Crypt of Civilization

Crypt of Civilization
Episode Information
Episode	3
Season	2
No. in Series	13
Air Date	January 19, 2010
Directed by	Louis C. Tarantino
Produced by	Douglas J. Cohen (Executive Producer) Louis C. Tarantino (Executive Producer) James Grant Goldin Samuel K. Dolan
Episode Guide
Previous	Toxic Revenge
Next	The Last Supper

Crypt of Civilization is the third episode of season two of Life After People: The Series. It originally aired on January 19, 2010.

Synopsis

Man tried to preserve his legacy by hiding treasures, burying important objects, and locked them away, but soon in a post-apocalyptic world, how would the time capsules survive to the far future which range from the Rosetta disks, the Crypt of Civilization at Oglethorpe University, the Clock of the Long Now, and in space of the proposed KEO satellite. The German Shepherds and rats in cargo ships battles to survive and man attempted to preserve legacies have to prove a long battle when nature attacks at the Library of Congress and Marine Corps War Memorial in Washington, D.C., the Gherkin in London and the Crypt of John Paul Jones in Annapolis, Maryland. The episode examines Norwich State Hospital in Connecticut, where sections of it were abandoned between 1970 and 1995.

Plot

1 Day After People

On the campus of Oglethorpe University in Atlanta, Georgia was a small X carved in stone. Buried a few feet underneath is a forgotten crypt filled with strange relics of mankind that wait to be rediscovered, from mannequins staring with painted eyes into the dark as if they're waiting, cans of newsreel and the violin case in the corner waiting for people to be opened, and typewriter waiting for someone to touch the keys. The fashion mannequins stand at a bizarre intersection between immortal and forgotten, waiting to be released from one of the world's strangest rooms called the Crypt of Civilization, a time capsule. Paul S. Hudson stated that the Crypt of Civilization was the first successful attempt to bury the record of human culture for future inhabitants or visitors to the planet Earth according to the Guinness Book of World Records. Everyday objects from toasters to dental floss rest in steel cylinders filled with inert gas, microfilms of 800 books including the Koran and works of Shakespeare remain next to lipstick tubes, cigarette lighters, radios, and the screenplay of Gone With The Wind, which were all carefully chosen to represent life in the 1930's. The Crypt was conceived in 1936 by the university's president, Thornwell Jacobs, he got inspired by recent excavations of Egyptian burial chambers and wanted to create a 20th century version of King Tut's tomb. The objects wait behind a stainless steel place measured one eighth of an inch thick with instructions not to open the crypt until the year 8113. Paul S. Hudson explains that the Egyptian calendar begins in 4241 B.C. as most historians say, making 6,177 years to elapsed and Thornwell Jacobs projected forward 6,177 in his words from 1936 and comes up with 8113 A.D., and whoever opened the crypt would see what it like at the midpoint of human history. The episode ask that can the crypt endure 6000+ years.

2 Days After People

All of man's attempts to preserve his legacy are in a battle against time. At Washington, D.C., at the Marine Corps War Memorial, 6 bronze heroes of the World War 2 Battle of Iwo Jima still raises the American flag. It was based on a photographic image of heroism that is so moving that people wanted it to be immortalized not in fading celluloid, but in bronze. Without people to remember the battle or protect the monument, time's ticking for the marines to continue to hoist the flag.

32 miles away in Annapolis lies the crypt of a Revolutionary War hero of the naval legend John Paul Jones, but only few knew that the crypt was not Jones' first resting place. Largely forgotten after the Revolutionary War, he was buried by his few friends and left in an unmarked grave for a hundred years. In 1905, Jones' lead coffin was found and opened for an autopsy, and while the doctors expected to see the mocking grin of a skeleton, instead the doctors was shocked on what they saw. Although partially decomposed, John Paul Jones was preserved enough to be recognizable from 18th century bust. The episode questions how it was possible before answering that hoping Jones would rediscovered some day, his friends had his coffin filled with methyl alcohol. Dr. Howard Oliver explains that it slowed down autolysis, which makes the body breaking down itself from its cells and when the cells break down, bacteria move in and disintegrate the cells but with alcohol creates a near-aseptic condition which kills the bacteria. John Paul Jones was reburied with fresh methyl alcohol in a tomb in Annapolis, Maryland, a quarter mile from shore.

4 Days After People

At Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton in Southern California, some marines remain on duty, German Shepherds, who were part of the US Marines canine core, lives without superior officers, but will remember their years of intense trainer. Cpl. Alfred J. Brenner stated that the memory is fantastic and the dogs were trained to attack and find explosives and others are trained to track humans and find them which able to drive like a Marine will. The more aggressive alpha males, uncaged when their masters vanished, goes AWOL, following orders from a new commanding officer called hunger. Jill Bowers stated that a German Shepherd would go after little animals and whatever they can eat because they're survivalists while Cpl. Alfred J. Brenner recalls that they had one dog at the kennels attack a snake. Outside of Pendleton are hungry coyotes and the shepherds are not the only predators.

Meanwhile, some attempts to preserve man's legacy race against time by standing still like a CD-sized object which holds the key to preserving mankind written languages. Created in 2008 by an organization called the Long Now Foundation is etched with micro sized writings and when magnified 1,000 times, it reveals 13,000 pages of text from vocabulary lists to Bible verses in more than 1,500 human languages. The disk is named after the Rosetta Stone, an ancient artifact which enabled researchers to decode Egyptian hieroglyphics. Copies of the Rosetta Disk were sent to safe havens around the world including the Smithsonian Institution where thousands of other treasures are stored. After people, the lights are out and the modern Rosetta Stone might survive or not in the future.

While the ancients preserved vital objects and great leaders behind walls of stone, modern office buildings of steel and glass are crypts of information. One third of most office buildings was devoted to storing papers in the time of humans, from personnel files to government secrets, which is true from the canyons of Wall Street to London's financial district where the most notable was the 591 foot tower nicknamed the Gherkin. Steven S. Ross explains that the Gherkin was called because it look like a pickle on end and was a very unusual building. Its 745 double layers of glass panels let in much natural light that the costs of heating and lighting the building were drastically reduced. Steven S. Ross stated that it uses about half as much as a conventional office building. However, shortly after it was completed in 2003, one panel came loose and shattered over 300 feet below. Gordon Masterton stated that it is a clue to its eventual demise and although it's an extremely well designed building, it still needs to be maintained. A maintenance crew of 90 kept the Gherkin in good shape in the time of humans, after people time will tell for another panel to falls and another

1 Week After People

There's trouble on the high seas, within a cargo ship carrying 30 thousand tons of wheat. While the crew is gone, the ship is not quite abandoned because the rats have taken over. Ship crews battled rats with traps and poisoned in the time of humans, but the days are over. A large rat of 12 or 13 ounces can eat 15% of its body weight in a day, but rats won't just eat, it also breed, and female rats can have 6 litters in a year and perhaps a dozen rats in each litter. At the age of only 3 months, the young rats are ready to breed, repeating the process.

6 Months After People

In Washington D.C., the bronze Marine Corps War Memorial depicting the Iwo Jima Marines remain undamaged, but the polyester flag was subject to fading in the sun and had to be changed once a month by an honor guard. John F. Kennedy directed that the 190 square foot banner on the 60 foot flag pole should be flown day and night forever which proclaimed in 1961 to help people remember the courage and sacrifice at Iwo Jima. After 6 months of sun, wind, and rain have torn the flag to shreds and it took one gusty afternoon to have the presidential proclamation to be overwritten by a harsh wind.

1 Year After People

A pair of rats can produce 2,000 offspring in just 12 months and the green greedy rats on the cargo ship have experienced a population explosion with the dark hold of the ship has become a moving wave of hungry and breeding rodents. The rats need half an ounce of water a day which has been satisfied by rainwater but another problem emerge, without humans to work at the bilge pumps, the cargo ship is taking on water in the middle of the ocean. As seawater saturates the grain, thousands of rats flee to the upper decks but they can't desert on the sinking ship.

Around the world, man attempts to measure the passage of time are fading away. When the power went out, electric clocks went dark forever while the batteries in some wrist watches may last for 3 years or more but it too will stop. The episode questions about a clock that won't stop before answering that at least not for 10,000 years. Laura Welcher stated that the idea for the 10,000 year clock was developed by Danny Hillis, one of the people behind the development of modern computer. In order to create a clock that keep accurate time for 10,000 years, Hillis designed a 60 foot tall machine made of corrosion resistant titanium and stainless steel. The idea was for the sun to keep the mechanical clock accurate at noon, solar heat focused through a lens, make a strip of tungsten buckle, and the motion resets the clock to exactly noon. to guarantee precise measurement of time over 100 centuries, the clock uses a sophisticated system of levers and pins that perform binary calculations. Laura Welcher stated that the 10,000 year clock is essentially the world's slowest computer and while it has no electronic, it's all mechanical.

2 Years After People

Outside of Camp Pendleton, the coyotes that prowl the wild landscape have learned to fear the strength of the German Shepherds, the last marines. Cpl. Alfred J. Brenner recalls that one of the aggressive dogs came up to a coyote and were overtaken thanks to the training the dogs have and the dog most likely kill a coyote. Unlike most dogs kept as pets in the time of humans, many military trained German Shepherds survived without people. Cpl. Alfred J. Brenner believes that the dogs would retain their training for a very long time like if they come up to a wall, they're not gonna stare at it and would jump over the wall which complete the task they need to.

Back in the open ocean, the hungry rats have turned on each other and everyone is dead of starvation or cannibalism. The bodies have become food for the hungry seabirds.

5 Years After People

All is quiet at the world's largest library called the Library of Congress in Washington D.C., which contains nearly 142 billion items, on roughly 650 miles of shelves, including in the collections were Mathew Brady's Civil War photographs and the personal effects Abraham Lincoln was carrying on the day of his assassination. All of this are little consequence to the swamp creatures returning to the former capital of man.

10 Years After People

The once manicured grounds of Oglethorpe University are choking under kudzu and wild poinsettia, but the granite building holding the Crypt of Civilization still stands secure. The crypt is surrounded by Georgia bedrock and was reinforced to survive centuries by scientists who strengthened the cement floor of a 200 square foot indoor swimming pool and waterproofed the walls with layers of porcelain enamel. After the crypt was sealed in 140, some 20,000 other time capsules were buried around the world, and when the publicity died out, most were quickly forgotten and lost, and for a while, it even happened to the crypt itself. Paul S. Hudson recalls that he was an undergraduate in 1970 and in the area where the Crypt is sealed off, he saw the stainless steel door covered in cobwebs and when he pulled it off, he saw a message about 8113 A.D. where he had no clue about it and it was only 30 years old when the crypt had been forgotten. After people, it was forgotten again but nothing much has changed inside the crypt. When it's creator, doctor Thornwell Jacobs was choosing items inside, he was sure to include a vial of beer, specially brewed and bottled by Anheuser-Busch. Jacobs thought that even 6,000 years from now, whoever opened the crypt would enjoy a foamy brew. Paul S. Hudson explains that Thornwell Jacobs admitted he had no notion of the far future but thinks that the people would be drinking beer like the way of the Egyptians drink beer where thy put earthenware jars in their pyramid chambers.

20 Years After People

Not all time capsules are intended to remain on Earth, instead some were intended on space. In the early 21st century, Europe's KEO Satellite was designed to orbit the planet carrying a DVD with thousands of e-mail messages from people around the world to the remote future. Travis Taylor stated it was called KEO because K, E, and O are sounds in most of the languages humanity uses. While the Crypt of Civilization was inspired by the first calendar, KEO looked to an even earlier landmark of civilization. Travis Taylor explains that the concept of KEO was the first art on the planet 50,000 years ago. The KEO was scheduled to return to Earth to be opened 500 centuries after it's launch, having completed almost 300 million orbits. Being at 870 miles high, it's out of the path of most other satellites and space debris, and while an astro-accident is unlikely in the near term, the episode questions what would happen when it's time for KEO to plummet back to Earth.

40 Years After People

Some places on Earth have mankind made no attempt to preserve his memories and with the places so horrible, it's better to forget. It already happen at one of the places still stands on a sprawling patch of land in southeastern Connecticut called Norwich State Hospital.

Norwich State Hospital

Visiting Norwich State Hospital, as if there was a fire drill and nobody came back as quoted by Kent Borner. He, along with Judith A. Riley and Steven S. Ross tour the hospital and explain its abandonment. It opened in 1904 and among it's patients were some of the worst criminally insane offenders in the state like Ernest Skinner who attacked his neighbor with an axe before setting him on fire and Matthew Naab who stabbed his 85 year old grandmother to death with scissors because he thought she was possessed by the devil, making it no wonder why many report strange happenings at the abandoned hospital. Kent Borner stated there's a lot of building thinking that the buildings are haunted. The souls would have reason to be restless even for patients who weren't criminals, making life at Norwich a terrible ordeal. Kent Borner stated that back in the turn of the century, people weren't sure how to deal with mental illness while Judith A. Riley stated that the facility utilized straitjackets, rubber rooms, and all things that people think are horrible and she imagine the cost of treatment in early years being very punitive. Judith Riley's mother was a nurse at Norwich in the 1930s and everyday she passed the building, she would heard the screams of the criminally insane. Judith A. Riley thinks it must been very chaotic and noisy nonstop. Steven S. Ross shows a gloomy room with the windows having a grate inside and steel bars outside with thinner grate which separate the people inside and the beautiful view outside.

In the 1970s, most of Norwich's criminally insane were transferred to Connecticut's prison system and the building that once held prisoners was abandoned to everything but nature. Kent Borner stated that the vines, trees, and shrubs infiltrate anything that has water and when it finds a crack it will get in. Steven S. Ross shows a three brick thick wall behind him that is missing a piece of downspout and has put extra water into the bricks. He explains that during the winter, the water freezes, expands, pushes the bricks out, allowing water in and the entire wall begins to collapse, he analyze that the building itself was abandoned in 1970 but the downspout went missing 15 years ago and it took 15 years to do the damage. Norwich State Hospital covered a thousand acres with 5,000 staff and patients at it's height, and had it's own farm and livestock, powerplant, movie theater, chapel, and bowling alley, but it was shut down for good in 1996 with parts of it had been deserted since the 1970's. When Judith Riley followed in her mother's footsteps to become a nurse at Norwich in the 1970's, medical practices had changed like popular surgical procedures like lobotomies were halted and controversial treatments like electroshock therapy were administered with greater care. Judith A. Riley recalls that it was done inhumanely and thinks that people are anesthetized properly before it wasn't always true people suffered while Kent Borner heard that third-hand of people have been tortured and experimented on. No one knows all the secrets Norwich hides in the abandoned rooms filled with accidental time capsules that are still being discovered like a basement with suitcases and clothes from patients who came to the hospital many decades ago and a room from the 1970's stacked high with typewriters. Kent Borner thinks as if somebody snapped their fingers and everybody was gone. The deserted tunnels are equally eerie that once connected every section of the hospital which carried hot water pipes and much more. Steven S. Ross explains that the staff have to move patients around from building to building in the dead of winter or late at night while Judith A. Riley stated that the tunnels were not always bright and one have to make way through with caution causing patients to weren't happy. The administration building, constructed in 1904, was abandoned in 1996 and the dust blown in from the outside mixes with peeled plastic from water soaked walls. Kent Borner stated that the decay is not a straight line but a linear and exponential progress. He recalls that he was on the site six months ago were it was deplorable and falling apart and when he visit a few weeks ago, he couldn't believe the difference. Judith A. Riley stated that the state closed the door and took off because the hospital shows disrespect and thinks the reason being the years the people were there. The exploration were concluded that the place were people like Judith Riley hoped they could help others to find their way back to the modern civilization society, after people, Norwich is under the care of nature and may never be discharged.

50 Years After People

The marine German Shepherds are no longer a memory. Although their training helped them to survive while other pets die, they could not breed among themselves due to a reason, the marines spayed their female dogs to prevent fraternization in the ranks. Although some shepherds mated with feral dogs, after a handful of generations, the distinctive German Shepherd breed has disappeared.

100 Years After People

Towers that still stand tall like London's Gherkin are being stripped away. Gordon Masterton stated that individual glazing panels will begin to fall out of the external skin as the effects of wind, sun, and rain have an aggravating effect on the condition of the materials.

Moisture slowly rusts the thin steel file cabinets and spreads mold on the forgotten files within. In place of file cabinets, some used home safes of tempered steel to protect valuables from not just water, but also fire. Paper burns at 451 degrees Fahrenheit, but many home fires can burn 3 or 4 times that hot. Safes keep the interiors at 350 degrees for a while but the precious papers that man thought to be protected from the flames, even the strongest home safes are no match for the fires that burn unchecked for days on end. It takes 2 hours for the heat to begin penetrating the weakened steel and the papers start to be incinerate within.

150 Years After People

Time has run out prematurely for the 10,000 Year Clock. The episode questions how it could happen before answering that the real 10,000 Year Clock was never completed. Laura Welcher stated there is just one prototype of the 10,000 Year Clock. The 9 foot tall prototype was put on display at the Science Museum in London as the year 1999 changed to 2000. However, humans had to wind the prototype every few months and it stopped dead in the first year after people. After 150 years, it lies in pieces as the stone structure of the Science Museum has collapsed. If the real 10,000 Year Clock had been completed before mankind vanished, it would have installed in an unique home at a hollowed out limestone mountain in Nevada that has a height of 10,000 feet and miles from civilization where the sun reset the clock by shining through a 4 square window made of sapphire. The purpose of the clock was not to tell people time, but to think about humanity's future, a future that never happened in life after people.

Not far from London's Science Museum, the joints of the Gherkin, exposed to corrosive moisture, fails where it have the most weight to bear, its own floors. Gordon Masterton stated that one floor could pancake onto another below eventually. Remarkably, the diamond shaped supports maintain the building's skeleton and while the Gherkin is weakened, it still standing unlike most other skyscrapers.

300 Years After People

Rising sea levels have thrust Maryland's tidal base relentlessly inland to the crypt of John Paul Jones at Naval Academy Chapel in Annapolis. The waters have let one of the world's greatest sailors to received a burial at sea.

In London, the loss of most of the windows and floors has reduced the weight load of the Gherkin on it's steel frame making its partial collapse to prevent complete destruction. But 300 years of English weather has seeped into cracks in the structure seal. Gordon Masterton stated it will be attacked by corrosion, the structural elements will be progressively weakened until a gust of wind in a very extreme storm would deliver the final blow. A brace of the Gherkin buckles, triggering chain reactions of failure and fracture in the trusses until the entire 30,000 ton framework fully yields to the force of gravity and falls into the skyline of London financial district.

Where steel has failed, bronze survives. The Iwo Jima marines at the Marine Corps War Memorial in Washington D.C. still strain to raise a flag that has ben gone for centuries. Although swamp weeds cluster the memorial, one of war's most dramatic monuments endures.

500 Years After People

Man tried to preserve his civilization in libraries where the memory of the past was available to all, but libraries are always vulnerable. During the War of 1812, the original Library of Congress was burned by the British and some 3,000 books on law, economics, and history were lost. After 5 centuries, the dome of the Thomas Jefferson Building, completed in 1897 and rising 160 feet on over the swampland, is putting too much strain on the supporting walls. Tanya Komas stated that because of the way that all domes are constructed, there's a weak point at the base of the dome where it want to expand, push down, and expand out. The pressure becomes too great for the dome and concrete can no longer resist the reticule of gravity and the entire dome falls in a shattering surrender.

2,000 Years After People

Copies of the Rosetta Disk preserving 1,500 human languages and dialects still exist. Each disk was made of nickel, a metal that forms much of the core of the Earth. While nickel resists corrosion, the text of the disk are still vulnerable to the corruption of time. Laura Welcher stated that it accumulate a kind of microscopic goo overtime and whatever ambient in the air that lands on the disc making it fairly quick that the material could build up. After 2 millennium, a great deal of material has built up around one of the Rosetta Disks, the Smithsonian Institution itself, and the roof caves in, possibly crushing the Rosetta Disk in the process.

May 28th, 8113

It is the time for the Crypt of Civilization to be opened, but it's long been buried by the collapse of the building around it which lies beneath a blanket of grass and trees of the once Oglethorpe University. Outside the crypt, mold and plants pushed in through broken windows and pressure from above have cracked the crypt walls, allowing water and dank air to seized the opportunity and invade. The metal items began to corrode and rust, the beer went flat long ago then turned and soured, and moisture seeped into the plaster skin of the mannequins, oxidizing and cracking the idealized images of a lost humanity.

50,000 Years After People

As planned 500 centuries earlier, the KEO Satellite orbit decays. On its way down, it's hit by micrometeorites and tiny fragments from ancient satellites but the KEO is prepared for it. Travis Taylor stated that the basic idea of the design to have a concentric sphere of different materials like titanium, aluminum, and some Kevlar like multiple thermos bottles within itself and the payload is inside. The KEO, laded with messages from the 21st century, re-enters the atmosphere intact with sunlight gleaming off its wings. Travis Taylor stated that the KEO's satellite wings would be shiny and the hopes that anybody left on the planet will look up and see the shiny lens, coming by, and hopefully watching where it's going land, but if nobody see it, it will not be a very useful alert system. The Earth is 2/3 water, and its probably where the KEO end its mission in the place where life began. Passing near the unknown islands, it is sealed for eternity in the blue crypt of the sea and the 50,000 year old messages wait for the future forever.

Travis Taylor then questions that why people would take stuff today, put in a box, and have people dig it up in the future and try to figure out what it is before answering himself that he thinks that it's sort of people to connect to humanity's future forever and really want to feel like one were important as part of humanity.

Epilogue

Every crypt of civilization assumes that someone will be there on the other side of the valley of time. While some vessels won't survive the journey, each message to the future is a gift of hope even in a life after people.

Transcript

Life After People Wiki has a transcript for this episode. To see it, click here.

Errors

• The glass panel fall from the Gherkin in 2005 fell over 400 feet to the ground instead of only 300 feet.
• Despite being 50,000 years after people, structures can be seen on the island when KEO arrives on Earth, possibly the production forgot to cover it up or a simple visual error.

Trivia

• The episode is named after the featured namesake Crypt of Civilization of Oglethorpe University.
• It is the first and only episode to have an exact date timeframe, being May 28th, 8113.
• It is also the first and only episode to featured a propose/visionary object, being KEO Satellite.
• It is the first episode on Season 2 where the writer is uncredited and the fourth episode overall.

Gallery

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