Life After People_07of10_Sin City Meltdown
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00:00Imagine our planet without its people.
00:08Imagine that every single human being has simply disappeared.
00:14This isn't the story of how that might happen.
00:17It's the story of what happens to the world we leave behind.
00:23In this episode of Life After People, humans have always liked to gamble, and the world's
00:30sin cities have uncertain futures.
00:34In Las Vegas, how quickly will these famous faces suffer a meltdown?
00:40What makes the wood of the Atlantic City boardwalk as durable as concrete?
00:46And what will be the fate of man's ultimate gamble?
00:50Welcome to the future of once-crowded cities and an abandoned, silent funfair.
01:02Welcome to Earth, population zero.
01:21One of man's most popular vices was to play the odds.
01:32In the time of humans, the streets of their gambling meccas were lined with outrageous
01:36spectacles and tributes to the great civilizations of the world.
01:45But these cities are built in hostile environments.
01:50Las Vegas springs from a barren desert.
01:53Atlantic City is perched on a storm-battered coast.
01:59Now that the final bets have been placed, can anything in either of these cities beat the odds?
02:09One day after people.
02:22In Las Vegas, the casinos are empty.
02:27But there's one place that still draws a crowd.
02:35In the time of humans, celebrities and dignitaries were immortalized in wax at the famous Madame
02:40Tussauds.
02:41Each lifelike figure was based on as many as 150 measurements.
02:53Melted wax was poured into plaster molds where it hardened into its final form.
03:00Fire was placed strand by strand.
03:05Now works in progress will never be finished.
03:10In Las Vegas, more than 100 completed wax figures are displayed in a 30,000 square foot
03:16museum.
03:17The temperature is set at an ideal 70 degrees, for now at least.
03:32Two days after people.
03:36Power has started to fail along the Las Vegas Strip.
03:42But a new rat pack is prowling the streets.
03:48Rats have been a problem around Las Vegas since the 1990s.
03:52Experts believe they came in the palm trees shipped in to decorate hotels and housing
03:56developments.
04:03After people are gone, they find their way into the city's casinos where they're more
04:09interested in searching for food than rolling dice.
04:16More than 2,000 miles away in Atlantic City, the only creatures strolling down the world
04:21famous boardwalk are cats.
04:30In the time of humans, 18 colonies of feral cats already lived under the boardwalk.
04:36Human volunteers put out food for them on a daily basis.
04:43Without people, the future of these 140 felines is uncertain.
04:53The boardwalk itself might just beat the odds.
04:59Originally built in 1870, Atlantic Cities was the first beachside boardwalk in the United
05:04States.
05:06It's made up of 216,000 planks of wood and runs for over four miles.
05:15The earliest boardwalk was made of cedar, a wood so fragile it was dismantled and put
05:19into storage every winter to keep it out of the elements.
05:24The modern boardwalk is much tougher.
05:28Beginning in 1990, many sections were replaced with a South American hardwood called Ipe,
05:33or Brazilian walnut.
05:35It's naturally resistant to insects, rot, and mold.
05:40It's one of the world's densest woods, with fibers packed so tightly it has the same fire
05:45rating as concrete.
05:51In June 2007, a fire that started under the boardwalk tore through local businesses.
06:00Some sections of the boardwalk, the parts made of pine, were destroyed.
06:05The hardwood was barely touched.
06:21Three days after people.
06:26Admired Madame Tussauds, glass eyes stare out at the empty hallways.
06:36When the power goes out, emergency lighting keeps the figures illuminated in the windowless
06:44galleries.
06:50But in the museum's utility rooms, the exhaust fans slow to a halt.
07:00The air conditioning cuts out, and the temperature begins to rise.
07:07Inside the building, the upper floors will really compress the heat and be kind of like
07:13an oven.
07:15These figures will start to droop and sweat and melt.
07:20Beeswax, the main component in these figures, begins melting at 115 degrees.
07:28Against these odds, Madonna has no chance, and within days, the material girl dematerializes.
07:42While the figure of Madonna melts 6,000 miles away in Buenos Aires, the body of the woman
07:47she played in the film of the same name remains surprisingly intact.
07:57When Argentina's First Lady Eva Perón died in 1952, her body was preserved by a process
08:05that left a plastic-like film on her skin.
08:10Evita's husband was assured her body would never decompose.
08:17Today, Evita rests in a tomb 20 feet underground, said to be able to withstand a nuclear attack.
08:29Unlike Madonna's wax figure, Evita will be preserved as a living doll for many years
08:34to come.
08:45One week after people.
08:4837.5 million people used to visit Las Vegas every year.
08:54Now the streets are empty.
09:00Looming over the scene of desolation is the Stratosphere Tower.
09:04Part of a hotel complex, it's the tallest freestanding observation tower in America.
09:11At 1,149 feet, it is taller than the Space Needle and the Eiffel Tower.
09:19Its most distinctive features were the highest amusement rides in the world, including one
09:24that dangled visitors 64 feet over the edge of the tower on a mechanical arm.
09:31Now, the screams of thrill-seekers no longer echo across the Las Vegas Valley.
09:45In the time of humans, many of the iconic hotels of this city were demolished in seconds
09:50at the hands of man, clearing the way for bigger and more eccentric structures.
09:57Now, nature may act more slowly, but with no less violence.
10:09And at this amusement park in the heart of America, life after people has already begun.
10:28Two weeks after people.
10:33In Las Vegas, casinos that were once filled with the flashing lights and deafening clamor
10:37of slot machines are silent and dark.
10:51Although there are no humans to exterminate them, the new Rat Pack has plenty to fear.
11:06This dog may not look like a predator, but he's called a rat terrier for good reason.
11:12His breed was originally developed in the 1800s to hunt vermin, and he's better than
11:17most cats at catching small rodents.
11:23In the time of humans, American President Teddy Roosevelt was said to have used one
11:27of these dogs to eliminate rats from the White House.
11:32Once the rat terrier got out, they'd be out there sniffing around, following mice,
11:38rats that you would have here in the Las Vegas area.
11:43There'd also be lizards and a variety of other kinds of species that were small that
11:47they would probably have the ability to capture.
11:58Across the country in Atlantic City, the ocean continues to pound against the famous Steel
12:03Pier as it has since 1898.
12:11Nearly as long as the Las Vegas stratosphere is tall, this attraction once hosted entertainers
12:16from W.C. Fields to Frank Sinatra and even the Miss America pageant.
12:24Rebuilt in 1993, its concrete supports are in good shape... for now.
12:45Mankind's gambling meccas have always been fertile ground for strange architecture.
12:52Unlike skyscrapers and monuments, these bizarre structures were built to draw in customers
12:57today, not to stand for tomorrow.
13:06Near Atlantic City, the strangest of them all is Lucy the Margate Elephant.
13:17Designed to attract investors to what was then an undeveloped stretch of sand, this
13:2265-foot-tall pachyderm was completed in 1882, a year before the Brooklyn Bridge.
13:29But she's hardly an engineering marvel.
13:35Her fragile skeleton had to be rebuilt in 1973 at a cost of $124,000.
13:45That she lasted into the 21st century was a miracle.
13:51Lucy's exterior shell is made up of wood covered with a tin sheathing.
13:56Being 100 feet away from the Atlantic Ocean, the structure requires constant maintenance.
14:01It needs to be stripped and painted every three years at a cost of around $65,000.
14:08Wood needs to continually be replaced.
14:10Rotted tin panels need to be replaced all the time.
14:15The last time Lucy was painted was 2002.
14:19By 2009, the deterioration was clear.
14:27On average, it rains every three or four days in Atlantic City, with wintertime bringing
14:32snow and ice.
14:35In the past, every time Lucy's future was threatened, concerned humans stepped in to
14:39save her.
14:41Now she's on her own.
14:51The fragility of the architecture of Amusement is clear.
14:56It's a story that is already being told at this abandoned amusement park in America's
15:01heartland.
15:07Welcome to the Americana Amusement Park in Lizardsville Lake, Ohio.
15:13In the time of humans, it was a thrill-seeker's paradise, drawing daily crowds of up to 10,000
15:19people.
15:20The park in its heyday was quite beautiful.
15:22It had a lot of vibrant colors.
15:24It was full of life and excitement.
15:30And today, to see it, it's almost like a ghost town.
15:33It's very sad to see it in this state.
15:37The park fell on hard times, and the gates closed in 2002, 80 years after they first
15:44opened.
15:48Just a few short years of abandonment have created a monster.
15:55Wood is rotting everywhere.
15:59Motors, bearings, and metal components are corroding.
16:03Gaping cracks permeate the park.
16:07The annual freeze-thaw cycle that occurs in the Ohio Valley is very hard on things.
16:15Water tends to seep in cracks, freeze overnight.
16:19As the water expands, it applies loads that enlarge the cracks.
16:29This amusement park tells us what will happen to the spectacles of Las Vegas and Atlantic
16:33City when people are gone.
16:36Like all amusement parks, it was once distinguished by bright colors.
16:46The protective paint steadily degrades beneath the sun's ultraviolet assault.
16:52This entrance looks like it's painted in pastel colors, but at one point, they were much more
16:57vibrant.
17:00In less than a decade, the sun's ultraviolet radiation dims the paint to an atomic level.
17:07The sunlight makes oxygen already in the paint mix with the color pigments, which fade as
17:12a result.
17:17The loss of pigment, the loss of volatiles within the paint is going to reach a point
17:22where the paint loses its elasticity, its ability to expand and contract with the material,
17:27and you'll see cracks.
17:29That's when the structural damage occurs.
17:35Without humans to constantly repaint the park, its first layer of defense is gone.
17:42At its current rate of destruction, the Americana will soon become unrecognizable.
17:49There's no fixed lifetime for the rides in an amusement park.
17:54In theory, they could last forever if they're inspected and repaired as damage occurs.
18:03The inspection is long overdue, and the rides are beyond repair, especially this once-proud
18:09roller coaster.
18:15The Screeching Eagle was the main attraction.
18:18Cars raced, plunged, and swerved at top speeds of 55 miles an hour on the 180-degree turns.
18:27What was once considered one of the best wooden coasters in America is now plunging towards
18:32complete collapse.
18:41But rotting wood is not the immediate enemy here.
18:44The coaster's support beams are made of chemically treated wood, so they'll resist rotting for
18:48several more years, longer than the mechanism that binds them together.
18:54A series of guy wires provides tension to the tallest section of track.
19:02It's braided wire rope, and we can see parts of the rope where the strands are coming apart
19:10and actually breaking.
19:12So there are a few of these ropes that are poised for failure right now.
19:19The weakest link in this coaster is the fasteners.
19:23Nothing as mundane as the nails that hold the boards together.
19:27Over a single season, we see nails coming out, and when those go, that will permit the
19:34vertical members to undergo buckling collapse.
19:38It just needs that one push to start the dominoes falling.
19:44With enough nails and guy wires loosened, a stiff wind will set off a dramatic collapse
19:50in the coaster's upper reaches.
19:57In time, every structure in the park will become a heap of rubble.
20:04If everyone on earth disappeared, within ten years this park would start deteriorating
20:09so bad, the buildings would start falling down, all the rust and the steel and the maintenance
20:15on all the equipment would just start deteriorating, and the concrete would be overgrown and be
20:20pushed up by plants and overgrowth.
20:22In a matter of twenty years, it would be unrecognizable.
20:32As the years pass, few of man's familiar landmarks will be recognizable, and the absence of people
20:39will bring surprising changes, like water, to places where there was nothing but desert.
20:55Two years after people, in Las Vegas the climate of its Mojave Desert starts to produce a new
21:01kind of strange display, as the parched desert reasserts itself.
21:10In the Mojave we like to say water is life.
21:14In the time of humans, the city was lush with green gardens, fed by a water system holding
21:19nearly 700 million gallons in reservoir tanks scattered throughout the valley.
21:32Lake Mead, a primary water source, is 25 miles away, but without electric pumps, its water
21:38has been unable to reach the city.
21:42It rains only four and a half inches a year here, and little will grow naturally besides
21:47the scrub of the Mojave Desert.
21:52Three miles from the strip, a one-time oasis stands as a natural reminder of the city's
21:57lush past.
22:01Springs Preserve is a museum, built on the site where artesian springs were discovered
22:06in 1829.
22:08The springs made it possible for people to settle here.
22:11Las Vegas, in fact, means the meadows.
22:17The wells dug to tap the underground water have long gone dry.
22:25But inside the visitor's center, the voice of man still echoes in the halls.
22:35The museum exhibits don't get their electricity from the municipal grid.
22:40They're powered by the sun.
22:46Over 2,000 solar panels cover the car parks, generating 409 kilowatts of electricity.
22:56This recorded narration is the last human voice heard in Vegas.
23:12Five years after people.
23:15In Atlantic City, inside the waterfront casinos, the city's feral cat population has found
23:21a new home.
23:26What's really interesting about domestic cats, they're not like bobcats that don't tolerate
23:30others of their kind.
23:32The densities of house cats, domestic cats, can be very, very large, and I think over
23:36time they would set up a hierarchy and they would occupy these buildings.
23:41Their new homes are dank, ghostly tombs.
23:45Tombs shroud the slot machines.
23:48Humidity from the outside encourages rot.
23:51Thick paper playing cards have curled and grown moldy in the dampness.
23:56The durable plastic poker chips, however, are unharmed, though they are covered with
24:01grime formed of dust and moisture.
24:12In the gloom of the casino, bats also find a place to live.
24:16In the time of humans, New Jersey was already home to nine species of bats.
24:22Preferring to avoid human contact, most of them found homes in abandoned mines and tunnels,
24:27like the Hibernia mine, where thousands congregated every autumn and winter.
24:33Now every casino is a potential bat cave.
24:42Some of these buildings will end up being roosts, and for some species of bats, these
24:45colonies are limited only by the size of the cave that they live in.
24:49In this case, the cave would be a very large building.
25:02Ten years after people, a familiar voice begins to strain.
25:15The solar cells in the car park of the Springs Preserve have kept the facility's power on
25:19for a decade now.
25:22But in order to operate efficiently, the panels need to be cleaned regularly.
25:27Solar cells are great, but they don't last forever.
25:30Without people, the solar cells are going to fall prey to dust and debris, and they're
25:35going to degrade seven or eight percent a year.
25:38That means after ten years, they will have lost more than half their power.
25:43As the voltage dips, the lights dim, and the voice of man is silenced.
26:05It's 15 years after people.
26:09On the coast from Atlantic City, Lucy the Margate Elephant is on her last legs.
26:14After people, the first thing that will happen to Lucy is her outer skin will begin to fail,
26:19and each piece of tin will eventually start to peel off and fall to the ground.
26:26But eventually, one good storm will weaken one leg.
26:30When one leg goes, the rest of Lucy will fall to the ground.
26:45Fifty years after people, Atlantic City's steel pier is just a skeleton.
26:54It looks much the way the old garden pier did in the time of humans.
26:58After the hurricane of 1944, the buildings were demolished, and the pier's foundations
27:03never repaired.
27:10Built of reinforced concrete, the steel pier's caissons are strong, but not strong enough
27:15against the constant assault of the ocean.
27:19Piers that extend into the ocean are already subject to the constant wearing away by the
27:25ocean.
27:26But the water has sand in it, as well as boards and other debris.
27:32This sand is essentially sandblasting the structure, and typically within 50 years the
27:38structure is gone.
27:49In Las Vegas, a city long known for giving second chances, a former star is making a
27:55surprise return engagement.
28:00Water.
28:04Fifty years after people, rain has continued to fall in the surrounding mountains.
28:09Water from the mountains is flowing down to the Las Vegas valley, where it permeates a
28:13porous layer below denser rock at the surface.
28:17Fifty years after people, water will return to the valley in spots like this.
28:23This is an old well, it was built in the early 20th century, and because of ground
28:26water pumping, basically the soil just sank down, so about five feet, all the way down
28:32to here.
28:33And when water returns, 50 years after people, little holes like that will be where the water
28:38comes out of.
28:41Water's reappearance in Las Vegas will alter the landscape, but only gradually.
28:47In other parts of the country, change comes suddenly and violently.
28:53A hurricane is on its way up the coast towards Atlantic City.
28:56The big one's coming in sometime in the next hundred years.
29:02Much of the boardwalk is already buried under sand, but in the exposed sections, wind buffets
29:08the durable South American hardwood that has survived the years intact.
29:13Corroded metal fasteners weaken as the winds increase, and whole sections of the boardwalk
29:18are ready to give way.
29:22Parts of the boardwalk will break up and become battering rams.
29:28Seawater floods the buildings, soaking their framework with a heavy solution of salt that
29:32remains behind long after the storm ends.
29:36The salt that's left behind sucks the water out of the air.
29:42The ports, now subject to salt, will constantly be re-wetted and corrode much faster than
29:48the rest of the structure.
29:51Once they're subjected to the heaviest loads, they'll start to fail, one by one, in a progressive
29:58failure.
29:59First one, then a second.
30:01After the first one goes, nothing will probably happen.
30:03But when the second and third columns go, you'll start to have what amounts to be a
30:09demolition of a building by explosives, but in slow motion, because only half of the building
30:13will fall, and then the middle, then the other half.
30:21A hundred years after people, fine grains of windblown sand are erasing the welcome
30:33sign that once greeted visitors to the city of Las Vegas.
30:42The blowing sand is actually an unnatural consequence of man's presence here a century
30:46ago.
30:51Before Las Vegas was developed, most of the sand was held in place by a hard layer called
30:56the cryptobiotic crust.
31:00The crust is formed of soil particles held together by microbes, fungi, lichens and mosses.
31:07Filaments from photosynthetic cyanobacteria spread out to bind specks of mineral material
31:13into a tough matrix.
31:19Those shovels and bulldozers disrupted the crust, and without it, the winds blow the
31:24sand around unimpeded.
31:29Wind gusts can be quite, quite powerful in the valley.
31:31In fact, Las Vegas is well known for its windstorms.
31:34With wind comes sand blown about.
31:37Most of that results from us moving around through the desert.
31:40We've destroyed the cryptobiotic crust, which takes hundreds of years to come back, and
31:44because we've destroyed this crust, we get a lot of sand blowing about, and that causes
31:48erosion.
31:54In Las Vegas, shafts of sunlight make their way into the giant atrium of the Luxor Hotel.
32:04When it was built in 1993, it was the tallest building on the Strip.
32:09Now, every one of the 28,500 panes in its glass skin are broken.
32:17The concrete structure inside remains, however, its shape giving it a natural stability.
32:22We've seen the pyramids last for thousands of years, and in Las Vegas, we have a simulation
32:30of a pyramid.
32:32That building is probably amongst the most stable structural systems that we can think
32:36of.
32:40The increasing amount of windblown sand may be eroding the Luxor, but other particles
32:45of earth have preserved its ancient Egyptian namesake, the Temple of Luxor.
32:52Originally built almost 3,500 years ago, the Temple of Luxor stands today because it was
32:58entombed in the layers of silt deposited each year by the Nile River.
33:03The river mud was a blanket, protecting the site not only from wind, earthquakes, and
33:08other hazards, but also from damage by vandals and treasure seekers.
33:15The site was largely buried until excavations in the late 19th century.
33:21Will Las Vegas be as lucky?
33:30Two hundred years after people.
33:35In Las Vegas, a desert thunderstorm rumbles in.
33:40Because Las Vegas often gets its total annual rainfall of four and a half inches in one
33:45or two storms, flash floods are common.
33:48There's two ways to die in the Mojave.
33:50You can die of thirst or you can die of drowning.
33:56Floodwaters have rushed past the Las Vegas sign so much in the past 200 years that rust
34:01has started spreading into its support beams.
34:06Now another weather hazard comes into play.
34:10The wind can blow up to 90 miles per hour here, and today a powerful gust catches the
34:16city's old greeting sign like a sail.
34:20It torques the weakened supports to the breaking point, and the sign falls flat on the empty,
34:26crumbling road.
34:34Three hundred years after people.
34:37While the skylines of most cities are stripped of their iconic towers, there are some surprises
34:42in Las Vegas.
34:44Even from a distance, the desert has preserved much of the familiar skyline.
34:52But the artesian water that began bubbling to the surface 250 years ago is bringing new
34:57life to the ruins in the desert.
35:01It's kind of interesting to think about what life might be like in the valley after people.
35:05When water returns, the habitat will look very much like this area right here.
35:11You'll have quite a bit of vegetation growing around, scattered throughout the valley.
35:15It'll actually be quite lush.
35:20Plants like the western honey mesquite grow in clumps along the strip, wherever the water
35:24happens to flow.
35:28But the new pockets of groundwater in Las Vegas wreak havoc on building foundations
35:32designed for the dry desert terrain.
35:36Three hundred years after people, the weakened foundation of the stratosphere will have to
35:40endure a thrill ride courtesy of Mother Nature.
35:47Although neighboring California is notorious for earthquakes, Nevada experiences thousands
35:52of its own tremors every year.
35:55Faults near Las Vegas have the potential to unleash events as large as the 1994 Northridge
36:01quake that jolted Los Angeles.
36:05If you look at a place like Las Vegas, it's a seismically active area, it has earthquakes.
36:11The buildings in Las Vegas, because of the relatively dry climate, you might think would
36:15last a long time, but actually many of them will be shaken down.
36:22We could potentially have a toppling failure of a tower.
36:25If we lost the corner of the tower at its base and it tilted over, we could have the
36:32Leaning Tower of Pisa effect.
36:36A violent quake lashes the tower back and forth like a whip.
36:41Losing support from its base, its fall seems agonizingly slow.
36:50The big observation pod hits the ground at 150 miles an hour, the entire tower smashing
36:56in a cloud of debris.
37:05A blanket of dust hangs over the city's remains.
37:09A place once called The Meadows is now a pile of rubble.
37:18Many of the odd animals imported into Las Vegas died quickly in the absence of humans,
37:24but in the distant future, the descendants of one creature just may beat the odds.
37:32And the messages man thought would last forever face destruction in the great expanse of time.
37:54It's been a thousand years since the last bets were placed in the gambling meccas of
37:57Atlantic City and Las Vegas.
38:01Their long-term fates are not based on chance, but on the inevitable forces of nature.
38:08Thousand years after people, even a trained eye would have trouble recognizing that there
38:12was ever a city in the Las Vegas Valley.
38:17In the ten centuries after people, Las Vegas is now little more than a jagged mound in
38:21the desert.
38:23Creosote bushes and other rough vegetation have colonized any remnants of buildings remaining
38:29under a thousand-year layer of desert dust.
38:33It is this very vegetation that prevents the wind from forming sand dunes and burying the
38:38remains of the city even more deeply.
38:53Twenty thousand years after people.
38:57Subtle changes in Earth's orbit and the tilt of its axis have aligned to return the planet
39:02to an ice age.
39:08As ocean water is tied up in the planet's massive ice sheets, sea level drops almost
39:13400 feet.
39:24In New Jersey, the entire continental shelf stands above sea level.
39:30Atlantic City is surrounded by an inland forest.
39:34If I were standing in Atlantic City during the next ice age, I would see forests something
39:39like this.
39:40The ocean would be too far away to see.
39:53In a million years, a number of ice ages have come and gone.
39:58The Nevada desert has gone back to looking much as it did when people gambled in Las
40:02Vegas.
40:06The city is long eroded away, but a vaguely familiar-looking creature reminds us that
40:11once there were humans here.
40:14The animal is descended from camels once kept at a ranch in Virginia City, 400 miles from
40:19Las Vegas.
40:21But with low-growing vegetation as its primary food, it has evolved into a new species, similar
40:27to the camel-like guanacos of South America.
40:34Because of the habitat in Las Vegas, a new species of camel might be a little bit smaller
40:38in stature, probably a thicker insulating layer of fur because of the temperatures here.
40:44This new species of camel would probably be fairly quick.
40:48There's quite a few predators.
40:53Though our gambling meccas are now all gone, one of man's greatest bets is still in play.
41:00It's not a gold coin, but a gold record aboard the Voyager spacecraft.
41:06What of humankind will actually last a million years?
41:09One pretty sure bet is the Voyager spacecraft.
41:18When the Voyagers were launched in 1977 to explore the solar system and beyond, each
41:23one carried a gold record containing sound and images from Earth as well as greetings
41:28in 55 different languages, intended to inform other intelligent beings of our existence
41:34on the third planet from the sun.
41:38But interstellar space is not a pure vacuum.
41:42It is filled with widely scattered gas molecules, dust and micrometeoroids.
41:49After 300 million miles and a million years, the stuff of space takes its toll on Voyager.
41:56It's still recognizable, but in pieces and full of holes.
42:04Even the gold record is so damaged that there's little chance anyone who finds it will be
42:09able to play it.
42:13Like all of man's great gambles, this one has proved to be a long shot in a life after
42:20people.