Life After People_06of10_Bound and Buried
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00:00Imagine our planet without its people.
00:06Imagine that every single human being has simply disappeared.
00:11This isn't the story of how that might happen.
00:15It's the story of what happens to the world we leave behind.
00:21Now, in life after people, what will be the fate of civilization's most precious achievements?
00:30Enshrined, encased and buried, they're protected from the outside world, at least for now.
00:40One site guards precious sources of life in a crypt dubbed the Doomsday Vault.
00:46Another mysterious cavern conceals priceless expressions from a prehistoric time.
00:53Can these treasures be protected for eternity, or are they doomed to follow the fate of man?
01:00Step into the future of our world's once crowded cities,
01:05and visit a town where the future has already happened.
01:10Welcome to Earth, Population Zero.
01:30One day after people.
01:34The Declaration of Independence is housed in the West Wing of Independence Hall in Philadelphia.
01:41Of the 200 copies printed on the 4th of July, 1776, just 25 survive.
01:48This one, prized because it was the first to be read aloud in public, is now virtually entombed.
02:00The Declaration of Independence is protected in this ever-increasing Russian nesting doll.
02:06It's contained within an oxygen-free environment, inside a climate-controlled case,
02:13inside a climate-controlled room, inside a climate-controlled building.
02:17Without power, humidity will creep into the case and threaten the document.
02:22But unlike today's paper, made of cellulose from trees,
02:2518th century paper has natural cotton and linen fibers that make it stronger.
02:32I think linen rag paper, if it wasn't subjected to any environmental forces like light, moisture or heat,
02:39would last thousands of years.
02:42Just across the street is the bell that hung above the room where the Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776.
02:49The Liberty Bell, still heavily protected by two thick marble walls.
02:53The design of the walls is a heavily guarded secret, but they've been engineered to withstand extreme shock.
03:06Well, they're a beautiful, soft, polished marble,
03:09but ultimately the strength and thickness of that material is to provide bomb protection.
03:14Almost 4,000 miles away, at the Louvre Museum in Paris,
03:19Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa faces its own risk, from within.
03:24Painted on wood, it can swell and shrink.
03:32The painting is protected by an airtight case that can withstand a rocket-propelled grenade.
03:37Sensors in the case can detect the movement of the object.
03:40It can withstand a rocket-propelled grenade.
03:43Sensors in the case can detect the tiniest swelling in the wood.
03:50The sensors can actually sense a one micron expansion or contraction.
03:56We're talking about one one-hundredth the width of a typical human hair.
04:02This treasure with the famous smile is buried under layers of protection.
04:07But how long will they last?
04:11While some icons have been left buried, others are left bound.
04:19San Francisco's cable cars are out of service.
04:26In the time of humans, they were pulled up and down some of the world's steepest urban hills by a wire cable.
04:33This is the sheave room.
04:36As they turn, they move the cable at 9.5 miles an hour.
04:42The cable cars grab on to the cable as they move.
04:49One day after people, the pulleys stop.
04:54The world famous cable car is no longer in service.
04:57One day after people, the pulleys stop.
05:02The world famous cable cars are frozen in their tracks.
05:06Hanging by a wire thread, for now.
05:19Arching across the water, two bridges, the Golden Gate and the San Francisco-Oakland Bay, are strangely silent.
05:28In the time of humans, the Golden Gate was an engineering marvel, crossed by 108,000 cars every day.
05:40But two days after people, the only thing crossing the bridge is a single, silent assassin.
05:49San Francisco's greatest landmark will die by fog.
05:53The moisture that's in the fog itself, condensing on the bridge, will promote the formation of rust.
06:01So, in a very real sense, the fog may steal in on little cat feet, but when it comes to a steel structure, it's a tiger.
06:11To the east, the Bay Bridge stretches more than four miles, connecting San Francisco to Oakland.
06:17No single bridge could span that distance.
06:20So in 1933, engineers solved the problem by building a series of bridges.
06:29A causeway section, a cantilever in the middle,
06:34and a double suspension design for the deepest part over the shipping channel.
06:40The Bay Bridge is a bit of a mongrel or a mutt.
06:44The Bay Bridge is a bit of a mongrel or a mutt, but in a good sense.
06:49After a section of it collapsed in a 1989 earthquake, the bridge was retrofitted with new bolts, plates and steel.
07:00Sturdier than ever, two days after humans, its only traffic is dust.
07:05And that will bring its own challenges.
07:14The only sounds to be heard on the waterfront are wavelets lapping at the hull of a cargo ship.
07:21Despite the explosion of technology in the time of humans,
07:25ships were tied to the pier with the same piece of equipment used by ancient mariners.
07:31Ropes hold the ship to the pier.
07:35Two days after people, eight ropes made of a synthetic as strong as wire secure the vessel to the deserted pier.
07:43A single line can hold fast 55 tons.
07:51But for how long? That remains to be seen.
08:02It's one week after people.
08:05The Petronas Towers soar over the deserted city of Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia.
08:10They're the world's tallest twin buildings, connected by the highest skybridge ever built.
08:17It sits about 400 feet or so in the air, bridging across between the 41st and the 42nd floors.
08:25Quite a unique feature.
08:30In two separate attempts, human Spider-Man, Alain Robert, tried to scale one of the 1,483-foot towers with his bare hands.
08:39Both times, he climbed 60 floors before allowing himself to be apprehended.
08:48Now, only the sun climbs its walls.
08:57Amid the remains of civilization, there are survivors.
09:01In North America, the pungent smell of old food left in kitchens attracts all sorts of hungry animals.
09:0914 days after people, some of the 400,000 wolves living in the wilds invade homes for an easy meal.
09:24While the wolves are moving in, dogs are trying to move out.
09:30But these animals remain bound to humans.
09:32We started manipulating the genetic makeup and the characteristics of other animals long before we had agriculture.
09:39Neoteny, the tendency of retaining childlike characteristics, is something that we kept emphasizing in dogs.
09:46That's why dogs accept our authority without challenging it.
09:50Dogs aren't even good at little tasks, like getting out of the house.
09:55They couldn't break a window, they couldn't do anything.
09:58They've been taught not to tear up things and so forth.
10:01Most of them would just sit there and starve to death.
10:05But one kind of canine would be ideally suited to this new world, the stray dog.
10:15Belonging to no one, they live on the outskirts of towns and are lean survival machines.
10:21They weigh about 20 pounds and they're just a little bit bigger than most people.
10:28They're designed to operate really cheaply.
10:33They can eat the worst, awfulest food in the world.
10:36They've been doing it for thousands of years and so on.
10:39They can get by with just a little.
10:43For the first few months after people, large populations of stray dogs live, eat and battle for the mountains of food at landfills and dumps.
10:52After that, survival becomes a riskier proposition.
10:58It's three months into a life after people.
11:07The breathtaking prehistoric paintings and engravings in the Lascaux Caves in southern France,
11:12thought to be drawn by Cro-Magnon man 30,000 years ago, were discovered in 1940.
11:20The quality of them, the dynamism, is just astounding.
11:23It is among the most beautiful art ever produced by mankind.
11:28Undisturbed again, they could survive for thousands more years.
11:34So long as they stay buried.
11:36But for how long will the other treasures of our civilization remain secure?
11:41When will others come unbound?
11:45And what will happen to a site called the Doomsday Vault?
12:07Doomsday Vault
12:12Four months after people.
12:16In the frozen wastes of Norway's most northerly islands, a doorway in the snow leads to a mysterious crypt.
12:25Known as the Doomsday Vault, it was meant to secure the world against a disaster that is now happening in a life after people.
12:34That disaster was sparked in the time of humans by the need to feed an exploding population.
12:43Agricultural companies engineered seeds to produce super crops and maximize output.
12:49Huge tracts of farmland were planted with the single best variety of seed.
12:54But this sacrificed a crop's strongest protection from pests, diversity.
12:59The diversity that allowed farmers in the 1700s and 1800s to establish agriculture in the United States is largely gone.
13:09Probably 95% of the corn varieties and wheat varieties that existed back in the 1800s. Gone forever.
13:19If a single pest or disease comes along and likes the first plant, it's going to like all the rest of them.
13:24So domesticated crops just don't last for very long.
13:29In the time of humans, farmers protected their crops with pesticides.
13:34Four months after people, there's nothing to stop a single species of insect from mowing down hundreds of thousands of acres.
13:43The vault in Norway, called the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, was built for precisely this kind of doomsday plague.
13:51With a capacity to store a billion seeds and millions of different kinds, it can bring life back to earth.
14:01If something really were to go wrong in this world, an asteroid hitting the earth or a meteorite,
14:07if something really were to go wrong in this world, an asteroid hitting the earth or a global nuclear war,
14:14then this seed vault does contain seeds which we would use to restore agriculture in the world.
14:23In the time of humans, an artificial cooling system chilled the vault to minus four degrees, perfect for seed storage.
14:31Since the electricity failed, the vault has been warming up.
14:35It will stabilize at 25 degrees, the temperature of the surrounding permafrost.
14:40But how long can the seeds now survive?
14:56Two years after people.
14:59A cable car in San Francisco is about to become gravity's bullet train.
15:07The inner core of the cables that run beneath the streets is made of plain rope.
15:15After two years, it has rotted away.
15:18The car has broken free and become an eight-ton missile of wood and steel.
15:29The thing it's most likely to run into first is a vehicle blocking its way.
15:36And at that speed, a cable car would slice right through it.
15:45Across the bay, eight high-strength lines have held the massive cargo ship fast for two years.
15:53Those ropes hold the ship rather loosely.
15:56That allows the ship to rise and fall with the tide.
16:02In San Francisco Bay, that rise and fall is about six feet.
16:09In a howling gale, the rope will be put to the ultimate test.
16:15You're talking about ropes that can withstand something on the order of 50-75 ton pull.
16:23But a ship might weigh 50,000 tons.
16:2750,000 tons rocked by wind and waves generates tremendous stress.
16:33And a line snaps.
16:37Once a first line snaps, the others swiftly follow, and the ship sets a course for disaster.
16:44A ship breaking free of its moorings, particularly in a gale,
16:47is going to be propelled from the south, north, toward the Oakland Bay Bridge.
16:53What you're going to have is a very large object hitting another very large object.
17:02And if the central part of the hull is hit, it's going to take on water,
17:08it's going to be a very large object.
17:10It's going to take on water, it's going to be heavier,
17:13while the two ends of the ship are more buoyant.
17:16That can actually snap the ship in two.
17:33Ten years after people, the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia
17:37is exposed to an enemy far worse than the British Redcoats.
17:42The windows of Independence Hall's west wing were covered with panels
17:45to keep out the caustic rays of sunlight.
17:51Ultraviolet light excites the molecules within the paper
17:54and causes their deterioration much more quickly.
17:57The infrared, or slower frequency, produces radiant heat,
18:00which will dry out the paper and also increase the speed with which it deteriorates.
18:05So light is really the biggest enemy.
18:09The failure of a single window pane is all that's necessary
18:12to put the Declaration in harm's way.
18:17A small rock or a piece of another building, perhaps, that's failed, or a branch,
18:23will be blown by the wind right through that glass.
18:27Once the failure starts, it accelerates.
18:32With nothing to stop it, the wind makes quick work of the panels.
18:36Daylight streams into the building.
18:40The words of the Declaration are beginning to disappear.
18:52Across the Atlantic Ocean,
18:54something mysterious is starting to happen to a priceless treasure.
19:02The prehistoric art in the Lascaux Caves is decaying.
19:06The cave's walls are flaking.
19:08How could caves that survived 30,000 years now be fading so fast?
19:16The answer is that this is not the original cave.
19:20The original was damaged by the effects of too many visitors,
19:23so the French built an exact replica for tourists in 1983
19:27and called it Lascaux II.
19:31It was made in an old quarry very close to the original cave,
19:35and it was a very, very fine piece of work for its time.
19:41But now, just ten years after people,
19:44its steel and plastic construction is falling apart.
19:50It would be disintegrating quite markedly.
19:53There is certainly no hope whatsoever, I think, of Lascaux II surviving.
19:58Just the opposite is happening to the original cave.
20:05Without the body heat and daily disturbances of people,
20:08the caves that were dubbed the Sistine Chapel of the Ice Age
20:12have returned to a natural balance.
20:15I think they would survive very happily for another 25,000, 30,000 years.
20:19It would be very, very nice just sitting in the darkness.
20:23What was created by prehistoric man
20:26will far outlast the recreation built by modern man.
20:35The Ice Age paintings will endure because of their underground vault.
20:40But for one small American town
20:42that is already 25 years into a life after people,
20:46it was an underground disaster that brought about its demise.
20:5425 YEARS AFTER PEOPLE
21:0225 years after people.
21:05In a windswept park, an engraved stone marks a mysterious vault.
21:10It appears to refer to a town,
21:13and yet there's almost nothing there.
21:17Battered signs mark streets and regulate parking,
21:21but there are no cars.
21:23Graveyard walls are in disarray.
21:26Streets are paved and lined with curbs,
21:29yet there are no structures except for the occasional house.
21:34A nearby road is bizarrely buckled,
21:37as if seized by a strange force of nature.
21:40This indeed was once a thriving town,
21:43called Centralia.
21:45But what happened?
21:47There's no physical trace left of the people
21:50except the curbs, the sidewalks, the occasional street sign.
21:54It's just a very odd place in many ways.
21:57In 1983, Centralia hummed with more than a thousand residents.
22:01Businesses, churches and a school anchored the village.
22:05Highway 61 was its main street.
22:08Centralia was just a classic small town
22:11where everybody knew each other.
22:14But something was terribly wrong.
22:19Located in the heart of Pennsylvania's coal country,
22:22Centralia had always lived by mining.
22:25Now it was about to die from it.
22:30Anthracite is what they call hard coal.
22:33It burns very hot, and it can burn for a long time.
22:36For more than 20 years, a hellish underground fire
22:39had been burning in a maze of abandoned coal shafts
22:42that ran directly beneath the town.
22:45Deadly gases seeped into the homes above the fires,
22:49leaving residents little choice but to leave.
22:53Well, the mine fire created three dangerous gases.
22:57One of them was anthracite,
23:00and they can all asphyxiate you.
23:03Carbon monoxide is the one that people feared the most.
23:07In 1984, the federal government bought up hundreds of homes
23:11and a mass exodus began.
23:14But a handful of residents refused to leave.
23:20In many abandoned towns, the first job for nature
23:23is to tear down the structures left behind.
23:26In Centralia, man gave nature a head start.
23:30Almost all the buildings were demolished,
23:33and nature was left to take over.
23:4025 years later, vines grow over a rusting trailer home.
23:45Inside, the debris-strewn floors are chewed away by moisture.
23:49Plastic Christmas ornaments have largely withstood the assault of snow.
23:53But their holiday dazzle is faded.
23:56Stone walls are surrendering to gravity.
23:59Trees, grass and shrubs have seized the opportunity presented by empty spaces,
24:04leaving just a few relics of the human past still visible.
24:13You know, you just had these sidewalks and curbs
24:16that obviously served the neighbourhood at one point,
24:19but there were no houses left.
24:21The subterranean inferno burned beneath a stretch of the main highway
24:25at the edge of the old town.
24:27Ominous cracks erupted in the road and forced the state to reroute it.
24:3525 years later, the fire has torn a huge fissure in the old road.
24:40Sulfurous smoke and steam still rises up.
24:44Moss grows in the warm vent, sheltered from the bitter winters.
24:48The roadway has grotesquely buckled from the underground cave-ins caused by the blaze.
24:54A hundred yards up the road, where both humans and fire have moved on,
24:58thick trees grow in the middle of the abandoned pavement.
25:07Cobwebs and dust cover the last abandoned house in the town,
25:11its destruction imminent.
25:13The basement is an underworld,
25:15strewn with the remnants of a family's possessions.
25:18The windows offer a haunting view of nowhere.
25:26Centralia is the ultimate ghost town.
25:32This is the intersection of Locust Avenue and Wood Street,
25:35and at one time it was filled with houses.
25:38You see an overgrown area now.
25:41Nature is reclaiming it since the Centralia relocation took place,
25:45and only one house remains today.
25:50On the outskirts of town, pipes that were thrust into the ground
25:54in an attempt to vent the fire's lethal gases lie rusted and overgrown.
26:02The iron gates of the cemetery close to where the fire first broke out
26:06have oxidized over the years.
26:09The wooden roof of a warehouse down the road is riddled with rot
26:13and no longer provides any shelter.
26:16But the cinderblock walls will stand for several more decades
26:20until the mortar crumbles and the bricks collapse.
26:28Beneath it all, largely unseen, the fire quietly rages underground.
26:33It will continue to burn for another two hundred and fifty years.
26:39Long after Centralia is gone.
26:44The most enduring part of the story is indeed the power of nature.
26:48People can be resilient, they can hang on in the face of conditions
26:53that other people think are crazy, but ultimately in the end, you know, nature wins.
27:01There's one final legacy, also underground.
27:06Marked by the engraved stone in what was once the center of the town,
27:10it's a time capsule.
27:13Buried nearly fifty years ago, it's due to be unearthed in 2016.
27:18Its contents may be the last mystery before the land returns to wilderness.
27:23Forever.
27:31It's fifty years after people.
27:34In the frozen land of Norway, plant life is beginning to perish
27:38in a structure that was meant to preserve it.
27:43The first seeds have begun to die in the Svalbard Global Seed Vault.
27:50The seed that's going to last the shortest amount of time
27:53is a seed such as sunflower or lettuce,
27:56and maybe that's fifty to seventy-five years under these conditions.
28:01Scientists believe that seeds have a special anti-aging protein.
28:06When that protein fails, the seeds die.
28:09A bit like corroded rebar in a concrete column,
28:12it causes a structural breakdown in the seed.
28:20In the cold, dark stillness of the vault,
28:23it may well be the collapse of these proteins
28:25that makes lettuce seeds the first casualty.
28:31EXPLOSION
28:37Seventy-five years of steamy tropical heat
28:40have corroded a part of the Petronas Towers where steel is vital,
28:44the supports under the Sky Bridge.
28:49The Sky Bridge is constructed primarily in steel,
28:52and steel is vulnerable to natural decay.
28:57The corrosion buckles a supporting leg,
29:00turning the Sky Bridge into a one-way lift.
29:14The twin towers, made of super-strength columns, remain intact,
29:18but their connection to each other is severed forever.
29:27Thousands of miles away in Philadelphia,
29:30the Liberty Bell is about to ring one last time.
29:36Made of bronze, it can last thousands of years,
29:39but the structural integrity is threatened by its large crack,
29:43and a much less visible one that could be just as damaging.
29:47You can actually see that the crack itself, the hairline,
29:51extends all the way up past the inscription to the crown of the bell,
29:55and that's the bell's greatest weakness.
29:58It's the wooden support that holds the bell where the final split will begin.
30:03Made from elm, 75 years of moisture and insects
30:06have left it too weak to hold the weight of the one-ton bell.
30:14Though split in two,
30:16the symbol of freedom remains clearly recognisable.
30:21A kind of freedom has become the very essence of stray dogs.
30:25Once dependent on human leftovers on the streets,
30:28they've evolved back into the wild predators they were before domestication.
30:35There are places in the world
30:37where they've already evolved back into a wild animal.
30:40So the village dog in Australia has become something called a dingo.
30:45Dingoes were brought to Australia around 2000 BC as domesticated dogs.
30:50Released into the outback, they soon numbered hundreds of thousands.
30:56And they're doing perfectly well in the wild.
31:00But without humans who provided most of their food,
31:03stray dogs have seen their population decimated.
31:08Where once there were more than 300 million,
31:11there are now just a few million.
31:17Yet as a species, they will survive
31:19because of a unique running ability
31:21that distinguishes them from every other creature in the animal kingdom.
31:25The cheetah's supposed to be the fastest animal in the world,
31:28but they only go through 400 yards,
31:30and then they become exhausted quickly.
31:33Where a good dog can do a good job,
31:38where a good dog can do miles and miles and miles.
31:42And there's no other animal out there in the world that can do that.
31:45I think they might make it really successfully.
31:55100 years after people.
31:58The crucible steel of the mighty Golden Gate Bridge
32:01has been humbled by common oxygen.
32:03What you're talking about is a bridge that is painted rust red now.
32:09Years from now, it's going to be rust, rust.
32:12It may very well be the same color,
32:14but when you get close, it's not going to be a healthy place.
32:20Dense fogs feed the rust,
32:22which threatens at the point of highest stress
32:25the vertical cables that bear the crushing weight of the deck.
32:28The roadway is not designed to support itself.
32:31It's really designed to be suspended from these cables.
32:35The failure of one cable quickly triggers others around it.
32:39Unsupported, the roadway plunges 245 feet
32:43into the chill gray waters of the bay.
32:47Only a few miles to the east,
32:49the bay bridge is in a drier and warmer location.
32:52This slows rust,
32:54but the moisture triggers another kind of growth.
32:59It will actually look a bit like a forest.
33:01There'll be a lot of trees growing on it,
33:03there'll be a lot of vegetation growing on it.
33:06It's going to look like a forest,
33:08but it's not going to look like a forest at all.
33:11It's going to look like a forest.
33:13There'll be a lot of trees growing on it,
33:15there'll be a lot of vegetation growing on it.
33:18Without maintenance to clear the fledgling forest,
33:21dirt clogs the expansion joints.
33:23With no room for movement,
33:25one span's fate is sealed.
33:34Inside the Louvre,
33:36the protective case entombing the Mona Lisa
33:38is built to withstand a terrorist attack.
33:41But humble dust will infiltrate the neoprene seals,
33:44forging a path for moisture.
33:48The tiniest crack, the tiniest hole,
33:51anywhere in that case,
33:53you're going to have moisture come in there very, very easily.
33:56So what happens is that the case itself
34:00actually becomes the Mona Lisa's enemy.
34:04The dampness sounds a death knell for the painting,
34:08as it creates the perfect habitat
34:10for a tiny insect called the death watch beetle.
34:15They got the name death watch beetles during the Middle Ages
34:18when people were waiting out the death of a loved one.
34:21The house would be very quiet and still
34:23because people were waiting for death to arrive.
34:25And during that time of silence,
34:27they would hear this ticking sound,
34:29this tapping sound coming from the walls,
34:31and that was being made by the beetles.
34:33It's basically a very slight...
34:37hardly audible.
34:39In fact, the beetles have nothing to do with dying, usually.
34:46But the Mona Lisa is painted on wood,
34:49and these are wood-eating beetles.
34:51Perhaps for dessert, the men want to save the smile to the last.
34:55But the Mona Lisa's fate
34:57is just the beginning of civilisation's demise.
35:01Soon, the fate of an entire city will be sealed.
35:12It's now 200 years after people.
35:18Only the skeletal spectre of the Golden Gate's soaring towers remain.
35:23But by the shallows of the Bay Bridge,
35:25enough debris has built up around the piers
35:27to form a more permanent passage.
35:32It will create land by creating an obstruction
35:35so that natural silt flows in the bay
35:38will actually start piling up against this mess.
35:42It will become almost like an island or peninsula all by itself.
35:56300 years after people,
35:58Spain has spawned a new occupying force in historic Philadelphia,
36:03a dense forest.
36:05Amid the trees, the two blast walls rise out of the earth
36:08and surround the half-buried Liberty Bell.
36:16Well, it looked very sort of tomb-like, very crypt-like.
36:23As the forest buries the bell,
36:25the obstruction may be one of the last visible pieces.
36:33100 yards away, the Declaration of Independence
36:36lies among the rubble of the West Wing,
36:38still intact in its bulletproof casing.
36:41The case, built to withstand the blow of a sledgehammer,
36:44has shielded the document since the year 2000.
36:48But heat and light have left the linen rag paper brittle and desiccated.
36:56Three centuries after people,
36:58the first blast of air to penetrate through a worn seam of the case
37:02will cause the document to disintegrate.
37:13500 years after people,
37:15the Petronas Towers may be the tallest man-made structures
37:18still standing on earth,
37:20thanks to an extraordinary quirk in their design.
37:24They were the tallest buildings in the world
37:26to be supported by a frame of concrete.
37:33Most skyscrapers around the world are steel-framed,
37:36but Malaysia doesn't have an indigenous steel industry,
37:40so these are unique.
37:44Five centuries of exposure to tropical sun and torrid humidity
37:48have weakened the super-strength cement.
37:51The collapse begins where the columns are at their most narrow,
37:54at the top.
38:05Cascading debris from one tower triggers the collapse of the other.
38:13In seconds, the monumental structures are reduced to dust and rubble.
38:18You have a progressive effect where both towers collapsed
38:22in a crashing heap to the ground pretty much at the same time.
38:37It's only a matter of years before walls of jungle
38:40entomb every trace of the once mighty buildings.
38:492,000 years after people, the Mona Lisa is long gone.
38:55But there was also another famous woman in the Louvre,
38:59Venus de Milo.
39:02The six-foot statue was buried for nearly two millennia
39:05before she was unearthed in 1820 by a farmer.
39:10Now she is being slowly re-buried.
39:13Sculpted from marble, the ancient goddess of love was built to last.
39:21Just across the river from where the Louvre once stood,
39:24the medieval cathedral of Notre Dame also remains.
39:28Built entirely of stone,
39:30it's held together by the eternal force of gravity.
39:35The basic structure of Notre Dame
39:38The basic structure of Notre Dame, especially the two towers,
39:42will still be standing and still recognisable 2,000 years from now.
39:5620,000 years after people,
39:58the last of the hundreds of millions of seeds
40:01stored in the global seed vault have died.
40:04Their potential to generate new life is gone forever.
40:08For the contents of this vault, doomsday has arrived.
40:2210 million years after people.
40:25Could the remains of the once great city of San Francisco
40:28be fossilised like the bones of the dinosaurs?
40:31For fossilisation to occur,
40:33buildings, like bones, need to be buried before they erode away.
40:41Their fate is decided by whether large sections of the Earth's crust
40:45on which they sit are pushing the ground up or down.
40:49In regions where the Earth's crust is slowly rising,
40:52the surface erodes, wiping away the remains of human civilisation.
40:56But where parts of the crust are moving downwards,
40:59under the sea or into the Earth,
41:01remains are buried, and the forces of fossilisation can begin.
41:11In the time of humans, San Francisco was perched along the San Andreas Fault,
41:16which marked the boundary of two large tectonic plates.
41:19This spot on Earth once triggered punishing earthquakes.
41:22Now, in the extreme slow motion of geologic movement,
41:26it has delivered the ultimate blow.
41:29The piece of crust we're on at the moment, around San Francisco,
41:32has little chance.
41:34The landscape here is going up, and if the crust is going up,
41:38then that landscape is being eroded.
41:41San Francisco is a beautiful city, but it is destined for oblivion.
41:48Worldly goods prove fleeting.
41:51The surface of the Earth is no place for the artefacts of man
41:56in a life after people.
41:59The Earth's crust is eroding,
42:02and the Earth's crust is eroding,
42:05and the Earth's crust is eroding,
42:08in a life after people.