Holiday Hell

Holiday Hell
Episode Information
Episode	6
Season	2
No. in Series	16
Air Date	February 9, 2010
Directed by	Tim Evans
Produced by	Douglas J. Cohen (Executive Producer) Louis C. Tarantino (Executive Producer) Tim Evans Vincent Lopez
Episode Guide
Previous	Home Wrecked Home
Next	Waves of Devastation

Holiday Hell is the sixth episode of season two of Life After People: The Series. It originally aired on February 9, 2010.

Synopsis

Humanity takes a holiday and holiday destinations & treasures becomes a subject to holiday hell. Fireworks factories explode without people to see the event like 4th of July, Knott's Berry Farm's Silver Bullet Roller Coaster may fall from the sand inside, snow piles up the cruise ships at Glacier Bay, Alaska, and while some ski runs reconquered by nature, some where still maintained even if man was there. Lions spread out across America and while domestic turkeys died off before they live to see another Thanksgiving, its wild counterparts would thrive. The city of Palm Springs would see the shattering of its wind turbines, the desert consuming the city, and the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway suffers a catastrophic failure. Christmas witness a not-so-jelly scene at Aldridge's Always Christmas Store and reindeers fall prey to the predators, but the spirit of Christmas lives on as Christmas trees were destined to survive long and fruitcakes can last over 130 years and still be edible if stored correctly. The episode explores the area across the Salton Sea where agricultural runoff from local farms cause the mass death of the fish and the birds that came from hydrogen sulfide causing most of the settlement to be abandoned and decline.

Plot

Prologue

Throughout history, mankind marked the passing of time with special holidays, days of celebration, and places of escape, but after people, the party is over.

1 Day After People

It's still Christmas at Aldridge's Always Christmas Store outside of Detroit with the lights sparkle, the animated Santa's, and snowmen sing carols. Christmas spawned it's own economy in the time of humans with Americans spent $154 billion in Christmas every year and imported nearly half a billion dollars worth of Christmas ornaments alone, more than the cost to launch the space shuttle. The most iconic symbol of the season was the Christmas tree where more than 60% of families put their presents under trees made of aluminium or plastic by the 21st century and because of the chemistry of the main ingredient, plastic Christmas trees are destined for a long life after people. Todd Sutton shows a typical artificial Christmas tree and explains that it is primarily made of two materials being steel or metal and plastic and he shows the wire rods that are covered in PVC or vinyl chloride. PVC is known as vinyl, the same material that made record albums and gave automobiles the new car smell. Another artifact of Christmas is the fruitcake, a traditional holiday food that is both beloved and reviled. It was invented in the Middle Ages and popularized in Victorian England, fruitcakes were built to last and it didn't need to be refrigerated. Fruitcakes were often joked that it can last forever but there's one key ingredient that may last forever and it's not a joke at all. After a day after people, the twinkling Christmas lights dim as the power grid fails, animated figures stop moving, and the Christmas carol stop forever at Aldridge's Always Christmas Store.

2 Days After People

Another Christmas icon is in trouble, the reindeers. Although it seem like a Christmas invention, reindeers are real domesticated species that live across Earth's polar regions in places like Alaska where they bred for milk, meat, and pulling sleighs. The origin of reindeers becoming part of the Christmas story isn't entirely clear but many believe that the image of Santa's sleigh being pulled by fling reindeer evolved from pagan images of the Norse god Thor with his sky chariot being pulled by flying goats. In Alaska alone, there are over 30,000 domesticated reindeers, but without people to care for them, a threat looms nearby.

3 Days After People

Another holiday animal faces tough times, domestic turkeys, who wander hungrily in their own pens. Turkeys were an essential part of American culture in the time of humans and in fact, founding father Benjamin Franklin wanted the turkey and not the bald eagle to be the national bird. Americans farms produce over 270 million turkeys per year by the 21st century and 46 million are destined to be eaten for thanksgiving dinner. After people, the turkeys avoided the axe but humans have done something to make turkeys more appealing would seal their fate after people. Leslie Lyons stated that Tom Turkey is for the dinner table and it is not going to make it. Selected breeding has created the domestic turkey with massive breasts that meat consumers demand but threatens supply and the turkey's breasts are too big to allow it to fly and too big for males to able to mount their mates. Leslie Lyons stated that farm bred turkeys are produced by artificial insemination to be order to reproduce but it won't going to happen. The generation of Thanksgiving turkey may be the last as the domestic turkeys died off in the future.

1 Week After People

Steel rollercoasters that once echoed with screams are silent. Theme parks were one of the world's favorite holiday destinations with rollercoasters first appeared in America in the 1880's and for nearly a century all coasters were wooden. Although the first steel coaster was built in 1959, it wasn't until the 1970's that a breakthrough in engineering resulted in the birth of the extreme coaster where looping inverted Zero G creates scream and one of the coaster is the Silver Bullet at Knott's Berry Farm in Southern California and it relied on highly engineered steel. Alan W. Pense stated that steel go into a ride like the extreme coaster have certain characteristics with steel being 97% or 98% iron but like a good soup, it has few little things like silicon, manganese, and most important element being carbon which increase the strength of a steel and even being a small amount, it's very powerful addition. Adding as little as half a percent of carbon can make steel 2 to 3 times stronger but even the toughest steel is still facing rust. Mark Schuller stated that if there's a scratch on the ride, they'll go ahead, sand it up, protect it, and recoat it. After people and without maintenance, a tiny scratch lets rust begin on the exposed steel.

Not far away from Orange County, a bizarre holiday oasis flourishes in the barren desert. Golf course fairways glisten, water fountains continue to spray, and power still flows in Palm Springs, California, the getaway of the stars. William T. Vollmann stated that it seems to him that a place really doesn't belong in the area, they drive around in Palm Springs and see lawns, flowers, fountains, and ponds, and he seems that it is a bad place to build a civilization. Despite being placed in a barren desert, Palm Springs was crowded with more golf courses per square mile than any other place in America but after people, the golf course sprinklers keep the fairways lush and inviting no one.

Another human artifact towering over the desert floor is the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway. It was a tourist attraction that stretched a mile across 5 steel towers from the desert floor to a mountain peak 8,500 feet above sea level in the time of humans. After people, the car sits empty 200 feet in the air and swings in a breeze overlooking the vacant resort city of Palm Springs.

Traffic lights still blink and air conditioners still hum in Palm Springs because much of the power is still on thanks to the city's reliance on a massive forest of wind turbines with 4,000 of it still spinning outside the resort city. As long as the wind pushes the blade, electricity keeps pumping out and while the windmills appears very simple, it looks can be deceiving. Travis Taylor stated that wind turbine is a fairly complicated beast because of wind speed measuring sensors and wind direction measuring sensors which actually control the pitches of the blade to produce the right amount of power at all time. However, high tech demands high maintenance. Travis Taylor stated it have lubricants, hydraulic fluids like in the car where one have to change the oil every so often or the motor's going to seize up and the same thing happens to it if one don't replenish the oil, lubricants, and hydraulic fluids where it going to quit working. A week after people, the blades of the wind turbines at the wind farm still spin which generate thousands of kilowatts every hour, day, and time the wind blows but over the horizon, the winds are beginning to howl

1 Month After People

In rural Pennsylvania, inside a series of steel sheds and concrete bunkers are thousands of pounds of explosive power of fireworks sit idle in a fireworks factory. Over 200 million pounds of fireworks were set off annually in the time of humans being twice the explosive power of the nuclear bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. After people, the fireworks await a celebration that never come and the episode question that are fireworks are in any danger of going off before answering that it happened before at a fireworks factory in Denmark in 2004. The disaster kills one person, injuring 17, damaging over 200 houses, and the final explosion resembled a nuclear mushroom cloud. In the United States, regulations require smaller buildings with each containing smaller amounts of explosives to prevent a massive explosion like the one happened in Denmark. After a month without people, the fireworks and gunpowder lie dormant behind the blast walls and inside the bunkers and there'll be no fireworks to be displayed.

In Alaska, the domesticated reindeers are struggling to survive without humans and are about to come in contact with their larger wild cousins, the caribou. Reindeer and caribou are actually the same species but with one key difference, reindeers are domesticated while caribou run wild with 900,000 caribou range in massive migratory herds across Alaska. Carol Borton stated that the caribou can migrate up to 3,000 miles in a year and explains that the caribou are lean, mean, and running machines while reindeers are couch potatoes. She continues that the caribou are built for running because of the long legs and slender bodies while the reindeer have very short legs and very heavy bodies. Although the reindeers aren't built to travel long distances, it can't help heeding the call of the wild even in the time of humans when domesticated reindeer often disappeared from the Alaskan ranchland which join the caribou herds as they swept across the countryside. Carol Borton stated that when the reindeers come out onto the rangeland, both animals being migratory, very closely related, and intermingle, and when the caribou goes on through the migration, the reindeers have a tendency to travel along the caribou. Without humans to tend the reindeers, it join the caribou herds and face the challenge of 3,000 mile migration.

Further south of Alaska in Glacier Bay, luxury cruise ships rock silently in the harbour. Hundreds of the ships sailed the inside passage from Vancouver to Seward in the time of humans which takes half a million visitors annually on a scenic holiday. Without maintenance, even the small pocket cruise ships face the creeping effects of Alaska's weather. Peter Knego thinks that during the summer season when most cruise ships are operating, the cold weather isn't too much of a hazard, but in the winter when it's very cold and rain freezes on deck during the winter season can be hazardous. As the snow piles up on the deck. sunshine and daytime warming creates at thick sheet of ice which covers everything from the portholes to the rigging. While it's eerily beautiful, the snow and ice build-up creates a weight that a cruise ship is not designed for. Peter Knego stated that a ship rarely sits completely even in the water because there's one side or other where it's leaning a slight bit and in the lower recesses where water and snow going to build up and gradually, it'll make the ship tilt over. For a cruise ship, the voyage is over at Glacier Bay.

6 Weeks After People

At San Diego Wild Animal Park, the lions are hungry. A lion can go 2 weeks without eating but it's been over a month since their last feeding. The lions are ravenous and are willing to test the electrifying fence that surrounds their enclosure but to their surprise, they don't get a shock because the power grid failed weeks ago. After people, the biggest obstacle is the moat and it's over 18 feet wide, but lions have been known to leap more than 30 feet and with a simple leap, the lions are free from the San Diego Wild Animal Park. Trevor Valle stated that the first thing lions would go is for food whether it's in the zebra enclosure right next door or somewhere throughout the park, lions would be timid at first because they're used to a very small area. Soon, lions will expand their range in search of food and the urban jungle has a new king.

6 Months After People

Some ski runs around the world are beginning to look the way it did before man claimed them as winter playground but strangely, while some ski runs have already seen pine sapling sprout, others remain mysteriously free of growth as if still being groomed by human hands.

1 Year After People

The wind turbine farms still tower over the desert outside Palm Springs, California, but the steel towers face a worse enemy than rust, the wind itself. Butch Mederos stated that the wind turbines are designed for a specific range of wind velocities and if one exceed that velocity, it'll essentially going to fly apart. Its the reason why windmills were designed with automatic braking systems in order to shut it down during extremely high winds. The episode questions if the systems fail before answering to itself that it happened in Denmark in 2008, when a wind turbine spin fast in extremely high winds and torn to pieces. After a year without maintenance, acres of power producing wind turbines are vulnerable to the same fate. Butch Mederos stated that the first time 100 mile an hour wind comes through the area, the rotor's would spin faster that it should which creates vibration and the turbines start to come apart while Travis Taylor stated that the wind turbines would fly off and when it hit the ground, one would see dust flying, parts flying everywhere, and going to have all sorts of mayhem.

20 Years After People

Act 1

With the windmill farms destroyed, power went out long ago in Palm Springs. The once bustling resort town is eerily silent, the once lush golf courses have turned into acres of sand traps, vermin checking in high end hotels, and luxury swimming pools are turned into empty cesspools. It is the fate of the vacation destination of Palm Springs and the episode knows what Palm Springs would look like 20 years after people because there's a place just like it being only 60 miles away where it's already happened, at Salton Sea.

Salton Sea

Visiting Salton Sea, where the place that Palm Springs might look like 20 years after people. William T. Vollmann, Todd Sutton, and Michael Cohen explains the event and explores the abandoned settlements of the Salton Sea. Salton Sea is the largest lake in California where it is conceived as a resort paradise for boaters, water skiers, and vacationers and was once called the next Palm Springs. Instead, it became an empty wasteland of foul smells, abandoned homes, and acres of dead fish. William T. Vollmann stated that the Salton Sea is one of the most beautiful places from a distance and once of the most foul and feculent places when one get close up with dead fish, odor of ammonia, and one think is really hideous. During the 1960's and 70's, it was the heyday of Salton Sea where vacation homes popped up like cactus blossoms, crowds thronged the beaches, swimming, boating, & water skiing during the day and sipping martinis at the yacht club at night. Only the pigeons remain at the yacht club, the vacation homes lie open to the elements, and RV campgrounds look more like burial grounds. Todd Sutton stated that the hookups throughout the campground are like tombstones to the dead campground. The episode questions what cause the Salton Sea to turn into an apocalyptic wasteland before answering to itself that it began in the 1970's when masses of fish suddenly dying and floating to the surface by the thousands with the cause was agricultural runoff from the local farms. Michael Cohen stated that because of the fertilizers, it cause tremendous growth of algae and when it dies, it falls to the bottom and creates a layer in the bottom of the sea where there's no oxygen and when the bacteria eat all the dead organic matter, it creates hydrogen sulfide. Hydrogen sulfide is a gas that is toxic as cyanide which cause extreme damage to the central nervous system and eventually destroying the ability to breath. It was so deadly that it was used as poison gas during World War I and it still deadly in the modern day. Michael Cohen stated at times it can kill millions of fish and a few years ago, it kill seven million fish.

As the fish kills continue, the birds that ate the fish got sick and died while residents claimed they could smell and taste the gas in the air. Eventually, people stopped coming to the Salton Sea. The population was around 15,000 at it's height with thousands more arriving on weekends. After its abandon, vacation homes are empty, resort developments stopped in mid construction, and RVs, boats, and yacht clubs all left behind. In the modern times, only a few hundred people remain in each of the tiny shoreside communities surrounded by the ruins of vacation homes where thousands once lived and played. Decades after being abandoned, the effects of water, sun, and salt are clear. Todd Sutton shows an old trailer thinking it's an Airstream trailer and it's been exposed to the environment for 40-50 years at least. He continues that after people were gone, the doors starts flopping in the wind or one of the windows breaks and the environment enters the trailer where it becomes food for the environment with all the materials that are composite or manmade falling apart and the Masonite or particle board decays much more rapidly than the solid timber. Like people ripping away and dribbling away from the Salton Sea, the structural elements slowly disappear from homes. Todd Sutton shows a 40 to 50 year old building and explains that although there are some structural frame in place, there's not much left because the roof went away, the windows and doors are gone, and its several feet down underneath the salt and sand. The exploration conclude with William T. Vollmann stating that it will go back to being a desert with lots of garbage on it.

Act 2

Vines and trees have covered up or broken through the concrete and steel bunkers of a rusted fireworks factory in rural Pennsylvania. Fireworks were a dangerous way to celebrate and on average, fireworks injured nearly 10,000 people a year in the time of humans. After 20 years, it is late summer where dry heat starts a wildfire, begins to burn out of control through the woods and the fire reaches the edges of the fireworks factory. Water has dripped or flooded into the steadily deteriorating bunkers for a decade and gunpowder easily absorbs water but it can take on a strange ability, when it dries out, it becomes more volatile and unstable. The powder clumps together, burning less evenly, and sometimes exploding more powerful. After 20 years, flames lick through cracks in the walls and the powder ignites as fires spread from bunker to bunker where thousands of prepared fireworks lie dormant. The explosives that were destined for 100 different fireworks displays all go off at once and explode inside.

Across the country, real snow mixes with artificial flocking at Aldridge's Always Christmas Store outside of Detroit. Soil has built up on the floor of the showroom, grass grows in the aisles of decorations, vines climb up plastic Santas and toy soldiers, and in a nearby aisle, fruitcake still rests. It owe their longevity to one key ingredient being alcohol, one of mankind's oldest disinfectants. With the combination of rum or brandy with dense flour, it creates an anaerobic environment where an oxygen free interior inhibits microbe growth. After 20 years, fruitcake shows no sign of decay and maybe will last forever.

In Alaska, the classic Christmas reindeers long ago swept up in caribou migrations have disappeared. While some have interbred with wild caribou cousins, most died out quickly after people and despite reindeer and caribou are the same species, there's a fundamental difference that caused many of the females to drop out of the herd within the first year, the reindeers have their calves one month before the caribou. Carol Borton stated that reindeers would start balling behind during the calving seasons and would fall prey to the bear and wolves. After 20 years, the reindeers' games are over as they fell prey to the predators.

50 Years After People

A mystery still remains on the ski slopes. While some ski runs have completely reverted to nature, others are strangely clear as if groomed just yesterday but there's a reason, the slopes originally cleared without heavy machinery recover quickly while those that were intensively engineered or graded defied the return of nature. Jennifer Burt stated that graded ski runs that are machined graded with heavy equipment like bulldozers and scrapers have scraped away the topsoil or buried beneath the subsoil and the soils are compacted by the machinery meaning there's reduced soil depth for plant rooting as well as the soils being compacted making it harder for plant roots to grow. After 50 years, the ski runs will remain just as humans left it for a very long time.

In Southern California, the lions are enjoying the spot in the sun. After escaping from the San Diego Wild Animal Park long ago, the African lions have spread out and adapted to the new environment. Trevor Valle stated that the lions from San Diego to Santa Barbara will have real easy to have the freeways to get to places, get off the freeways into open savannas making it a perfect environment. He mentions there's a lot of ranches in the area and they would able to take down cows and horses. Lions can eat up to 75 pounds at one sitting and that's an entire baby calf from hooves to head at a single meal. Trevor Valle stated that the lions would be an apex predator of Southern California and in enough time, evolve into a new American lion.

80 Years After People

Outside of Detroit, Michigan, at the Aldridge's Always Christmas Store, it's beginning to look a lot less like Christmas as the structure begins to crumble.

100 Years After People

The 150 foot tall curves of Knott's Berry Farm Silver Bullet are reaching to the breaking point. The coaster doom incredibly comes from the inside due to a feature hidden in it's bones. In order to keep the noisy ride from disturbing the theme park's neighbors, engineers filled each of the rails of the 1,300 foot long coaster with sand, which cuts down the ride's decibel level by at least half. Mark Schuller stated that if you heard it run, it's an extremely quite ride. However, hairline cracks in the coaster's steel and after a 100 years of neglect, it turned the sand into a coaster killer. Alan W. Pense stated that if one have sand in the track and get moisture and water in there and trap it, it will accelerate corrosion on the inside. Water trapped by the sand speeds up internal corrosion in the rails which weaken the steel including the bolts. Alan W. Pense stated that the connections will start to fail first and it's almost true in any structure. The bolts of the Silver Bullet snap, the steel bends, and the entire track begins to wave crazily as the extreme coaster makes it's final plunge and collapse.

120 Years After People

The winter resort destination of Palm Springs has reverted completely to desert where snowbirds and retirees once lounged by the pools, the sand yucca, and mesquite cover almost all remnants of the once resort civilization.

However, the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway still stands and five giant steel towers once supported the cars that ferried vacationers up to 8,500 feet. The steel has held up for over a century but one thing set up a catastrophic chain reaction, a constant steady corrosion at the base of each tower and the problem begins with the cable itself. Travis Taylor stated that the track cables are almost 3 inches in diameter and it is huge and not just one piece of wire but many pieces of wire wrapped around each other in a rope fashion. However, the constant steady pressure of a hanging cable car and over a century of erosion on the tightly wound wires finally causes the cable to snap. It's the first of a cascade of catastrophe as the crashing gondola swings down into tower no. 1 and the rusk weakened tower cannot withstand the impact which begins to collapse. Travis Taylor stated that if the power fail, it will put too much torque on the next tower which would then pull it over which then cause a domino effect to the other towers as one tower fail, it would daisy chain up. The 5 towers, connected by 2 miles of cable, pull each other down the bedrock of the mountain and falls in an avalanche of rubble, dust, and twisted metal into the desert below.

130 Years After People

Nearly all signs of human holidays have been wiped off the face of the Earth, but like the ghost of Christmas past, the fruitcake lives on. It was protected by it's anaerobic mix of sugar, flour, and alcohol and in fact, the oldest recorded fruitcake in the time of humans was more than 130 years old. The 140 year old fruitcake was baked in 1878 by an elderly grandmother who died shortly after it came out of the oven and the family couldn't part with it. The baker's great grandson presided over the tasting of the cake in 2003 where it was deemed still edible.

As fruitcakes continue to defy decay, wild turkeys continue to roam throughout America. The turkeys are the descendants of mankind's Thanksgiving turkeys but not the ones eaten by modern Americans and were lean and fast native breed that was eaten by the pilgrims at the first thanksgiving.

Epilogue

Wild turkeys, the creature that Benjamin Franklin thought it should be the national bird lives on as a feathery reminder of holiday's past in a life after people.

Transcript

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

Errors

• The fact of Benjamin Franklin thought that turkey should be a national bird is not fact and was actually a myth.
• The tracks of the Silver Bullet is actually 3,125 foot long instead of only 1300 foot length.

Trivia

• The episode ended in the shortest timeline in the series, being 130 years after people.
• The episode also had the shortest segment, being 80 years after people at 27 seconds.
• The title of the episode might be a reference to Holiday Hell, a supercard produced by the Eastern Championship Wrestling/Extreme Championship Wrestling themed around the Christmas and holiday season which was staged in December from 1993 to 1996, and again in 2000.
• It is the 5th episode overall where the writer is uncredited and the 2nd episode in Season 2.

Gallery

The thumbnail from History's Official YouTube Channel/"Christmas gone horribly wrong" (S2, E6)

One of the cruise ships, as used on History.com.

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One of the reindeers, as used on the History Vault website.