Aftermath | |
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Created by | Rob Minkoff |
Written by | Warren Davis II Michael Tupy |
Narrated by | Mike McCurlie Reg E. Cathey Trevor Nichols |
Country of origin | Canada |
No. of episodes | 5 |
Original release | |
Network | History National Geographic |
Release | March 5 – May 6, 2010 |
Aftermath is a 2010 Canadian-American documentary television series created by History Canada and produced by Cream Productions. It aired on National Geographic in the United States.
Aftermath consists of thought experiments looking at what would happen to Earth if extremely distant events and changes occurred in the present. The series is a follow-up to the TV special Aftermath: Population Zero .
In 2010, the series was nominated for a 2010 Gemini Award for best documentary. [1]
The series' pilot special, this episode hypothesizes what would happen if all humans suddenly disappeared from Earth. [2] [3]
This episode hypothesizes a total oil depletion scenario, where almost all oil on Earth simply vanishes in one night.
In the first few minutes, approximately 100,000 billion barrels (1.6×1016 L) of underground oil vanishes. Alarms in oil rigs sound as pipe pressure plummets, leading employees and chemists around the globe to discover the bizarre situation as it unfolds. One day after oil, asphalt, diesel, gasoline, and tar supplies become limited. This causes $2 trillion USD of stock to become worthless, and oil workers are dismissed as the industry fails. Consumers rush to gas stations to fuel their cars for the last time, while oil tankers are called back to their countries of origin to save national reserves of oil. All international transportation is grounded, including logistics, meaning resources such as steel, food, medical supplies, and trash are not being moved.
Five days after oil, power stations start running out of diesel, sparking widespread outages. Martial law is declared to stop rioting and looting. Unemployment rises to 30%. Livestock die due to lack of food. Coal, which is still accessible, briefly becomes the main source of fuel, but they quickly face shortages. Thirty days after oil, diesel-powered passenger trains are running on rations, and the roads are empty of cars. Governments start biofuel planting programs, while nations that already produced large amounts of biofuel prior to the vanishing of the reserves are able to mitigate the negative effects of losing oil.
Five months after oil, the Big Three automobile manufacturers are nationalized by the U.S. government. Famine and drug-resistant infections threaten death, while many begin to migrate as food shipments come every second day. Emergency vehicles are still given fuel rations. Stockpiled gasoline begins to degrade in quality due to it being stored in poor conditions, and civilians begin to experiment with chemicals to produce their own biofuel. While some governments embrace the use of biofuel and begin mass production, others start to wonder if they should plant crops for food or fuel, eventually abandoning biofuel planting altogether.
One year after oil, emergency vehicles are operated either by lithium battery or biofuel. The price of lithium then shoots up, becoming a valuable commodity and creating jobs in industries revolving around the element. Populations of wild animals bounce back. In the countryside, more people practice subsistence farming, growing their own food, keeping livestock and hunting.
Ten years after oil, artificial satellites burn up in the atmosphere as maintaining them is of a reduced priority. Old and obsolete electronics are scavenged for precious metals as people recycle on a massive scale. Algae is used as a biofuel. Trucks deliver vital supplies to hospitals, indirectly improving life expectancy.
Forty years after oil, the skies are much clearer and cleaner as pollutants are washed out. Most vehicles now run on biofuel. Lithium battery cars are expensive, resulting in a re-emergence of public transportation and railways, and new towns grow along railway points. Some cities are eventually abandoned, but many others thrive. A world trade based on biofuel and lithium grows. Eventually, lithium supplies begin to run out, but balancing this with biofuel production means humanity is able to prosper once again. [4] [5]
This episode hypothesizes an overpopulation scenario where the human population of Earth doubles from 7 billion to 14 billion in one night.
The governments of the world attempt to cope at first by ordering the construction of gigantic high rise apartment complexes. However, the often outdated public works systems cannot handle this vastly increased load; bridges break and sewers fail, leading to contamination of the water supply. Much of the remaining woodlands of the earth are cleared to form new farms and housing. Emergency rationing becomes commonplace, and grain exporters stop their exports, leading to a drastic shortage in nations that relied on them. Even in wealthy countries, food and water resources are strained by the doubled population. Electrical grids have difficulty keeping up with the increased demand. New coal plants are built to relieve the pressure, but they result in drastically increased air pollution.
Water shortages become rampant, with insufficient water available for drinking or farming, and desalination plants are built. Looting leads to martial law in many countries. People in countries that lack water and food begin leaving the country in search of resources, prompting unprecedented human migration. Some countries such as the U.S. close their borders to refugees, while others are more accepting and attempt to help them. In the U.S., many people head to the Great Lakes, forming massive tent cities. A population crash begins, resulting in the die-off of billions of people due to the carrying capacity being exceeded.
Despite the grim outlook for humanity, thirty years after the doubling event, the population crash concludes. The total human population stabilizes at 4 billion, similar to that of the mid-1970s. [6] [7]
This episode hypothesizes a scenario where the rotation of the Earth begins slowing dramatically, eventually coming to a complete stop. Though the actual rotation of the Earth is slowing, it is so slow it does not affect life in the present day; in this scenario, Earth would stop spinning in as little as five years. Unlike the other sudden changes featured in the series, this process is portrayed as taking place on a gradual scale, as if the Earth came to a complete stop in an instant, the momentum of the planet would cause everything on Earth's surface to be launched eastwards at the former rotational speed.
The first signs of the developing incident are that GPS satellites become desynchronised with Earth's reducing speed, causing discrepancies on the ground. Stock markets crash due to humanity's uncertain future. With less centrifugal force generated by Earth's rotation, the equatorial bulge begins to disappear, and water starts moving towards the poles. Russia, Canada, Antarctica, and Northern Europe are flooded. Air currents vital for the distribution of solar heat across the planet whirl towards the poles, while the atmosphere starts to thin at the equator, and people migrate to more northerly and southerly cities to keep up with denser air. There is a higher risk of solar radiation as the magnetosphere weakens because of the slowing inner core.
As the Earth slows, the planet's crust, mantle, and core slow down at different speeds. The massive friction generated from this process triggers great quantities of powerful earthquakes, including in locations which had never seen the phenomena before. Humans and numerous other animal species start suffering from sleep deprivation as their bodies cannot properly work in a day longer than 60 hours. The new oceans at the poles begin to flood the contiguous United States and Southern Europe.
Eventually, the Earth stops spinning altogether and its position becomes fixed with respect to the background stars, and as a result still experiences a day-night cycle synonymous with an entire year. The scorching day lasts for six months, while the remaining six months of the year are a lengthy cold, dark night. The planetary landscape now consists of one ocean approximately 10 miles deep in the north, another vast ocean in the south, and a vast girdle of land - a new supercontinent exposed by the water in the equator receding towards the poles - that spans the equator in its entirety. The equatorial supercontinent is surrounded by scattered giant islands, areas of the old continents not inundated by the sea. Most of the new continent is uninhabitable due to thin air, but the former ocean floor has sufficient air pressure for human life. A team of scientists set sail for the supercontinent to explore and study it, but harsh storms near the equator wreck their boat and wash the survivors ashore, where they face an uncertain future.
Survivors living in the Midwestern United States are safe from flooding and have sufficient air pressure to sustain human habitability, but in the new stable climate of the still Earth, whose axis remains tilted, resulting in different areas of the planet experiencing permanent seasonal conditions depending on their location during the six-month days, little to no precipitation occurs, putting the people at great risk; additionally, because the electricity supply has collapsed due to the flooding, the survivors are unable to desalinate the oceans for water for several years. The possibility of finding food remains as fish continue to thrive in the vastly-expanded seas. Survivors living in Hawaii, now part of the new equatorial supercontinent, are notably better off because they live about 1,000 miles north from the edge of the sun's path, receiving sufficient amounts of water from rain to last the year and having safer methods of fishing.
This episode hypothesizes a scenario where the Sun expands into a red giant. Though this is expected to be a gradual process, taking billions of years as the Sun ages and the hydrogen fusion in its core diminishes, in this scenario the Sun rapidly ages and expands in the present day.
The Sun gradually becomes hotter as the hydrogen at its core is consumed through nuclear fusion, resulting in the accumulation of helium, which causes the remaining hydrogen to fuse faster to maintain radiation pressure against the sun's gravity. The average global temperature goes up by 36 °F (20 °C). All snow and ice on Earth melts, causing sea levels to rise by more than 200 feet (61 m), submerging coastal cities. Regular temperatures this hot, around 130 °F (54 °C), become difficult for life to handle.
At 212 °F (100 °C), hot enough to boil water, humans and animals are blinded and suffocated as the alveoli in their lungs are cooked. Earth's magnetosphere begins to weaken. Animals without lungs survive longer, but eventually also succumb to the heat. Humans move underground to survive, and to explore the Earth's surface, humans have to wear space suits. At 300 °F (149 °C), water begins to evaporate much faster than it does today. The concentration of water vapor increases in the atmosphere, displacing oxygen, but despite the intense heat, oxygen levels become so low that fires cannot start. Rain evaporates before reaching the ground.
At 700 °F (371 °C), all life on Earth is rendered extinct, even those living underground. All water on Earth evaporates, turning the former ocean floors into salt pans. The air pressure resulting from the vaporized oceans increases to 4,000 pounds per square inch, destroying even pressurized containers. Anything made of plastic or other synthetic materials melts, and concrete deteriorates as the water inside it evaporates explosively, resulting in buildings collapsing into dust. Oxygen levels shoot back up after the water molecules are split into hydrogen and oxygen due to the sun's increased ultraviolet radiation, and the lighter hydrogen escapes to space. Earth turns red as the new oxygen reacts with the iron in the Earth's crust to produce iron oxide, covering the planet in rust. The return of oxygen also causes spontaneous combustion to consume any remaining flammable materials.
At 2,400 °F (1,320 °C), stone structures such as Stonehenge and the Egyptian pyramids melt, destroying the last remaining proof of life on Earth; the Earth's crust melts as well. The Sun eventually enters its red giant phase as the last of its hydrogen is consumed, and temperatures at its core reach the point where the helium begins to fuse. As the Sun expands, Mercury and Venus are swallowed, and Earth's orbit slows. Earth, now a planet-sized ball of molten magma, spirals toward the Sun and is swallowed by it, finally destroying all that's left. The Sun stops expanding before it reaches the orbit of Mars, the sole survivor of the inner planets and now the only rocky planet in the entire solar system. Miraculously, humans - along with a variety of different species from Earth brought along with them - escape extinction aboard space arks, as a portion of humankind was able to escape Earth prior to all life on the planet being rendered extinct. The episode ends with the survivors establishing new settlements on the moons of the gas giant planets, which now lie within the Sun's habitable zone. [8] [9]
Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to harbor life. This is enabled by Earth being a water world, the only one in the Solar System sustaining liquid surface water. Almost all of Earth's water is contained in its global ocean, covering 70.8% of Earth's crust. The remaining 29.2% of Earth's crust is land, most of which is located in the form of continental landmasses within one hemisphere, Earth's land hemisphere. Most of Earth's land is somewhat humid and covered by vegetation, while large sheets of ice at Earth's polar deserts retain more water than Earth's groundwater, lakes, rivers and atmospheric water combined. Earth's crust consists of slowly moving tectonic plates, which interact to produce mountain ranges, volcanoes, and earthquakes. Earth has a liquid outer core that generates a magnetosphere capable of deflecting most of the destructive solar winds and cosmic radiation.
Nature is an inherent character or constitution, particularly of the ecosphere or the universe as a whole. In this general sense nature refers to the laws, elements and phenomena of the physical world, including life. Although humans are part of nature, human activity or humans as a whole are often described as at times at odds, or outright separate and even superior to nature.
Water is an inorganic compound with the chemical formula H2O. It is a transparent, tasteless, odorless, and nearly colorless chemical substance, and it is the main constituent of Earth's hydrosphere and the fluids of all known living organisms. It is vital for all known forms of life, despite not providing food energy or organic micronutrients. Its chemical formula, H2O, indicates that each of its molecules contains one oxygen and two hydrogen atoms, connected by covalent bonds. The hydrogen atoms are attached to the oxygen atom at an angle of 104.45°. "Water" is also the name of the liquid state of H2O at standard temperature and pressure.
The hydrosphere is the combined mass of water found on, under, and above the surface of a planet, minor planet, or natural satellite. Although Earth's hydrosphere has been around for about 4 billion years, it continues to change in shape. This is caused by seafloor spreading and continental drift, which rearranges the land and ocean.
The water cycle, also known as the hydrologic cycle or the hydrological cycle, is a biogeochemical cycle that describes the continuous movement of water on, above and below the surface of the Earth. The mass of water on Earth remains fairly constant over time but the partitioning of the water into the major reservoirs of ice, fresh water, saline water and atmospheric water is variable depending on a wide range of climatic variables. The water moves from one reservoir to another, such as from river to ocean, or from the ocean to the atmosphere, by the physical processes of evaporation, transpiration, condensation, precipitation, infiltration, surface runoff, and subsurface flow. In doing so, the water goes through different forms: liquid, solid (ice) and vapor. The ocean plays a key role in the water cycle as it is the source of 86% of global evaporation.
An atmosphere is a layer of gas or layers of gases that envelop a planet, and is held in place by the gravity of the planetary body. A planet retains an atmosphere when the gravity is great and the temperature of the atmosphere is low. A stellar atmosphere is the outer region of a star, which includes the layers above the opaque photosphere; stars of low temperature might have outer atmospheres containing compound molecules.
The abundance of the chemical elements is a measure of the occurrence of the chemical elements relative to all other elements in a given environment. Abundance is measured in one of three ways: by mass fraction, by mole fraction, or by volume fraction. Volume fraction is a common abundance measure in mixed gases such as planetary atmospheres, and is similar in value to molecular mole fraction for gas mixtures at relatively low densities and pressures, and ideal gas mixtures. Most abundance values in this article are given as mass fractions.
Pangaea Proxima is a possible future supercontinent configuration. Consistent with the supercontinent cycle, Pangaea Proxima could form within the next 250 million years. This potential configuration, hypothesized by Christopher Scotese in November 1982, earned its name from its similarity to the previous Pangaea supercontinent. Scotese later changed Pangaea Ultima to Pangaea Proxima to alleviate confusion about the name Pangaea Ultima which could imply that it would be the last supercontinent. The concept was suggested by extrapolating past cycles of formation and breakup of supercontinents, not on theoretical understanding of the mechanisms of tectonic change, which are too imprecise to make predictions that far into the future. "It's all pretty much fantasy to start with," Scotese has said. "But it's a fun exercise to think about what might happen. And you can only do it if you have a really clear idea of why things happen in the first place."
The history of Earth concerns the development of planet Earth from its formation to the present day. Nearly all branches of natural science have contributed to understanding of the main events of Earth's past, characterized by constant geological change and biological evolution.
Oil depletion is the decline in oil production of a well, oil field, or geographic area. The Hubbert peak theory makes predictions of production rates based on prior discovery rates and anticipated production rates. Hubbert curves predict that the production curves of non-renewing resources approximate a bell curve. Thus, according to this theory, when the peak of production is passed, production rates enter an irreversible decline.
A runaway greenhouse effect occurs when a planet's atmosphere contains greenhouse gas in an amount sufficient to block thermal radiation from leaving the planet, preventing the planet from cooling and from having liquid water on its surface. A runaway version of the greenhouse effect can be defined by a limit on a planet's outgoing longwave radiation which is asymptotically reached due to higher surface temperatures evaporating water into the atmosphere, increasing its optical depth. This positive feedback means the planet cannot cool down through longwave radiation and continues to heat up until it can radiate outside of the absorption bands of the water vapour.
Saturn's largest moon Titan is one of several candidates for possible future colonization of the outer Solar System, though protection against extreme cold is a major consideration.
Renewable Fuels are fuels produced from renewable resources. Examples include: biofuels, Hydrogen fuel, and fully synthetic fuel produced from ambient carbon dioxide and water. This is in contrast to non-renewable fuels such as natural gas, LPG (propane), petroleum and other fossil fuels and nuclear energy. Renewable fuels can include fuels that are synthesized from renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar. Renewable fuels have gained in popularity due to their sustainability, low contributions to the carbon cycle, and in some cases lower amounts of greenhouse gases. The geo-political ramifications of these fuels are also of interest, particularly to industrialized economies which desire independence from Middle Eastern oil.
The atmosphere of Venus is primarily of supercritical carbon dioxide and is much denser and hotter than that of Earth. The temperature at the surface is 740 K, and the pressure is 93 bar (1,350 psi), roughly the pressure found 900 m (3,000 ft) underwater on Earth. The Venusian atmosphere supports opaque clouds of sulfuric acid, making optical Earth-based and orbital observation of the surface impossible. Information about the topography has been obtained exclusively by radar imaging. Aside from carbon dioxide, the other main component is nitrogen. Other chemical compounds are present only in trace amounts.
World energy resources are the estimated maximum capacity for energy production given all available resources on Earth. They can be divided by type into fossil fuel, nuclear fuel and renewable resources.
The geological history of the Earth follows the major geological events in Earth's past based on the geological time scale, a system of chronological measurement based on the study of the planet's rock layers (stratigraphy). Earth formed about 4.54 billion years ago by accretion from the solar nebula, a disk-shaped mass of dust and gas left over from the formation of the Sun, which also created the rest of the Solar System.
The world ocean or ocean sea is the body of salt water that covers ~70.8% of the Earth. In English, the term ocean also refers to any of the large bodies of water into which the world ocean is conventionally divided. Distinct names are used to identify five different areas of the ocean: Pacific, Atlantic, Indian, Antarctic/Southern, and Arctic. The ocean contains 97% of Earth's water and is the primary component of the Earth's hydrosphere, thus the ocean is essential to life on Earth. The ocean influences climate and weather patterns, the carbon cycle, and the water cycle by acting as a huge heat reservoir.
The biological and geological future of Earth can be extrapolated based on the estimated effects of several long-term influences. These include the chemistry at Earth's surface, the cooling rate of the planet's interior, the gravitational interactions with other objects in the Solar System, and a steady increase in the Sun's luminosity. An uncertain factor is the pervasive influence of technology introduced by humans, such as climate engineering, which could cause significant changes to the planet. For example, the current Holocene extinction is being caused by technology, and the effects may last for up to five million years. In turn, technology may result in the extinction of humanity, leaving the planet to gradually return to a slower evolutionary pace resulting solely from long-term natural processes.
A helium planet is a planet with a helium-dominated atmosphere. This contrasts with ordinary gas giants such as Jupiter and Saturn, whose atmospheres consist primarily of hydrogen, with helium as a secondary component only. Helium planets might form in a variety of ways. Gliese 436 b is a possible helium planet.
This timeline of natural history summarizes significant geological and biological events from the formation of the Earth to the arrival of modern humans. Times are listed in millions of years, or megaanni (Ma).
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