What was the point of Life After People

[pRICE cUBE]

How fragile is Humanity? How close could we be? It isn't unfathomable with Nuclear and Bio warfare or pandemic and we are all gone. I found it very informative about the enormous amount of maintenance people have to put into structures to keep nature at bay.

[Lux Interior]

It is a thin veneer of society between us and savagery.

[davester]

Just look at Chernobyl. That place has been abandoned and is now dissolving before our eyes. I didn't see this show but I can imagine. As far as extinction is concerned, it is difficult to say. Individuals of the human species have some distinct but very specialized survival tools, but the human society as a whole probably has more destructive than constructive force when it comes to living in the natural world (i.e. destructive due to the power that individuals now possess, destructive because the society as a whole doesn't have the power to stop errant individuals). It would not take too much to decimate the human race to the brink of extinction...a single large bolide impact could completely destroy our ecosystem if we don't do it ourselves.

[Black]

davester wrote:
It would not take too much to decimate the human race to the brink of extinction...a single large bolide impact could completely destroy our ecosystem if we don't do it ourselves.

The ecosystem is irrelevant.
Resistance is futile.
You will be assimilated.

[davester]

Black wrote:
The ecosystem is irrelevant.
Resistance is futile.
You will be assimilated.

Ah, well there is THAT ecosystem.

[Don Kiyoti]

RgrF wrote:
The History Channel started out well intended, now it's just another notch in some corporate belt. It has less to do with history than Fox does with news.

I have to agree with you there. Even their shows that are actually historical in nature are cheap cut & paste mashups of the same stock footage over and over.

[Mac-A-Matic]

Speaking of The Borg...

I remember seeing a satellite image of our planet a couple of years ago that offered a view of the East Coast of the United States (I think you could probably do this with Google Earth) and as I zoomed around the northern part of the East Coast, you started to see vast swaths of green earth being overcome by grey concrete and the development of civilization.

That grey cover reminded me that perhaps humanity is the virus that plagues our planet and that we are like The Borg - especially if you remember how grey the Borg planet was...

[Blankity Blank]

Lee3 wrote: Oh, and they do hate people. Those are the same clowns that told me as a kid 40 years ago that we would run out of oil and the world population would plummet due to starvation and the earth would be an ice cube by 10 years ago. They scared me as a child and I consider them child abusers.

The History Channel was on in 1969?

Well, whoever it was, I think you probably confused a warning/cautionary tale with a written in stone prediction. Unlike Ben Linus and John Locke, we can alter the future with our actions. :biggrin:

And cUBE is right, the show was just a little reality check on our hubris. Although it could also be a bit of a glass half empty/full exercise. Gone, but dead and gone? Moved on, out amongst the stars? An evolutionary leap to another plane?

[DavidS]

If I remember correctly, the show premiered around the same time that I Am Legend came out in theaters. While not an official tie-in, it was certainly promoted as having a similar, if not more "scientific" premise. I watched bits and pieces of it, but not the whole thing.

[graylocks]

pRICE cUBE wrote:
I think the point is that Mankind marvels in it's own superior sense of accomplishment and that if we wiped ourselves out, it would not take long for nature to overcome it all.

i agree. when i watched it with my son we were so depressed afterwards. we felt so unnecessary...