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This is a transcript for episode 15 (S2, E5) of Life After People, Home Wrecked Home.

What would happen if every human being on Earth disappeared? This isn't the story of how we might vanish. It is the story of what happens to the world we leave behind. In this episode of Life After People, the 1.5 billion homes that once housed mankind are all in a race to survive. But each faces a different enemy. No matter where you live, or what you keep inside, Life After People hits home. Welcome to Earth, population zero.

One day after people. These 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 now stand empty. Including those in the town that invented American suburbia: Levittown, New York. Built during the post-WW2 baby boom, and fueled by America's love affair with the car, Levittown pioneered a new type of suburban living that took America by storm. These mass produced, prefabricated houses quickly multiplied into vast subdivisions. And by the year 2000, for the first time in history, half of all Americans lived in suburbs.

"Levittown really fed the imagination of Americans for clean air, places where you can raise your kids in safety."

- Steven S. Ross

Now, this 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. In the time of humans, most American homes were heated by natural gas. 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 this massive subterranean network.

"Natural gas lines typically are ruptured because mankind intervenes with them. They dig up a pipe, they rupture the pipe. It causes a failure in the structural integrity. The fires can be very catastrophic because you're blowing methane gas into the air and it's mixing, and you got a very large blowtorch going on there."

- Travis Taylor

Now, natural pressure from the wells is enough to keep gas flowing into kitchens that will never see another meal.

"In a life after people, the gas isn't going to stop flowing. It's still under pressure, it's flowing through the lines, and it's still gonna come to the houses. Pilot lights are gonna continue to burn."

- Travis Taylor

Natural gas has no smell, but a substance called mercaptan was added to give it a distinctive odor that could alert people to leaks. Still, gas leaks cause 2500 home fires and explosions each year, which kill dozens and injured hundreds. Now, people are gone, but leaks still occur.

"The best detector for gas leak is your nose. But in a life after people, there'd be nobody around to smell it. Then all you'd need is a spark."

- Travis Taylor

The stoves pilot light provides the spark, and this kitchen is toast.

One week after people. Stately homes face an entirely different enemy. On New York's Central Park, the luxurious San Remo apartments look down on a Manhattan devoid of man. In the time of humans, San Remo's apartments sold for up to $20 million.

"The building is a prestige building. Apartments in the San Remo are huge."

- Steven S. Ross

Now, the elite have moved out, and catastrophe is about to move in. A catastrophe that stems from a material that epitomized luxury. The danger emanates from a high-end paint with an unusual ingredient.

"Many of the owners in the San Remo have chosen to use paints that were made with linseed oil, rather than with a solvent that evaporates. It provides this beautiful glossy sheen, and it takes color very very well. What happens when you're a painter? You leave the rags on the can of linseed oil paint. If it's just overnight, doesn't matter, but after people, those rags are time bombs."

- Steven S. Ross

As linseed oil interacts with oxygen in the air, the chemical reaction produces heat. Without adequate ventilation, spontaneous combustions can occur. In the time of humans, this was a common cause of household fires. In 1991, cotton rags soaked with linseed oil triggered a massive blaze in a Philadelphia high rise. Now, at the San Remo, the paint soaked rags are smoldering. This New York icon is turning into a different kind of hot property.

Over in the Bronx, stands the mirror opposite of the swanky San Remo. Co-Op City, one of the nation's largest apartments complexes, cram with 55 thousand residents, epitomized the cheaply constructed high rises of the 1960's.

"This was badly constructed in the first place. Given the history of these structures, it really only takes 10 or 15 years after people for major parts of the structure to begin failing."

- Steven S. Ross

Co-Op City's 50 thousand pilings face a daunting enemy. They're sunk into reclaimed tidal marshland which sinks a fraction of an inch each year.

"The ground around the columns is slowly sinking. So what you have is a pavement area where the curbstone isn't tied to the rest of the building at all, and it's already significantly below what the original building line was."

- Steven S. Ross

The San Remo and Co-Op City, represent polar opposites in apartment engineering. One will be marred by fire in a life after people, will the other face death by water?

One month after people. Methane in it's gassiest state is not the only threat to the former homes of man. Another form of fuel, and one of mankind's coldest substances is ominously warming up.

"Liquefied natural gas is the liquid version of methane gas. If you take methane gas and cool it down to about -260 degrees Fahrenheit, it becomes a liquid. The reason for using liquefied natural gas is for ease of transportation, since the volume is so much less, 600 times less, say, then you can fill a truck or a ship with liquid natural gas and carry much more of it on a smaller vessel."

- Travis Taylor

If the liquid heats up, it becomes a gas again, and once the concentration reaches 5%, it can become one of the most explosive substances on Earth.

"Liquefied natural gas, once it's stored in a tank, could be very explosive, much more so than other forms of fossil fuels. And when it mixes with air, then you have a very volatile explosive ability, and you can destroy many city blocks with one explosion."

- Travis Taylor

Now, with no humans to continuously open and close valves to maintain proper pressure, these tanks have become ticking time bombs.

"Then, the gas starts to expand and you reach a pressure that the tanks weren't designed for, and it could be very devastating."

- Travis Taylor

One by one, they rupture in a catastrophic chain reaction.

One year after people. Man's once beloved suburban homes face a new set of enemies. Over the winter, pipes in each house freeze and burst. With the spring thaw, fountains of liquid destruction gush from thousand of pipes.

"That day would be a rough day on the structure of Levittown itself."

- Steven S. Ross

After the flooding, comes the mold and dry rot. The dampness also attracts the twin scourges of wooden homes: carpenter ants and termites. And the presence of both sets the scene for a primordial battle, hidden within the rotting walls.

"Carpenter ants will take termites, will prey on them. Termites protect themselves both from water loss and from predators by kind of walling off their galleries and feeding tubes with mud, and if that was breached, yes, the ants would go and prey on them. The termite would lose. They got no way of defending themselves."

- Lynn Kimsey

It's 2 years after people, and one type of home has already vanished from the Earth. Igloos were built in the Arctic for centuries, made from blocks of compressed snow. But these structures are hardly frozen in time.

"In cold Arctic climates, snow doesn't really melt. It evaporates. The ice that's in the snow goes directly from being a solid to being a gas."

- Steven S. Ross

Now, after just 2 years, the very last igloo has wafted into the frigid Arctic sky, and igloos are no more.

In the next few years after people, mankind's most prized mementos face an inevitable fadeout. And the world's tallest skyscraper gets a foreclosure notice from nature.

10 years after people. Around the world, the places were mankind once lived now struggle against the returning wrath of nature. The tallest home on Earth is no exception. This is the Burj Khalifa in the desert kingdom of Dubai. When completed in 2010, it became the world's tallest skyscraper, and it's home to over 1,000 private apartments, some as high as the 108th floor.

"The Burj Khalifa is over 2,700 feet tall. That's twice the height of the Empire State Building. You could see that building from over 95 kilometers away."

- Travis Taylor

Starring blankly over a humid, salt drenched wasteland, the building is in desperate need of a bath. In the time of humans, huge bucket machines, weighing 13 tons, were used to wash the exterior in a desperate race to prevent corrosion from Dubai's dense, salty humidity.

"These devices are suspended by cables. They are a potential point of failure, especially if they're already filled with fluid."

- Steven S. Ross

Dangling hundreds of feet in the air, they haven't scrubbed the building in a decade, and it shows.

"The window washing machines are very heavy and the cables would likely fail over 5 or 10 years."

- Steven S. Ross

One of the massive buckets breaks loose, and swan dives 2000 feet to the desert below.

15 years after people. High in the Hollywood hills, an iconic house who's revolutionary engineering came to symbolize the California lifestyle of the 1960's, is still intact. The Stahl House was built entirely of glass and steel, on a lot so steep, that many considered it unbuildable. Owner Buck Stahl disagreed, and spent 2 years personally constructing the concrete terraces that continued to anchor the house on it's dramatic cliff. It's a region vulnerable to catastrophic mudslides. Now, untamed wildfires ravage Los Angeles, but the house refuses to burn down.

"The plate glass would crack in fire, but the steel framework remains in pretty good shape."

- Steven S. Ross

But by destroying the vegetation that binds the soil, the fires have cleared a new avenue of destruction.

200 miles (321 km) north, one of America's most lavish homes has an engineering secret, that may keep it standing tall in a life after people. This is Hearst Castle, built for publishing tycoon William Randolph Hearst in San Simeon, California.

"Hearst Castle is one of six homes that Mr. Hearst had. This was his most beloved."

- Hoyt Fields

Begun in 1919, Hearst's show place was considered a masterpiece of earthquake resistant design. Architect Julia Morgan's technique was to build ceilings that hang from hidden anchors and boxes. They're separated from the rooms they cover, so they float during a quake.

"The outdoor pools at Hearst Castle, referred to as Neptune Pool, there's a concrete box surrounding it. The suspension of the pool is like the suspension of the ceilings, in all the rooms. They bear no weight, and so in an earthquake, the ceilings will actually float, and it's just the same as the pool. The structure around it is actually taking the blunt of whatever comes along."

- Hoyt Fields

In 2003, a 6.5 earthquake struck the castle, putting Morgan's construction methods to the test.

"He had 400 visitors in the main house, Casagrande, not one bit of structural damage."

- Hoyt Fields

But there is another secret about Hearst Castle. Julia Morgan produced the castle cement right on the site.

"Hearst Castle was built of reinforced concrete. They had their own plant here on the hilltop. They imported sand but they also used beach sand.

- Hoyt Fields

In the centuries after people, will the decision to use beach sand keep the castle standing? Or will it lead to the downfall of this massive 56 bedroom home?

In suburban homes across America, a new breed of cat is moving in: bobcats looking for places to make their dens.

"They certainly will move into the abandoned houses and the closets of those abandoned houses to set up a den. And so you might find a cat making a den in your underwear.

- Leslie Lyon

This has happened before. In 2008, after a wave of home foreclosures hit America, bobcats wasted no time moving in to vacated houses. As they move into the former homes of man, bobcats and other home invaders begin to feed an invisible monster. A tiny pest once fed by people and they're constant supply of human skin.

"House dust mites are very tiny little mites. They feed on skin flakes. You replace the outer surface of your skin every couple of days, so little flakes are constantly falling off. And that's what they feed on."

- Lynn Kimsey

Now, they will feed on the dander of the bobcat and it's legion of new roommates. Another human scourge, the bed bug, won't lose any sleep over humanity's disappearance.

"A bedbug is a small true bug, doesn't feed on anything else except blood. And bedbugs will go back to being parasites of birds and bats, basically."

-Lynn Kimsey

Across the deserted planet, all houses are decaying. But it was not the structures themselves, it was the treasures inside them that made these buildings into homes. Which human possessions will endure? The first to go is anything made of paper.

"Paper is made of cellulose, or cellulose fiber. And it's absorbent, and when it absorbs moisture, you have the perfect conditions for decay or decomposition."

- Todd Sutton

Natural fabrics are also beginning their inevitable unraveling. Wool doesn't retain moisture, so it's safe from rot. But it's hardly off the hook.

"It has enemies as well. It has larva: the case-making moth, larva love wool. Wool's gonna ultimately go 30 to 40 years."

- Todd Sutton

Leather may seem more durable. In the time of humans, archeologists sometimes unearth leather shoes up to 2,000 years old, preserved in oxygen deprived environments like peat and mud. But for most shoes it's an inevitable march to oblivion.

"What will be left? The steel grommets that you ran your shoelaces through, the plastic tip off the cotton laces, and maybe the hard rubber soles. They'll be around for 50-60 hundred years. But your leather's gonna be long gone."

- Todd Sutton

In living rooms and dens, household furniture is hardly sitting pretty.

"The laminate on the particle board will become unglued, either through moisture exchange or through exposure to the sun. That laminate will peel away and accelerate the decomposition of the particle board inside."

- Todd Sutton

Even durable trophies are losing the race against time.

"Trophies are primarily made of plastic, formed plastic. The thin, shiny gold or silver laminate will begin to peel or delaminate."

- Todd Sutton

CDs and DVDs are useless husks.

"The polycarbonate will delaminate from that middle base and begin to crumble. And like most metals, the metals will begin to oxidize."

- Todd Sutton

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

But some of history's most important photos may be saved. Deep beneath western Pennsylvania, one of the world's largest photo collections remains in sharp focus. In 2001, the Corbis Archive moved it's treasure trove of 11 million photos to a refrigerated mine near Butler, Pennsylvania. There, priceless images of history are protected. The Hindenburg explosion, a playful Albert Einstein, and prize winning photos of the popstars, and politicians, the scientists, and the humanitarians, the wars and disasters that defined the modern era. All were stored at -4 degrees Fahrenheit.

"In -4 degrees, pretty much all chemical activity in a picture stops, and a picture that would fade in 30 to 70 years would become totally unreadable, could last 5,000 years."

- Steven S. Ross

Whether it's a trailer park, or a luxury tower, 30 years has taken a terrible toll on the homes of man. And the worst is yet to come. How do we know this? It's a future that's already happened at one of the most mysterious spots on Earth. This Italian hill town once bore witness to a dark and sinister history. Until man disappeared.

It's 60 years into a life after people. Across the planet, nature's relentless home invasion confronts every former shelter, and community with catastrophic threats. Like those that created the eerie ruins of Balestrino. This ancient Italian hill town survived a dark and tortured past. But could not survive the shifting earth beneath it's walls.

"If the stones of Balestrino could talk, they'd tell a story of 700 years of the rise and fall of a community. The story of a town teetering on the brink of collapse over many centuries. But surviving, because man used his intellect and ingenuity to keep it surviving."

- Gordon Masterton

Beneath this once picturesque village, lies an ancient legacy of brutality and oppression. Here, in this decaying courtyard, the lords of Balestrino once executed barbaric punishments to anyone who challenged their cruel dominion.

"One of the most common penalties was just to hang people with their wrists behind their backs so that in time, the shoulders broke, the victim would not be able to work and would die of starvation."

- Ubaldo Pastorino

From the 1400's onward, the town was ruled by feudal lords who treated the impoverished town people like slaves.

"The marquee was a tyrant. An absolute owner of the people and the place. He owned the ovens, the water, the streams around the area and all that was connected with the food for the people."

- Ubaldo Pastorino

Balestrino's feudal history planted the seeds of it's physical collapse. Since the feudal lords reserved the best building materials for themselves, residents had to make due with whatever they could find.

"This reveals a lot about the construction of these buildings. The external skin of this wall has fallen away and revealed the underlying construction. I can see different types of stone incorporated into the wall, what looks like sandstone, limestone, bits of brick, tiles, anything that was available to the builders, they've incorporated in, and cemented within a loose laying mortar."

- Gordon Masterton

And when the area's frequent earthquakes damaged fragile homes, residents again had to make due.

"What we have here is a room with a double voltage roof, but at some time in its history, it's developed a crack right along the center, and they tried to repair and stabilize that crack by putting in this tie from side to side, and tighten it up. Originally, this was an arched opening. You can see the arch stones here, but at a later date, it's been plastered over and a simple rectangular framing put in, but look at the crack. In time, that's gonna get worse and worse, and already you can see the framing is close to failure."

- Gordon Masterton

The modern age brought Balestrino freedom from the cruel grasp of the rulers, but not the iron grasp of nature.

"The buildings are built on the slopes, and if those slopes are susceptible to landslips and movements, then so will the buildings be."

- Gordon Masterton

Unstable soil and Italy's susceptibility to devastating earthquakes compounded the problems of the town's makeshift construction. In 1997, an earthquake in Assisi 200 miles away provided a stark reminder of the threat lurking beneath Italy's sun-drenched landscape. Even the famed basilica of Saint Francis provided no sanctuary. Fearful that even worse could happen on Balestrino's failing hillsides, the town was abandoned in the 1950's. The Italian government evacuated all homes, and built a newer, safer village nearby. Since then, Balestrino's slow slide to ruin bears testimony to the impermanence of the works of man.

"The armies of the past failed to conquer Balestrino, nature's now winning the battle."

- Gordon Masterton

In the mere 60 years since people were banished from Balestrino, catastrophic failure radiates in every direction.

"This used to be a street, thoroughfare through the town. And what's happened here is this entire gable wall has collapsed, creating the rubble, and even the tie bars that are a common feature of the stabilization measures for these buildings, haven't been strong enough to prevent the whole wall from collapsing into the street."

- Gordon Masterton

Today, streets that echoed with children's laughter now echo only with the bleating of stray goats. Ubaldo Pastorino grew up in Balestrino.

"I can recall the happiest memories of my life. My father shaving on the balcony, my grandmother giving us dried figs. It's a pity because now everything is in ruins. It makes me sad."

- Ubaldo Pastorino

"Even today there are signs that the hillside is still on the move. And in the long run, it'll be nature that wins the battle and the hillside will overcome, once again, the town of Balestrino, leaving little sign of what has been there for centuries."

- Gordon Masterton

The decline and fall of Balestrino bears mute testimony to the impermanence of every home on the planet.

In the next centuries after people, an icon's of California's sunny lifestyle prepares to surf down a cliff face. And a different kind of surf spells doom for New York's Co-Op City.

75 years after people. California's Stahl House, built entirely of glass and steel, teeters precariously on it's fire blasted, rain eroded hillside.

"I think a house like that could potentially sit in a tilted position for some time, but not for a great length of time, because you're gonna have all sorts of things shifting. As things shift, forces are changed."

- Tanya Komas

Now, a particular heavy downpour washes out a final section of sediment beneath the house, and one of the 20th century's most iconic homes, slides down the hill, crashing the party on the once fabled Sunset Strip below.

100 years after people. Water has attacked New York's Co-Op City, from above and below.

"These flat roofs drain to the inside to internal drains, so the water has no place else to go, so it's going to drain through those leaks. Once it starts doing that, it invades the insulation underneath."

- Steven S. Ross

Meanwhile, the sinking land has reverted to tidal mudflats, and Co-Op City resembles an apocalyptic Venice.

"The area of the building that's in the splash zone where waves are hitting it, and the water level's rising and lowering with the tide, that splash zone is where it's going to fail."

- Tanya Komas A massive winter storm blows in from the northeast.

"It's the northeastern that would really do you in. You would get a fair amount of wave pounding against the building itself. That would begin to displace the building."

- Steven S. Ross

The weakened splash zone buckles under the northeaster's assault, and the former homes of 55,000 New Yorkers are swallowed by the shifting tides.

200 years after people. The landscape around Hearst Castle looks surprisingly unchanged, from the time of humans. But strange intruders graze the hills.

"Here at Hearst Castle, Mr. Hearst had the largest private zoo in the world. 2,000 acres, the guests would come through a 2,000 acre called a paddock, and he had every animal you could imagine."

- Hoyt Fields

In the 21st century, zebras could still seen grazing in the pastors below the castle, some will survive in a life after people.

"The African plains are very similar, so zebras might live through it, because there's lots of grassy areas for them to eat and to have proper nutrition, but boy, the cat's are gonna come right in wanting some of those zebras."

- Leslie Lyons

The castle itself has survived numerous earthquakes, thanks to architect Julia Morgan's innovative design. But now, her decision to use beach sand in the concrete has become a dagger at the heart of Hearst Castle.

"The salt from the sand was used to mix and make the concrete. It's probably going to be the major cause of its downfall because the salts are continually being pushed deeper and deeper into the foundations of the castle through the moisture, and as that dries and it crystallizes, it just continues to grow and grow and that just pushes things apart."

- Hoyt Fields

In the time of humans, this was barely noticeable. But over centuries, salt crystals slowly crack the cement, the area's relentless fog rusts the rebar, and major earthquakes periodically shake the foundations.

"All you need, once you got those crystals building up in there and you got those spaces and pockets, a major jolt from an earthquake, and that's all it is. That's it, the building's gone."

- Hoyt Fields

Now, the former home of Hollywood's rich and famous has reached the end of the reel. A 7.2 earthquake rumbles through, several rusted girders fail, and the huge towers fold into the building below.

But this pales in comparison to what is coming. Earth is about to be visited by the most massive building collapse in it's history.

250 years after people. In Dubai, the world's tallest building, with it's 1,000 empty apartments, still towers nearly half a mile above the desert floor. Sandstorms and ocean humidity have shredded the Burj Khalifa's exterior, reveling a towering skeleton quaking in the wind.

"In a life after people, larger wind gusts would stress the building a little bit more, cracks would open up a little bit more."

- Tanya Komas

Now, one question becomes critical. Which will fail first? The columns of the building's top or bottom?

"There's a lot of stresses in that lower area that are subjected to that corrosive environment next to that salt water. And as concrete cracks and becomes stressed, one potential for the collapse is its connection at the base."

- Tanya Komas

A huge sandstorm blows in from the desert. The tallest tower mankind ever built keels over in the largest building collapse the planet has ever seen.

300 years after people. In a mine deep beneath Pennsylvania, the prized Corbis photo Archive has finally succumbed to humanity's fadeout. It's priceless historic photos were meant to last thousands of years at subfreezing temperatures, but conditions long ago warmed up.

"Once the generators run out of fuel, the refrigeration stops. The pictures that are lovingly stored there, carefully stored there, would begin to deteriorate. Instead of lasting 5,000 years, they might only last a few hundred."

- Steven S. Ross

10,000 years after people. Across most of the world, the descendants of house cats have remained small, trapped in their ecological niche by the presence of larger cats like mountain lions. But under certain conditions, evolution is taking a dramatic turn.

"If domestic cats were isolated on an island where other cat species couldn't move in, the domestic cats would actually evolve to a bobcat size, according to what actual prey is there for them to eat. So if there's larger prey, such as small deer, the cats are gonna rule. They already are the top predator in most of the ecosystems that they inhabit, so there's no reason why they're not gonna take control once all the people are gone."

- Leslie Lyons

50 million years after people. What has become of everything that made a house a home? The answer is found compressed into a thin geologic strata, buried a quarter mile deep in many places. This human layer or strata of the geologic record is unique.

"The strata that represents human existence would indeed look very different because it would be enriched with materials that are refined from the Earth and are concentrated by humans."

- Steven S. Ross

Among these materials are the remnants of a common household substance: plastic.

"They won't dissolve. The plastic would begin to lose hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen and become more carbon-rich. It'll turn from clear, it'll turn yellowish first, and then brownish."

- Jan Zalasiewicz

But no one really knows how long certain plastics can last, especially buried away from oxygen, water, and ultraviolet light. Could some future species excavating the human layer stumble upon a frayed toothbrush, or the eerie figure of a vinyl toy? Reminders of the lives once lived, and the homes once cherished, now buried in a narrow slice of Earth's geologic record in a life after people.

In the next episode of life after people, humanity takes a holiday. Now, the reindeer games are over, thanksgiving turkeys are cooked, and this holiday getaway has become a holiday hell.

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