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What If Every Human Disappeared Right Now? — Transcript

by OminiAM · 1,858 words · 319 segments · language en · Watch on YouTube

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0:00Right now, there are about 10,000
0:01[music] planes in the sky. More than a
0:04million people 35,000 ft above the
0:07ground. Now, watch what happens when I
0:10snap my fingers.
0:13Every person on Earth is gone.
0:16No war, no virus, no bodies, just gone.
0:20The coffee is still hot. The cars are
0:23still rolling. And those 10,000 planes
0:25are still flying on autopilot with
0:28nobody inside.
0:30In a few hours, they start to fall. In 2
0:33days, New York's subway is underwater.
0:36In about a week, a countdown ends at
0:38more than 400 nuclear reactors. And the
0:42very last trace of the human race, the
0:44one thing that will outlive everything
0:46we ever built, it isn't even on this
0:49planet. Let's start the clock. The first
0:5210 seconds are the loudest. Over a
0:55billion cars are on the world's roads,
0:57and everyone that was moving just lost
1:00its driver.
1:01Highways turn into one long chain of
1:03crashes. Then, the engines idle, run
1:07dry, and stop.
1:09After that, comes a silence the planet
1:11hasn't heard in thousands of years.
1:143 hours in, the first planes run out of
1:17fuel. The autopilot holds them level
1:19right up until the engines quit. Then,
1:22they glide down one by one over oceans,
1:25forests, and empty cities. Nobody hears
1:28them land.
1:29By now, power plants are in trouble.
1:31[music]
1:32Most of our electricity comes from
1:34plants that need people. Someone to feed
1:36in the fuel. Someone to balance the
1:38grid. Without them, [music] safety
1:40systems kick in, and the plants shut
1:42themselves down. One goes offline. Its
1:45neighbors overload. They [music] trip,
1:47too.
1:48It spreads like dominoes, country by
1:51country. For more than a century, you
1:53could see humanity [music] from space, a
1:56glowing web on the dark side of the
1:58planet. By the end of day one, most of
2:01it is gone. A few places hang on.
2:03[music] Wind farms keep spinning. Some
2:06hydroelectric dams keep running on their
2:08own for months, [music] lighting up
2:10cities with nobody in them. But the dark
2:12is coming for them, too.
2:14And in the dark, a much bigger problem
2:17has just started ticking. Day two,
2:20>> [music]
2:20>> New York City.
2:22Here's something most people who live
2:23there don't know.
2:24>> [music]
2:25>> The subway is always trying to flood.
2:28Every single day, pumps pull about 13
2:31million gallons of water out of those
2:33tunnels.
2:34No power, no pumps. Within about 36
2:37hours, the tunnels are full.
2:40And New York isn't special.
2:41>> [music]
2:42>> London, Tokyo, Paris, every city built
2:45on top of water starts drowning from
2:48underneath.
2:49Day three is the hard one. Hundreds of
2:52millions of pets are waiting by the door
2:54for someone who isn't coming home. The
2:57ones that can get out become hunters
2:59fast. The ones that can't don't have
3:02long.
3:03On farms, it's worse. Over 20 billion
3:07chickens, a billion cattle, most of them
3:10locked in buildings with automatic
3:11feeders that just stopped. But some
3:14fences fail. Some [music] gates were
3:16open, and those animals walk out into a
3:19world that suddenly [music] belongs to
3:21them.
3:22Day seven. This is the countdown from
3:25the start of the video.
3:26When the grid died, every nuclear
3:28reactor on Earth shut down
3:30automatically. That part worked
3:32perfectly. The problem is the used fuel.
3:36It sits in deep pools of water, and it
3:38stays dangerously hot for years. That
3:41water has to keep circulating. So,
3:43backup diesel generators took over. They
3:46have about one week of fuel.
3:48That week is up. With the generators
3:51dead, the water in those fuel pools
3:53heats up. Then it boils.
3:56Then it's gone.
3:58At some sites, the exposed fuel catches
4:01fire and throws radiation into the wind.
4:04Not at one plant, at many, around the
4:07world in the same few weeks.
4:10It's the worst nuclear disaster in
4:12history, [music] and there's nobody left
4:14to call it one. And here's the strange
4:16part.
4:17>> [music]
4:17>> For nature, it's survivable. We know
4:20because we've seen a preview, Chernobyl.
4:23After the accident in 1986, [music]
4:26people left. Scientists expected a dead
4:29zone. Instead, the wolves [music] came
4:31back. Then links, bison, wild horses.
4:35Today, [music] it's one of the richest
4:37wildlife areas in Europe. It turns out
4:40that for most animals, radiation is less
4:42dangerous than we are.
4:44>> [music]
4:44>> Meanwhile, cities are burning.
4:47One lightning strike, one gas, one spark
4:51in a city with no fire department. A
4:54fire that would have lasted an hour
4:56[music] now burns for weeks and takes
4:58whole neighborhoods with it. Then the
5:01first winter arrives, and it does
5:03something fire can't. Water gets into
5:05every crack in every road and wall. It
5:09freezes. It expands. It splits the crack
5:12wider. Spring comes and seeds fall in.
5:16By the end of year one, grass is growing
5:18through the highways. Times Square has
5:21weeds, and we're only getting started.
5:24Let's speed up. 10 years. [music]
5:27Your home has a hole in the roof. That's
5:29all it takes. Rain gets in, wood rots,
5:32mold [music] eats the walls.
5:34Somewhere around year 50, the house you
5:36live in right now folds in on itself.
5:39Look up. Those aren't shooting stars.
5:42Those are satellites. [music]
5:44Without ground control nudging them back
5:46into place, they sink lower every year
5:49until they burn up in the atmosphere.
5:51The space station is one of the first to
5:53go.
5:54The greatest light show in history, and
5:57nothing is watching that knows what it
5:59is. [music]
6:00Down below, there are winners and
6:02losers.
6:03The losers? Everything that [music]
6:05depended on us.
6:07Cockroaches in cold cities freeze
6:09without our heating. Rats [music] lose
6:11their endless buffet of garbage and
6:13become someone else's dinner.
6:15And head lice? They can only live on
6:17humans.
6:17>> [music]
6:18>> They're gone within weeks.
6:19The winners? Almost everything else.
6:23Forests [music]
6:23spread. Fish fill the oceans again.
6:26Whales, for the first [music] time in
6:28200 years, swim in quiet water.
6:32And our pets? Small dogs don't make it.
6:35Bigger ones [music] join packs and
6:36slowly turn back into something close to
6:38wolves.
6:40Cats are fine. Cats [music] were always
6:42fine. They never really needed us.
6:44100 years.
6:46Bridges are held together by a job that
6:48never ends, painting.
6:51Crews repaint them constantly [music]
6:53because the moment steel is bare, it
6:55rusts. A century without paint, and the
6:58cables [music] start to snap. The Golden
7:00Gate, the Brooklyn Bridge, one after
7:03another, they fall into the rivers they
7:05were built to cross. So, what about the
7:08really big things? [music] The towers,
7:11the dams, the things we built to last
7:13forever? [music] A skyscraper looks
7:16permanent. It isn't. It's a steel
7:18skeleton wearing glass, and it only
7:21survives as long as it stays dry inside.
7:24The windows went first, decades [music]
7:26ago.
7:27Since then, rain and salt air have been
7:30eating the steel from the inside, floor
7:32[music] by floor.
7:34Around year 300, the skeleton gives up.
7:37[music]
7:37New York becomes a forest with strange
7:40square hills. Dubai disappears under
7:43sand.
7:44Amsterdam, New Orleans, and every city
7:47we held back the sea to build are simply
7:49underwater.
7:51The dams go next. Concrete cracks, gates
7:54jam, water finds a way.
7:57When a big one finally breaks, it sends
7:59a wall of water through valleys where
8:01millions of people used to live.
8:04The rivers go back to the paths they had
8:06before we moved [music] them.
8:081 thousand years. If you flew over Earth
8:11now, you would have to look hard to find
8:14us.
8:14>> [music]
8:14>> So, here's the question.
8:16What's still standing? Not the newest
8:18things, the oldest. The pyramids of Giza
8:22were already ancient when Rome was
8:24founded. No steel to rust, no glass to
8:27break, just stone on stone.
8:30They'll still be there, slowly wearing
8:32down long after every modern city is
8:35dust.
8:36The Great Wall survives in pieces. So do
8:39the stone temples, the Roman roads, the
8:41tunnels we carved through mountains.
8:44And then, there's Mount Rushmore.
8:46Four faces cut into solid granite, which
8:49erodes about 1 inch every 10,000 years.
8:53Those faces could still be recognizable
8:557 million years from now.
8:57>> [music]
8:58>> But something else lasts even longer
9:00than stone, and it's a lot less
9:02impressive. 1 million years.
9:05>> [music]
9:05>> The air has finally recovered. The
9:08carbon we pumped into the sky took
9:10around a hundred thousand years to fully
9:12clear. [music]
9:13On the surface, there is no sign of us
9:16at all. But if you dug down, you'd hit a
9:18thin, strange line in the rock.
9:21Our line.
9:22>> [music]
9:23>> It holds crushed concrete, bits of
9:25glass, traces of metals that don't
9:27belong together, and plastic. [music]
9:30Billions of tons of it pressed flat like
9:33leaves in a book.
9:34>> [music]
9:34>> Everything we ever built, everything we
9:37ever fought over, squeezed into a layer
9:39about as thick as your hand. That's
9:42what's left of us on Earth.
9:44But I told you, the last trace of
9:46humanity isn't on this planet. It's up
9:48there.
9:50The moon has no wind and no rain.
9:52Nothing to wash anything away.
9:55The footprints the Apollo astronauts
9:56left in 1969 are still perfectly sharp
10:00today. And they could stay that way for
10:02millions of years. Six landing sites,
10:05flags, rovers, a family photo one
10:08astronaut left lying on the ground. And
10:11even that isn't the last thing.
10:13In 1977, we launched two small
10:16spacecraft [music]
10:17called Voyager. Each one carries a
10:19golden record with our voices on it.
10:22Greetings in 55 languages, music, the
10:25sound of a child laughing. They've
10:27already left the solar system. There's
10:30almost nothing out there to damage them.
10:32Those records were built to last a
10:34billion years. Long after the pyramids
10:37are sand, a child's laugh will still be
10:40traveling between the stars. So, let's
10:42go back to that snap.
10:44We started this thinking the story was
10:46about what the world loses when we're
10:48gone.
10:49But look at what actually happened. The
10:51lights went out in a day. [music]
10:54The cities flooded in a week.
10:56Our homes lasted 50 years. [music]
10:59Our tallest towers, 300. And after a
11:02thousand, the planet had almost
11:04forgotten we were here.
11:06Everything we call permanent is only
11:08[music] standing because somebody,
11:10somewhere, is taking care of it. Every
11:13bridge is being painted. Every tunnel is
11:15[music] being pumped. Every light is on
11:18because a person is making sure it stays
11:21on.
11:22The world we built isn't a thing. It's a
11:24job. And we do it every single day
11:27without noticing. [music]
11:29The Earth doesn't need us to keep going.
11:31That part is clear, but everything that
11:34makes it ours, [music]
11:35every road, every city, every story
11:39lasts [music] exactly as long as we keep
11:41showing up.
11:43So, here's my question for you. If you
11:45could choose just one thing from our
11:47world to survive a million years,
11:49[music] one building, one object, one
11:52message, what would it be?
11:53>> [music]
11:54>> Tell me in the comments. I really want
11:56to read these. If you're still watching,
11:58you're clearly curious. So, subscribe.
12:01It's free and it really helps the
12:03channel.
12:04>> [music]

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