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Life After People (History Channel)
Availability:
In Stock
Price:
$19.95
$5.39*
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| Part No: | B0012IV3PU |
| Manufacturer: | A&E HOME VIDEO |
| MFG Part: | AAED110900D |
| Customer Rating: | 4.0 / 5.0 |
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This explores the question - what will the world be like when mankind has vanished from the planet? Studio: A&e Home Video Release Date: 03/18/2008 Run time: 94 minutes
The very notion is deliciously ghoulish: What happens to earth if--or when--people suddenly vanished? The History Channel presents a dramatic, fascinating what-if scenario, part science fiction and part true natural science. "Welcome to Earth, Population: 0" is the catchy tagline,
Life After People's 94 minutes are so gripping you nearly forget while you watch that you, yourself, will be gone too. It turns out that earth can go along very nicely without us. The hardest part of the special is probably in the first 15 minutes, when pet owners confront what likely will happen to their dogs (thankfully, the show follows those dogs who break out of their houses, and the prognosis for them to survive as scavengers is good). As the fictional days and weeks tick by, the process of nature's reclaiming the planet becomes less grim and more fascinating. The impact of the lack of people will be noticed right away, as most power grids shut down around the planet. The one holdout: Hoover Dam, whose hydro power lights up the American Southwest. Scientists say the dam can continue to operate on its own for months, maybe years, keeping the Vegas Strip alight. Only the eventual accumulation of quagga mussels, an invasive species, in the cooling pipes of the power plant--currently being cleaned by humans--will shut down the dam. Elsewhere, critters and plants will have their run of Manhattan and every other previously "civilized" spot. Inventive photography shows bears clambering out of subway stations, and vines pulling down brownstones, then skyscrapers. It may not be a surprise when the Eiffel Tower and Space Needle meet their eventual fates, but the scenes nonetheless provide a pleasant sting of shock.
Life After People is humbling, yet exhilarating. --
A.T. Hurley
| Not as good as it could be | 2009-01-06 | 2 / 5 |
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This program is made for television/ short-attention span piece of work. It is more formatted around time for commercials than for its overall flow as a documentary.
I ordered it after reading the book "The World Without Us" by Alan Weisman. I was hoping for commentary by Alan Weisman but there was none. I feel like he did much better job in his work on an analysis of this scenario.
This effort by the history channel seems more like a Johnny-come-lately in comparison to Weisman's work and I was disappointed. |
| Sensationalistic ripoff of The World WIthout Us | 2008-12-13 | 2 / 5 |
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| Don't watch this: it's bad for you. Instead, read Alan Weisman's "The World Without Us." Weisman shows us as part of nature, affecting its cycles and processes and affected by them; the film revives obsolete tropes of a struggle for mastery between man and nature. The combat-mastery approach isn't just misleading, it's dangerous - for, as Weisman's book (along with many others) shows, it is our inability to recognize that we are part of nature that makes us such a scourge. The film imagines all traces of human civilization (except perhaps Mount Rushmore) effaced, but Weisman reminds us that we will be survived by our plastics, our stainless steel, etc. "The world without us" points the way to a thoughtful ecological consciousness, "Life after people" points away from it, making the collapse of human civilization and the longterm scarring of nature more likely. And in the meantime, Weisman shows the way to enjoy being part of nature, and so to accept our inevitable disappearance not as a disaster and defeat but as but one part of the remarkable unfolding of chemical and biological histories on this remarkable planet. |
| Surprisingly my family loved it! | 2008-11-19 | 4 / 5 |
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| Because I watch science and nature programs a lot, I was not as impressed with this program as I had hoped to be. What was surprising, was how much each of my family members loved it. One would watch it and recommend the others watch it. They are all over 22, and again it was fascinating to see how much they each thought it was interesting and cool. |
| interesting look on our legacy | 2008-11-09 | 5 / 5 |
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| We have all wondered what our society's ruins would look like. Now with this dvd we call can. Very well made and covers all aspects of our human impact. |
| Makes you think... | 2008-11-05 | 4 / 5 |
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| I really enjoyed this show although I felt that after about an hour not much changed from hundreds of years after humans to thousands of years and it got a bit depressing on one hand but uplifting on the other. Mother Earth pretty much takes over and you can't even tell humans were ever on this planet. Worth watching though! |
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