Home Wrecked Home

Home Wrecked Home
Episode Information
Episode	5
Season	2
No. in Series	15
Air Date	February 2, 2010
Directed by	Douglas J. Cohen
Produced by	Douglas J. Cohen (Executive Producer) Louis C. Tarantino (Executive Producer) Gabriel Rotello
Wrtten by	Gabriel Rotello
Episode Guide
Previous	The Last Supper
Next	Holiday Hell

Home Wrecked Home is the fifth episode of season two of Life After People: The Series. It originally aired on February 2, 2010.

Synopsis

1.5 billion homes, once housed mankind, are all in a race to survival and each faces a different enemy as life after people hits home no matter where one live or what keep inside. Gas leaks explode suburban homes like Levittown and eventually the tanks that housed natural gas. Fires spread from the Stahl House in Los Angeles to The San Remo in New York City. The flood struck Co-Op City with the tides, a hidden flaw that topples Hearst Castle by courtesy of its materials, and the desert reclaim Dubai where the Burj Khalifa corrodes and falls by the desert storm. Animals move in and out of home such as bobcats moves in while housecats moves out, zebras escape from the private zoo of Hearst Castle, and tiny bugs like house dust mites and bed bugs change habits. And while the contents of the house decays, the photographs of the Corbis Archive may meet the same tragic fate. The episode visits the Italian town of Balestrino, which was abandoned during the 1950s due to geologic instability, forcing the residents to build new homes nearby at the foot of the hill.

Plot

1 Day After People

Suburban homes are the places that man called home where families were raised, meals were shared, and people grew old. In America's vast suburbs alone, 23 million homes stand empty including the town that invented American suburbia, Levittown in the state of New York. It was built during the post-World War II baby boom and was fueled by America's love affair with the car, it pioneered a new type of suburban living that took America by storm. The mass produced and prefabricated houses quickly multiplied into vast subdivisions and by the 2000, half of all Americans lived in the suburbs for the first time in history. Steven S. Ross stated that Levittown fed the imagination of Americans for clean air and places where one can raise the kids safely.

After people, the classic prototype of suburbia is devoid of people but not of explosive danger because in kitchens and hot water heaters everywhere, the gas is still on. Most American homes were heated by natural gas in the time of humans, and the highly flammable methane was pumped from naturally pressurized wells through 2.2 million miles of underground pipelines and compressors but disaster sometimes erupted from the massive subterranean network. Travis Taylor stated that natural gas lines ruptured because mankind intervenes by dig up a pipe and rupture the pipe which cause a failure in the structural integrity and the fires to be catastrophic because of blowing methane gas into the air and mixing it would get a very large blowtorch. Natural pressure from the wells is enough to keep gas flowing into kitchens that will never see another meal. Travis Taylor stated that the gas isn't going to stop flowing because it's still under pressure, flowing through the lines, and come to the houses causing the pilot lights to continue to burn. Natural gas has no smell but substance called mercaptan was added to give a distinctive odor that could alert people to leaks but still gas leaks cause 2,500 home fires and explosion each year, killing dozens and injured hundreds. After people, leaks still occur. Travis Taylor stated that the best detector for gas leak is the nose but after people there'd be nobody to smell it and it all need is a spark. The stoves pilot light provides the spark and the entire kitchen of a home in Levittown to explode and the house burns in the aftermath.

1 Week After People

Stately homes face an entirely different enemy like The San Remo apartments on Central Park in New York City where it look down on Manhattan devoid of man. The apartments of The San Remo sold for up to $20 million in the time of humans. Steven S, Ross stated that the building is prestige and the apartments are huge. With the elite moved out, a catastrophe moves in, that stems from a material that epitomized luxury. The danger emanates from a high-end paint with an unusual ingredient. Steven S. Ross explains that many owners in The San Remo chose to use paints made with linseed oil rather than with a solvent that evaporates because it provides a beautiful glossy sheen takes color very well but if one is a painter, one will leave the rags on the can of linseed oil paint and if it's just overnight, it won't matter but after people, the rags became time bombs. As linseed oil interacts with oxygen in the air, the chemical reaction produces heat and without adequate ventilation, spontaneous combustions will occur. It was a common cause of household fires in the time of humans and in 1991, cotton rags soaked with linseed oil triggered a massive blaze in a Philadelphia high rise. Now, the paint soaked rags smolder at The San Remo, causing the apartments to burn and turn the New York icon into a different kind of hot property.

Over in the Bronx stands the mirror opposite of The San Remo, the Co-Op City, one of the nation's largest apartments complexes, cram the 55 thousand residents that epitomized the cheaply constructed high rises of the 1960's. Steven S. Ross stated that it was badly constructed in the first place and given the history of the structures, it will take 10 to 15 years for major parts of the structure to begin failing. The 50 thousand pilings of Co-Op City face a daunting enemy, the reclaimed tidal marshland where they sunk which sinks a fraction of an inch each year. Steven S. Ross stated that ground around the columns is slowly sinking and with the pavement area that has curbstone that isn't tied to the rest of the building at all and already significantly below what the original building line was. The San Remo and Co-Op City represent polar opposites in apartment engineering. One marred by fire and the other may face death by water.

1 Month After People

Methane in it's gassiest state is not the only threat to the former homes of man but in another form of fuel and one of mankind's coldest substances is ominously warming up. Travis Taylor stated that liquefied natural gas is the liquid version of methane and if one take methane gas and cool it down to -260 Fahrenheit, it will become liquid. He continues that the reason using liquified natural gas is for ease of transportation being the volume is 600 times less then fill a truck or a ship with liquid natural gas and carry much more of it on a smaller vessel. If the liquid heats up, it becomes gas again and once concentration reaches 5%, it become one of the most explosive substances on Earth. Travis Taylor stated that liquefied natural gas stored in tank could be very explosive much more than other forms of fossil fuels and when it mixes with air, it will have a very volatile explosive ability and can destroy many city blocks with one explosion. Without humans to continuously open and close valves to maintain proper pressure, the tanks become ticking time bombs. Travis Taylor stated that the gas starts to expand and once it reach a pressure that the tanks weren't designed for, it will be devastating. One by one, the tanks rupture in a catastrophic chain reaction as they explode in pieces.

1 Year After People

Suburban homes once beloved by man face a new set of enemies. Pipes in each house freeze and burst over the winter with the spring thaw the ice and fountains of liquid destruction gush from thousand of pipes. Steven S. Ross stated that it will be a rough day on the structures of Levittown itself. After the flooding comes the mold and dry rot and the dampness also attracts the twin scourges of wooden homes, carpenter ants and termites. The presence of both sets the scene for a primordial battle within the rotting walls. Lynn Kimsey stated that the carpenter ants will take termites and prey on them while the termites protect themselves both from water loss and predators by walling off their galleries and feeding tubes with mud and if it was breach, the ants would go and prey on them because the termite have no way of defending.

2 Years After People

One type of home has already vanished from Earth, igloos. Igloos were built in the Arctic for centuries being made of blacks of compressed snow, but the structures are hardly frozen in time. Steven S. Ross stated that in cold Arctic climates, the snow doesn't melt instead it evaporates and the ice in the snow goes directly from being solid to being gas. After 2 years, the very last igloo has wafted into the frigid Arctic sky and disappears.

10 Years After People

Around the world, the places were mankind once lived are struggling against the returning wrath of nature but the tallest home on Earth is no exception in the desert kingdom of Dubai is the Burj Khalifa. When completed in 2010, it became the world's tallest skyscraper and home to over 1,000 private apartments with some as high as the 108th floor. Travis Taylor stated that the Burj Khalifa is over 2,700 feet tall being twice the height of the Empire State Building and one could see the building over 95 kilometers away. Starring blankly over a humid salt drenched wasteland, the building is in desperate need of a bath. Huge bucket machines, weighing 13 tons, were used to wash the exterior in the time of humans in a desperate race to prevent corrosion from Dubai's dense, salty humidity. Steven S. Ross stated that they are suspended by cables and are a potential point o failure especially if already filled with fluid. Dangling hundreds of feet in the air, the bucket machines haven't scrubbed the building in a decade and it shows. Steven S. Ross stated that the window washing machines are very heavy and the cables would likely fail over 5 to 10 years. The cables break causing one of the massive buckets to break loose and swan dives 2,000 feet to the desert below.

15 Years After People

High in the Hollywood hills is an iconic house who's revolutionary engineering came to symbolize the California lifestyle of the 1960's is still intact. The Stahl House, built entirely of glass and steel, is on a lot that is so steep that many considered it unbuildable but owner Buck Stahl disagreed and spent 2 years personally constructing the concrete terraces that continued to anchor the house on it's dramatic cliff. The region is vulnerable to catastrophic mudslides and after 15 years, untamed wildfires ravage Los Angeles but the house refuses to burn down. Steven S. Ross stated that the plate glass would crack in fire but the steel framework remains in pretty good shape. However, as the fires burned the vegetation that binds the soil, it have cleared a new avenue of destruction.

200 miles north, One of America's most lavish homes has an engineering secret that may keep it standing tall after people. Hearst Castle was built for publishing tycoon William Randolph Hearst in San Simeon, California. Hoyt Fields stated that Hearst Castle is one of six homes that Mr. Hearst had and it is his most beloved. Begun in 1919, Hearst's show place was considered a masterpiece of earthquake resistant design thanks to the technique by architect Julia Morgan who thinks by building ceilings that hang from hidden anchors and boxes, separated from the rooms it cover so it float during an earthquake. Hoyt Fields shows the outdoor pools at Hearst Castle which is referred as Neptune Pool and shows a concrete box surrounding it and the suspension of the pool is like suspension of the ceilings in all the rooms. He continues that it bear no weight and during an earthquake, the ceilings will actually float and will be same as the pool with the structure around it takes the blunt of whatever comes along. A 6.5 earthquake struck the castle in 2003 which puts Morgan's construction methods to the test. Hoyt Fields stated that they had 400 visitors in the main house Casagrande and not one bit of structural damage occur. However, there is another secret about Hearst Castle, Julia Morgan produced the castle cement right on the site. Hoyt Fields stated that Hearst Castle was built of reinforced concrete, they had their own plant on the hilltop, and imported sand but also used beach sand.

In suburban homes across America, a new breed of cat is moving in, bobcats looking for places to make their dens. Leslie Lyons stated that they'll move into the abandoned houses and the closets of the abandoned homes to set up a den and one might find a cat making a den in ones underwear. It happened before in 2008 after a wave of home foreclosures hit America where bobcats wasted no time moving in to vacated houses.

As bobcats and other home invaders move into the former homes of man, an invisible monster begins to feed from it, a tiny pest once fed by people and constant supply of human skin, the house dust mites. Lymm Kimsey explains that house dust mites are very tiny mites that feed on skin flakes and one would replace the outer surface of the skin every couple of days with little flakes constantly falling off making it to what it feed on. After people, the house dust mites feed on the dander of the bobcat and it's legion of new roommates.

Another human scourge, the bed bugs, won't lose any sleep over humanity's disappearance. Lynn Kimsey stated that bed bugs is a small bug and doesn't feed on anything except blood and after people, bed bugs will go back to being parasites of birds and bats.

Across the deserted planet, all houses are decaying but it was not the structures themselves, instead it was the treasures inside that made the buildings into homes. As human possessions begin to race to survival, the first to go is anything made of paper. Todd Suttons stated that paper is made of cellulose or cellulose fiber and its absorbent that when it absorbs moisture, it will have perfect conditions for decay or decomposition.

Natural fabrics also begin their inevitable unraveling like wool, which doesn't retain moisture and assume safe from rot but it's hardly off the hook. Todd Sutton stated that wool has enemies like larva called the case-making moth which larva love wool and it will decay 30 to 40 years.

Leather may seem more durable because in the time of humans, archeologists sometimes unearth leather shoes up to 2,000 years old preserved in deprived environments like peat and mud. However, for most shoes, it's an inevitable march to oblivion. Todd Sutton stated that the only thing left for shoes are the steel grommets that ran the shoelaces through, the plastic tip off the cotton laces, and the hard rubber soles which be around for 50/60-100 years but the leather will be long gone.

In living rooms and dens, household furniture is hardly sitting pretty. Todd Sutton stated that the laminate on the particle board will become unglued either through moisture exchange or through exposure to the sun and the laminate will peel away and accelerate the decomposition of the particle board inside.

Durable trophies are also losing the race against time. Todd Sutton stated that trophies are primarily made of formed plastic and the thin, shiny gold or silver laminate will begin to peel or delaminate.

CDs and DVDs became useless husks. Todd Sutton stated that the polycarbonate will delaminate from the middle base, begin to crumble, and like most metals, it begin to oxidize.

But out of all the objects in a home, perhaps the most treasured were photographs. Photos printed on cheap commercial paper would already rotted rotted away largely due to the corrosive acids present in wood pulp. More expensive professional grade photos will last longer which is printed on paper treated with chemicals that neutralize the acids. While it's more resistant to rot, it will eventually succumb to water damage and mold.

However, some of history's most important photos may be saved because deep beneath western Pennsylvania is one of the world's largest photo collections remains in sharp focus. The Corbis Archive moved it's treasure trove of 11 million photos in 2001 to a refrigerated mine near Butler, Pennsylvania. Priceless images, of history are protected like the Hindenburg explosion, a playful Albert Einstein, prize winning photos of the popstars, politicians, scientists, humanitarians, wars, and disasters that defined the modern era, all stored at -4 degrees Fahrenheit. Steven S. Ross stated that all chemical activity in a photo stops in -4 degrees and the picture would fate in 30 to 70 years that become totally unreadable could last 5,000 years.

60 Years After People

Across the planet, nature's relentless home invasion confronts every former shelter and the community with catastrophic threats. It already happened in the eerie ruins of Balestrino.

Balestrino

Visiting Balestrino, 60 years after people have let it vulnerable to the nature invasion of home. Gordon Masterton and Ubaldo Pastorino tour the place and explains its downfall. The ancient Italian hill town had survived a dark and tortured past but not the shifting earth beneath its walls. Gordon Masterton stated if the stones could talk, it will tell a story of 700 years of the rise and fall of a community, a story about a town teetering on the brink of collapse over many centuries but it survive because of man using intellect and ingenuity. Beneath the once picturesque village lies an ancient legacy of brutality and oppression like in the decaying courtyard where the lards of Balestrino once executed barbaric punishments to anyone who challenged their cruel dominion. Ubaldo Pastorino stated that one of the most common penalties is to hang people with their wrists behind their backs so that the shoulders broke and the victim not able to work and die of starvation. From 1400's onward, it was ruled by feudal lords who treated the impoverished town people like slaves. Ubaldo Pastorino stated that the marquee was a tyrant who absolute own the people, the place, the ovens, water, streams around the area, and all connected with the food for the people. Balestrino's feudal history planted the seeds of its physical collapse since residents had to make due with whatever they could find because the feudal lords reserved the best building materials for themselves. Gordon Masterton shows an external skin of the wall that has fallen away, reveals the underlying construction, and he can see different types of stones incorporated into the wall like sandstone, limestone, bricks, tiles, and anything available to the builders that incorporated in and cemented it with loose laying mortar. When the area's frequent earthquakes damaged fragile homes, residents had to make due again. Gordon Masterton shows a room with a double voltage roof and in some point in history, it developed a crack right along the center and tried to repair and stabilize the crack by putting a tie from side to side and tighten it up. He then shows a door that was originally an arched opening with the arch stones but at the later date, it's been plastered over a simple rectangular framing put in but there's a crack and in time, it will get worse with the framing close to failure.

While the modern age brought freedom for Balestrino from the cruel grasp of the rulers, the iron grasp of nature continues. Gordon Masterton stated that the buildings are built on slopes and if the slopes are susceptible to landslips and movements, the buildings will be. Unstable soil and Italy's susceptibility to devastating earthquakes compounded the problems of the town's makeshift construction. An example is in 1997 when an earthquake in Assisi 200 miles away provided a start reminder of the threat lurking beneath Italy's sun-drenched landscape, including the famed basilica of Saint Francis where it provided no sanctuary. Fearful that the worse could happen on the failing hillsides of Balestrino, the town was abandoned in the 1950's by orders of the Italian government to evacuate all homes and build a newer and safer village nearby. Since its abandonment, Balestrino's slow slide to ruin bears testimony to the impermanence of the works of man. Gordon Masterton stated that armies of the past failed to conquer Balestrino and nature is wining the battle. In 60 years since people were banished from the town, every direction radiates by catastrophic failure. Gordon Masterton shows a ruined street and explains what happens is that an entire gable wall collapsed which creates rubble and even the tie bars that are common feature of the stabilization measures for the buildings aren't strong enough to prevent the whole wall from collapsing into the street. Streets that echoed with children's laughter only echo with the bleating of stray goats. Ubaldo Pastorino grew up in Balestrino and he shows his old home recalling that it was his happiest memories of his life with his father shaving on the balcony, his grandmother giving them dried figs, and he is sad because everything is in ruins. Gordon Masterton stated that there are still signs that the hillside is on the move and on the long run, the nature will win the battle and the hillside will overcome the town of Balestrino leaving little sign of what has been located there for centuries. The exploration ends that with the decline and fall of Balestrino bears mute testimony to the impermanence of every home on the planet.

75 Years After People

The Stahl House in Los Angeles, California, built entirely of glass and steel, teeters precariously on it's fire blasted and rain eroded hillside that is long ago destroyed. Tanya Komas stated that the house could potentially sit in a tilted position for some time but not for a great length of time because it will have all sorts of shifting and as things shift, the forces are changed. After 75 years, a particular heavy downpour rain washes out a final section of sediment beneath the Stahl House and one of the 20th century's most iconic homes breaks off one after another before sliding down the hill and crashing the party on the once fabled Sunset Strip below.

100 Years After People

In New York City, water has attacked Co-Op City from above and below. Steven S. Ross stated that the flat roofs drain to the inside to internal drains making water to has no place else to go but drain through the leaks and once it starts doing it, it invades the insulation underneath. Meanwhile, the sinking land has reverted to tidal mudflats and Co-Op City resembles an apocalyptic Venice. Tanya Komas stated that the area of the building in the splash zone where waves are hitting it, water level's rising and lowering with the tide would make the splash zone where it's going to fail. From the northeast, a massive winter storm blows in. Steven S. Ross stated that it's the northeastern that would really do when it get a fair amount of wave pounding against the building itself, it would begin to displace the building. The weakened splash zones buckles under the northeaster's assault and the former homes of 55,000 New Yorkers are swallowed by the shifting tides as one of the buildings collapsed and sink into the flood waters.

200 Years After People

The landscape around Hearst Castle looks surprisingly unchanged like the time of humans but strange intruders graze the hills. Hoyt Fields stated that Mr. Hearst had the largest private zoo in the world in Hearst Castle at 2,000 acres with the guests would come through a 2,000 acre called a paddock and he had every animal one could imagine. In the 21st century, zebras could still seen grazing in the pastors below the castle and some would survive after people. Leslie Lyons stated that the African plains are very similar and the zebras might live through it because there's lots of grassy areas to eat and have proper nutrition but the cat's are going right in wanting to eat the zebras.

The Hearst Castle has survived numerous earthquakes thanks to architect Julia Morgan's innovative design, but after 200 years, her decision to use beach sand in the concrete has become a dagger at the heart of Hearst Castle. Hoyt Fields stated that the salt from the sand was used to mix and make concrete and it be the major cause of its downfall because the salts are continually being pushed deeper into the foundations of the castle through moisture and as it dries and crystallizes, it will continue to grow and pushes things apart. It was barely noticeable in the time of humans but over the centuries, salt crystals slowly crack the cement, the area's relentless fog rusts the rebar, and major earthquakes periodically shake the foundations. Hoyt Fields stated it all need is once the crystals build up and got spaces and pockets, a major jolt from an earthquake would make the building to collapse. After 200 years, the former home of Hollywood's rich and famous has reached the end of the reel as a 7.2 earthquake rumbles through San Simeon causing several rusted girders to fail and the huge towers of the Hearst Castle collapse and fold into the building below.

250 Years After People

In Dubai, the Burj Khalifa, the world's tallest building with it's 1,000 empty apartments, still towers nearly half a mile above the desert floor. But the sandstorms and ocean humidity have shredded the exterior which reveals a towering skeleton quaking in the wind. Tanya Komas stated that larger wind gusts would stress the building a little bit more and cracks. One question becomes critical and the episode questions which will fail first, the columns of the building's top or bottom before Tanya Komas answers that there's a lot of stresses in the lower area that are subjected to the corrosive environment next to the saltwater and as the concrete cracks and becomes stressed, it became a potential for the collapse at the connection of the base. After 250 years, a huge sandstorm blows in from the desert and the Burj Khalifa, the tallest tower mankind ever built, keels over in the largest building collapse the planet has ever seen as it tilt from the bottom and collapse, snapping the top of the tower in the process of its fall and the spire topples.

300 Years After People

In a mine deep beneath Pennsylvania, the prized photo at the Corbis Archive has finally succumbed to humanity's fadeout and it's priceless historic photos that were meant to last thousands of years at subfreezing temperatures have warmed up long ago. Steven S. Ross stated that once the generators run out of fuel, the refrigeration stops and the pictures stored inside would begin to deteriorate and would last a few hundred years instead of lasting 5,000 years.

10,000 Years After People

Across the world, the descendants of housecats have remained small and trapped in their ecological niche by the presence of larger cats like mountain lions, but under certain conditions, evolution is taking a dramatic turn. Leslie Lyons stated if the domestic cats were isolated on an island where other cat species couldn't move in, the cats would evolve to a bobcat size according to what actual prey is there to eat and when there's a larger prey like small deer, the cats would rule. She continues that the cats are top predator in most of the ecosystems that they inhabit and there's no reason to why they would not take control once people are gone.

50 Million Years After People

The episode questions what has become of everything that made a house a home before answering to itself that is found compressed into a thin geologic strata that's buried a quarter mile deep in many places, and the strata of the geologic record is unique. Steven S. Ross stated that the strata that represents human existence would look very different because it would be enriched with materials that are refined from the Earth and concentrated by humans. Among the materials are the remnants of a common household substance called plastic. Jan A. Zalaseiwicz explains that plastic doesn't dissolve and would begin to lose hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and become more carbon-rich. He continues that it will turn from clear by yellowish first and then brownish. However no one really knows how long certain plastics can last especially buried away from oxygen, water, and ultraviolet light.

Epilogue

Future species could excavate the human layer would stumble upon a frayed toothbrush or the eerie figure of a vinyl tower with reminders of the lives once lived and the homes once cherished are buried in a narrow slice of Earth's geologic record in life after people.

Transcript

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

Errors

• Some footages shown in 1 week after people are not Co-Op City and instead it shows a different neighborhood called Stuyvesant Town-Peter Cooper Village.
• The UAE doesn't call their regions kingdom, instead they are called emirate.
• Despite still being 15 years after people, the narrator mentioned 30 years at the end of the segment.
• Despite the fire that occurred in 15 years after people, the furniture inside of the Stahl House remains intact.
• The population of Co-op City was 43,752 at the time of '10, instead of the show information of 55,000.
• A sandstorm suddenly shows up on the left side during the collapse of the Burj Khalifa on the birds eye view despite being located by the shores. Also included are the buildings, which were duplicated during the collapse on the bottom left, both additions are seen from birds eye view.

Trivia

• The title may derived from the term Homewrecker, where a person, object, or activity cause the breakup of a marriage and it is said that one have taken out of the spouses away from the marriage thus "wrecking" the martial home.
  • It may also derived from the saying Home Sweet Home, an opposite to Home Wrecked Home.

Gallery

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