals being very closely related   they do intermingle and when the  caribou goes on through their migration   the reindeer have a tendency  to travel along with them now without humans to tend them the once  sedentary reindeer will join the caribou herds   and face the challenge of a 3 000 mile migration further south in glacier bay alaska luxury  cruise ships rock silently in the harbor   in the time of humans hundreds of these ships  sailed the inside passage from vancouver to seward   taking half a million visitors  annually on a scenic holiday but without maintenance even  the small pocket cruise ships   face the creeping effects of alaska's weather i think generally during the summer season  when most cruise ships are operating the   cold weather isn't too much of a hazard but  in winter when it's very very cold when rain   freezes on deck during the winter  season that can be hazardous as the snow piles up on the decks sunshine  and daytime warming creates a thick   sheath of ice covering everything from the  portholes to the rigging it's eerily beautiful   but snow and ice buildup creates a weight  that a cruise ship is not designed for   the ship rarely sits uh completely even in  the water there's going to be one side or   the other where it's it's leaning a slight bit  and in the lower recesses is where water and   snow are going to build up and gradually  they're going to make the ship tilt over   for this ship the voyage is over six weeks after people at the san diego wild  animal park the lions are getting hungry   a lion can go two weeks without eating but it's  now been over a month since their last feeding the   lions are so ravenous they are willing to test the  electrified fence that surrounds their enclosure to their surprise they don't get a shock  since the power grid failed weeks ago   now the biggest obstacle is the  moat the motes are over 18 feet wide   but lions have been known to leap  more than 30 feet and now they're free   the first thing they would do is go  for food whether it's in the zebra   enclosure right next door or  somewhere throughout the park   they would be timid at first because  they're used to a very small area but soon they will expand their range in search  of food there is a new king of the urban jungle six months after people   some ski runs are beginning to look the way  they did before man claimed them as his winter playground but strangely while some ski runs  have already seen pine saplings sprout   others remain mysteriously free of growth  as if still being groomed by human hands one year after people   the wind turbine farms still tower over  the desert outside palm springs california the steel towers face a worse enemy than rust   the wind itself these wind turbines are designed  for specific range of wind velocities if you   exceed that velocity they're essentially going  to fly apart that's why these windmills were   designed with automatic braking systems to  shut them down during extremely high winds but what if those systems fail it  actually happened in denmark in 2008 now after a year without maintenance   acres of power producing windmills  are vulnerable to the same fate   the first time 100 mile an hour wind comes through  here the rotor is going to be spinning faster than   it should that's going to create vibration the  turbine's going to probably start to come apart you would see the thing fly off and  then when it hit the ground you'd see   a dust flying park flying everywhere  you're gonna have all sorts of mayhem 20 years after people with  the windmill farms destroyed   power went out long ago in palm springs the  once bustling resort town is eerily silent   its golf courses return to  sand its hotels empty shells we know this because just down  the road from palm springs   is a place where life after  people has already begun 20 years after people high-end  hotels are only checking in vermin once lush golf courses have  turned into acres of sand traps   and luxury swimming pools are now empty cesspools this is the fate of the vacation  destination called palm springs we know what palm springs might  look like 20 years after people   because there's a place just like it only  60 miles away where it's already happened the salton sea is the largest lake in california  conceived as a resort paradise for boaters   water skiers and vacationers it was  once called the next palm springs instead it became an empty wasteland  of foul smells abandoned homes and acres of dead fish the salton sea is one of the most beautiful places  from a distance and one of the most foul faculty   places when you get close up dead fish a nice odor  of ammonia and you think this is really hideous the heyday of the salton sea was the 1960s and 70s   vacation homes popped up like cactus blossoms   crowds thronged the beaches swimming  boating and water skiing during the day   and at night sipping martinis at the yacht club  now the crowds at the yacht club are only pigeons   the vacation homes lie open to the elements and rv campgrounds look more like burial grounds these hookups all throughout the  campground they're kind of like   tombstones to the dead campground what happened to turn this lush oasis into an apocalyptic wasteland  it began in the 1970s   masses of fish suddenly dying floating  to the surface by the thousands the cause of the fish kills was  agricultural runoff from local farms because of all these fertilizers running in  there we get this tremendous growth of algae   and as this algae dies it falls to the bottom   and it creates a layer in the bottom  of the sea where there's no oxygen with bacteria that are eating all this  dead organic matter and creating hydrogen   and sulfide gas hydrogen sulfide is a  gas that is as toxic as cyanide causing   extreme damage to the central nervous system  eventually destroying the ability to breathe it was so deadly it was used as  a poison gas in world war one it's just as deadly today   and at times it can kill millions of fish a  few years ago about 7 million fish died at once the fish kills continued then the birds  that ate the fish also got sick and died residents claimed they could  smell and taste the gas in the air   people stopped coming to the salton sea at its height the population of salt and sea was  around 15 000 people with thousands more arriving   on weekends but vacation homes were abandoned  resort developments stopped in mid-construction rvs boats even the yacht clubs all left behind  today where thousands once lived and played   only a few hundred people remain in  each of the tiny shoreside communities   surrounded by the ruins of vacation homes decades after being abandoned the  effects of water sun and salt are clear   this is an old trailer i think it's an airstream  trailer and it's been exposed to the environment   for 40 or 50 years at least after people are gone  once one of the doors starts flopping in the wind   or perhaps one of the windows breaks  and the environment enters this trailer the whole thing just becomes  food for the environment all the materials that are composite or  man-made are falling apart this here is like   masonite or particle board it's decaying  much more rapidly than the solid timber like the people dribbling away from the toxic sea   the structural elements slowly  disappear from the homes this is about a 40 or 50 year old building and  although we still have some structural frame in   place there's not much left once the the roof  went away the windows are gone there's i don't   see any doors any glass it's all actually deep  several feet down underneath the salt and sand   ultimately it'll go back to being  desert with a lot of garbage on it   but in this desert of a future time and nature may  lead to a fourth of july display bigger than ever   20 years after people vines and trees have covered  up or broken through the concrete and steel   bunkers of what was once a fireworks factory  fireworks were a dangerous way to celebrate   in the time of humans on average fireworks  injured nearly 10 000 people a year now   it is late summer dry heat and a wildfire  begins to burn out of control through the woods   the fire reaches the edges  of the fireworks factory   for a decade water has dripped or flooded  into the steadily deteriorating bunkers gunpowder easily absorbs water but wet  gunpowder takes on a strange ability   after it dries out it becomes more volatile and  unstable the finely milled powder clumps together   burning less evenly and sometimes  exploding more powerfully now flames lick through cracks in  the walls and the powder ignites the fire spreads from bunker to bunker where  thousands of pounds of prepared fireworks lay   dormant these explosives were destined for  over a hundred different fireworks displays   now they all go off at once across the country real snow mixes with  artificial flocking at detroit's always christmas   soil has built up on the floor of the showroom   grass grows in the aisles of decorations  vines climb up plastic santas and toy soldiers and in a nearby aisle fruitcake still rests  they owe their longevity to one key ingredient   alcohol one of mankind's oldest disinfectants  the combination of rum or brandy with dense   actually creates an anaerobic environment an  oxygen-free interior that inhibits microbe growth 20 years after people the fruit cake shows no  sign of decay maybe fruitcakes will last forever   but the classic christmas reindeer long ago swept  up in caribou migrations have disappeared while   some have interbred with their wild caribou  cousins most died out quickly after people   although reindeer and caribou are the same  species there's a fundamental difference   that caused many of the females to drop  out of the herd within the first year   reindeer have their calves one  month before caribou they would   start falling behind during their calving  seasons we prayed of the bear and wolves the reindeer games are over 50 years after people a mystery remains on the  ski slopes while some ski runs have completely   reverted to nature others are strangely  clear as if groomed just yesterday the reason slopes originally cleared without  heavy machinery recover quickly   but those that were intensively engineered  or graded defy the return of nature   graded ski runs are machine graded with  heavy equipment like bulldozers and scrapers   things like that a lot of the top soil is  scraped away or buried beneath the subsoil   and the soils are compacted by the machinery so  there's reduced soil depth for plant rooting and   as well as the soils being compacted makes  it harder for plant roots to grow there   these ski runs will remain just as  humans left them for a very long time in southern california a new top  cat enjoys his spot in the sun having escaped from the san diego wild animal park   the african lions have spread out  and adapted to their new environment   we've got predatory cats that size from  san diego to santa barbara real easy to   get places on the freeways get off the freeways  into open savannah's perfect environment for   them there's a lot of ranches in the area  they would be able to take down cows horses lions can eat up to 75 pounds at one sitting   that's an entire baby calf from hooves to  head at a single meal they would be an apex   predator of southern california and they might  in enough time evolve into a new american lion   and as the centuries march on a unique ingredient  hidden inside this extreme roller coaster   will prove its downfall years after people outside  detroit michigan at the always christmas store   it's beginning to look a lot less like christmas 100 years after people the 150 foot  tall curves of knott's berry farm   silver bullet are about to  reach their breaking point incredibly this coaster's  doom comes from the inside   due to a surprising feature hidden in its bones to keep this noisy ride from  disturbing the theme park's neighbors   engineers filled each of the rails of  the 1 300 foot long coaster with sand   this actually cuts down the  ride's decibel level by at least half it's actually if you've heard  it run it's extremely quiet ride but hairline cracks in the coaster  steel after a hundred years of neglect   have turned the sand into a coaster killer well it's kind of an ironic thing  if you have sand in the track   if you get moisture in there if you get  water in there then you'll trap it in   there and that will probably accelerate  corrosion on the inside water trapped by   the sand speeds up internal corrosion in the  rails weakening the steel including the bolts   it's the connections that start to fail  first that's almost true in any structure bolt snap steel bends and the  entire track begins to wave crazily this extreme coaster makes its final plunge 120 years after people   the winter resort destination of palm springs has  reverted completely to desert where snowbirds and   retirees once lounged by the pool sand yucca and  mesquite cover almost all remnants of civilization yet the aerial tramway still stands   five giant steel towers once supported the  cable cars that ferried vacationers up 500 feet the steel has held up for over a century but one  thing will set up a catastrophic chain reaction   a constant steady corrosion  at the base of each tower the problem begins with the cable  itself the track cables on this tram   are almost three inches in diameter those are  huge those are really big cables and they're not   one piece of wire there are many many pieces of  wire wrapped around each other in a rope fashion but the constant steady  pressure of a hanging cable car   and over a century of erosion on the tightly  wound wires finally causes the cable to snap it is the first of a cascade of catastrophes the  crashing gondola swings down into tower number one   the rust weakened tower cannot withstand the  impact and it begins to collapse and as that   tower fell it's liable to put too much torque  on the next tower which would then pull it over   and then it's liable to put too much torque on the  next tower it would pull it over and so on up the   mountain you'd have that domino effect there's  one tower fell then it would daisy chain up   five towers connected by two miles of cable pull  each other down from the bedrock of the mountain   and fall in an avalanche of  rubble dust and twisted metal 130 years after people nearly all signs of human  holidays have been wiped off the face of the earth but like a ghost of christmas past the fruitcake   lives on protected by its anaerobic  mix of sugar flour and alcohol in fact the oldest recorded fruitcake in the  time of humans was more than 130 years old   it was baked in 1878 by an elderly grandmother who  died shortly after it came out of the oven and the   family couldn't part with it in 2003 the baker's  great-grandson presided over a tasting of the cake   where it was deemed still edible now as fruitcakes continue to defy decay   throughout america wild turkeys continue to  roam these are the descendants of mankind's   thanksgiving turkeys just not the  ones eaten by modern americans   they are the lean and fast native  breed that was eaten by the pilgrims   at the first thanksgiving the creature  the benjamin franklin thought should   be the national bird lives on as a feathered  reminder of holidays past in a life after people you

Channel: HISTORY

Views: 280,500

Keywords: history, history channel, history shows, history channel shows, life after people, history life after people, life after people show, life after people full episodes, life after people clips, full episodes, Life After People season 2 episode 6, Life After People s2 e6, Life After People s02 e06, Life After People 2X6, Life After People season 2, Life After People season 2 full episoes, Life After People season 2 clips, Watch life after people, Christmas Gone Horribly Wrong

Id: D_RcAESIsRc

Length: 44min 2sec (2642 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 20 2020

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[u/KittiesAndPills]

I god damn LOVE that show!!!!