Sky's the Limit

Sky's the Limit
Episode Information
Episode	8
Season	2
No. in Series	18
Air Date	March 2, 2010
Directed by	Louis C. Tarantino
Produced by	Louis C. Tarantino (Executive Producer) Douglas J Cohen (Executive Producer) Frank Kosa Sven Berkemeier
Wrtten by	Frank Kosa
Episode Guide
Previous	Waves of Devastation
Next	Depths of Destruction

Sky's the Limit is the eighth episode of season two of Life After People: The Series. It originally aired on March 2, 2010.

Synopsis

The episode takes to the skies and everything is grounded including airports around the world where the absence of artificial cloud cover could change the atmosphere in the Earth and the migratory patterns of birds like Canada geese takes control of the airport, as it crumbles faster due to most simply weren't build to last. Famous planes like the Air Force One and Spirit of St. Louis in the National Air and Space Museum would cause a plane crash, the Theme Building might outlast most including the control tower at Los Angeles International Airport, coast redwoods thrive after a blazing fire, and the Rocky Mountain locusts returns. Radios are silent but KTAO might continue broadcasting while KVLY-TV mast in North Dakota might face a harsh winter especially at the tallest mountain in the world, Mount Everest, where it could thaw out the artifacts and in space, the Cassini might crash land on one of the Saturn's moon and could the extremophile bacteria from Earth to colonize and have life to evolve. The episode visit the Berlin Tempelhof Airport in Germany that was recently closed in 2008 and the RCAF Station Edgar in Ontario, Canada, a Cold War radar site that was abandoned in 1999.

Plot

Prologue

For a creature bound to Earth, mankind's dreams often took him to the skies. But after people, what will become to the engineering humans used to conquer the air and what will seize control of the skies.

1 Day After People

Air Force One, the most recognized plane in the world, sits empty on the tarmac of Andrews Air Force Base. 63 feet longer than the White House, it was built with the body of a Boeing 747 and was fitted with 2 kitchens, a soundproof conference room, and an entire bay of secure communications that made Air Force One unlike any other planes in the world. Steven S. Ross stated that there are enormous amount of extra equipment onboard of Air Force One that one will never see on a private jet line or a regular commercial jet. It includes an array of top secret defense systems and there was a danger that the plane could be a target for missiles so Air Force One packs an ingenious counter measure that if a heat-seeking missile locked on to the plane, a series of false target flares would shoot out which generates more heat than the engine and diverts the missiles. It was a state of the art fortress. Steven S. Ross stated that aircraft are not designed to sit around and not being maintained and Air Force One has more stuff that can go wrong than any other 747s in the world. After people, a small malfunction can lead to a high-flying failure.

2 Days After People

The highest mountain on Earth no longer welcomes any climbers at Mount Everest. The summit reached nearly as far into the sky as most commercial airlines at more than 29,000 feet and the final 3,000 feet to it's summit was called the death zone, because there's so little oxygen at the height that a human body could not sustain to itself. Brent Bishop stated that it'll have 1/3 of the oxygen at the death zone than at sea level because one will have an acute mountain altitude sickness and as it gets worse, there'll be fluid in the lungs and brain and as it progress, one will die. Every ounce of energy is needed to survive and climbers routinely left behind food tins, plastics, used oxygen bottles, and almost anything that wasn't essential. In 1994, climber Brent Bishop organized a cleanup effect that removed 25,000 pounds of trash from the mountain but with 400 climbers a season, trash continues to be a problem. 2 days after people, the mountain's mighty glaciers conceal even greater secrets that aren't going to vanish into the thin air.

3 Days After People

Although some battery powered radios are still on, the broadcasts from the stations have ceased. Nearly 15,000 radio stations once beamed news, talk, and music across the United States every day. With the people gone and power failing, radio all over the nation signs off forever yet there's one place in the American Southwest were the airwaves still crackle with the voices of man. KTAO, a radio station in New Mexico, is completely solar powered and because of it's remote location, it was engineered for a computer to take over anytime humans weren't there. So in the northern part of the state, music and announcements beam continues across the land without any human input.

4 Days After People

Airports that once thronged with passengers are vacant and so is the airspace around the world. There were more than 5,000 flights in the skies above the United States alone at any given moment in the time of humans and after people, there is none. It happened only 4 times in modern aviation history, 3 times in the 1960's when the military cleared the skies to test the radar warning system and the most recent, after the attacks of September 11th, 2001. For 3 days straight after 9/11, commercial flights were grounded and scientists noticed a surprising side effect because each day the planes were out of the sky, the average difference between the high and low temperatures across the United States increased by 2 degrees. The reason, jet plane contrails normally spread out in the sky which creates a thin but significant layer of artificial clouds and some atmospheric scientists believed that the layer kept the Earth a little warmer at night like a blanket and cooler during the day because it reflected some of the sun's heat. After people, the absence of the artificial cloud cover quickly change the climate on Earth.

1 Week After People

Seagulls and Canada geese flock to the airports and takes advantage of the peace and quiet. Kevin McGowan stated that Canada geese like to graze and the thing that attract the birds is the big open space that they call loafing areas where they can sit, rest, and see any danger approaching. In the time of humans, the greatest danger is an airplane and in the United States, bird strikes happened an average of 20 times a day with the most famous in 2009 when US Airways Flight 1549 suffered a complete engine failure when it ran into a flock of geese after takeoff and a miraculous landing by pilot Chesley Sullenberger prevented a catastrophic crash. However, collisions between birds and planes didn't start in the Jet Age because the first recorded bird strike was in 1905 and the pilot being Orville Wright.

Of all the aircraft that forever revolutionized the world of man, the most famous was possibly the Spirit of St. Louis, piloted by Charles Lindbergh and was the first plane to ever be flown solo across the Atlantic. Many believed that the achievement convinced the public that the skies belong to mankind. After a week without people, the plane is still aloft because it hands from the ceiling of the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. where it is suspended by 3 cables that loop through ordinary bolts.

1 Month After People

The tallest structure in North America still stands and it's not the Empire State Building, the Sears Tower, or the CN Tower in Canada. The answer is the 2,063 foot high KVLY-TV mast in North Dakota. Broadcast towers are usually placed on top of hills, mountains, or existing skyscrapers but on the wide open Great Plains, building tall was the only way to reach an audience of 2,400 households that spread out over more than 15,000 square miles. The galvanized steel frame was engineered to withstand severe winter storms and 85 mile per hour winds and after people, the tremendous height of towers like the KVLY-TV mast becomes big targets for nature arsenal because it happened before. Steven S. Ross stated that their failures are spectacular and had been many of it.

6 Months After People

Of all the plants growing on Earth, the tallest plant being the coast redwood in Northern California at 379 feet. With a lifespan that can stretch for 2,000 years, a tree that was a seedling when Jesus was born could have been overflown by a plane in the 21st century. Wildland managers sought to protect the trees by suppressing forest fires in the time of humans and without firefighters to beat back the flames, wildfires burn unchecked but the coast redwoods are hard to kill. When the fire burns the leaves, it triggers a signal in the trees to sprout new limbs and shoots. While their competitors were often destroyed by wildfires, coast redwoods quickly flourish.

1 Year After People

Air Force One has begun to rust on the tarmac of Andrews Air Base. The tarmac, once kept pristine by a ground team that scoured the pavement for any debris before each flight, has brush that already begun to take it back. The episode knows because there's an abandoned airport in Berlin, Germany that already shows 1 year after people, Berlin Tempelhof Airport.

Berlin Tempelhof Airport

In 2008, the terminal was closed to air traffic but it was once ground zero for the massive air relief operation in history. 6 decades ago, the runways were a frenzy of air traffic in one of the first major struggles of the Cold War, the Berlin Airlift. Dieter Nickel recalls that there are constant sound in the air of the incoming airplanes and every 90 seconds there were traffic on the runways. In 1948, Berlin was deep inside the Soviet-occupied Germany and the city was divided in half between the Soviets and the West. When a struggle for territorial control boiled over, the Russians blockaded West Berlin cutting off all food & supplies by ground and West Berliners faced starvation or surrender. Dieter Nicker recalls that the threat for West Berliners is that they would have been taken by the Russians and would finally lose their freedom. The West responded with the airlift and fully loaded cargo planes roared in & out of Tempelhof every minute and a half ferrying up to 13,000 tons of food and supplies. After 10 and a half months, the Soviets lifted the blockade and Tempelhof became known as the airport that saved the city. It was shutdown in the 21st century after a more modern airport opened outside the city. The ticket counters are empty, the vast hallways are filled only with shadows, and wild grass obscures signs on the runways that once made history.

3 Years After People

In the wilderness of Yellowstone National Park, a tiny flying creature that once terrified North America, the Rocky Mountain locust, has returned. The locust were a common sight in the 19th century and swarms that were often 2,000 square miles blackened the skies from the Rocky Mountains to the Mississippi River. Like a biblical plague, wherever they landed, the ravenous mass devoured every blade of vegetation. Jeffrey Lockwood stated that the locust would pelt you, would land, crawl into a clothing, and its a horrific rainstorm or hailstorm of locusts as they cover everything. In 1875, one outbreak was so massive that it was deemed the largest single gathering of living creatures in recorded history. Jeffrey Lockwood stated that nothing come close to the swarm of Rocky Mountain locusts from 1875 where it was approximately 1,800 miles long and 110 miles & if one squared them up, it would covered the state of Colorado border to border. However, in the late 19th century, settlers began farming on the insect's fragile habitats in the river valleys of the upper Rocky Mountains and within 25 years, the locusts disappeared. Only a few small pockets have survived in pristine places like Yellowstone National Park. After 3 years without people, the population of a surviving pocket of locusts grows in the absence of humans the ravaging swarms that once terrified settlers might return.

5 Years After People

Although most planes are slowly deteriorating, Air Force One has hidden potential for disaster because one of its defense system is called false target flares which divert heat seeking missiles away from the plane. However, the electrical circuits that trigger it were never meant to go unmaintained. Steven S. Ross stated that the flare circuits are a major point of failure and it is dangerous if left in place because it deteriorate quickly. the circuit fails and it deploy the flares, causing the plant growth on the tarmac below becomes kindling for a massive blaze and the plane has plenty of fuel to feed the fire. Unlike most planes, Air Force One's 50,000 gallon fuel tank were kept filled in cast the president had to be flown out of harm's way at a moment's notice but after people, there is no one to move Air Force One out of harm's way as the fire cause the fuel tanks to explode and the plane is destroy.

8 Years After People

In space, a spacecraft called Cassini silently orbits Saturn, 750 million miles from Earth. In the time of humans, it generated countless revelations about the ringed planet Saturn and the Solar System. After people, it is alone in the frigid void of outer space but not quite alone. Gregory Laughlin stated that in the innards of the Cassini spacecraft, there are probably very hardy bacteria which hitched a ride on the mission. The bacteria are called extremophiles. Gregory Laughlin stated that extremophiles can survive in very harsh conditions like in the dry valleys of Antarctica, in a mud pot of Yellowstone, and every environment no matter how harsh. The hardy bacteria were believed to stowaway on all kinds of space vehicles and to make sure there would be no unintended consequences from the microorganisms crash landing on the surface of another world, NASA planned to end Cassini's mission by incinerating it in Saturn's atmosphere. Without Mission Control to order it's demise, Cassini and it's tiny stowaways are on a voyage into uncharted territory.

10 Years After People

Act 1

Airports are already crumbling because many simply weren't built to last. Steven S. Ross stated that architecture are quite humble about airports like a terminal building which often doesn't last more than 40 or 50 years before it's massively redesigned so it have the ultimate disposable building.

There were some exceptions like the LAX Theme Building at Los Angeles International Airport. The architectural landmark was constructed in 1961 to resemble a landing spacecraft and was called the Theme Building to usher in a Jet Age theme for the airport. By the 2010, it was one of the few surviving airport building in it's era because of a 2 year renovation that strengthened it to withstand the test of time. 10 years after people, the arches dominate the empty airport and would continue to endure because of a surprising form of protection that will keep it safe from nature's most powerful forces.

Act 2

The places that once protected mankind from nuclear destruction faces destruction of their own, and it's already happened at RCAF Station Edgar or simply, Edgar Radar Station.

RCAF Station Edgar

Visiting Edgar Radar Station, it sees 10 years after people where it facing the destruction of its own. Steven S. Ross and Marshall Swartz explores and explain the site of the radar station. Edgar looked like an ordinary town but the entire site was built in 1952 for one sole reason being to scan the skies for an airborne apocalypse. Steven S. Ross stated that the Defense Departments realized that the Russians would able to build plenty of nuclear weapons, put it inside the bombers, fly over the North Pole, and destroy targets in Canada and in the United States. Situated about 80 miles north of Toronto, Canada, Edgar was large enough to be a self-contained town and self-sufficient security. Marshall Swartz stated they have everything from dentists, doctors, messing facilities, and a reaction center with an indoor swimming pool. More than 300 people lived and worked on the base that hummed with daily life and after people, stools at the station's snack bar sit long empty, a tree branch sprawls across the roof of an abandoned home, the floor of the old gym is in ruins, and some buildings have been entirely demolished. Steven S. Ross shows what's left of the single men's barracks and explains that one can see the tiles on what was once the inner floor where the walls and carter laid out. The entire enclave was built to support radar where it scoured the northern skies 24 hours a day for an attack by Soviet planes loaded with atomic bones. Steven S. Ross stated that the more the United States and Canada knew about Russian intentions, the less chance there was for someone to make a mistake and push the button. Radar's electromagnetic waves could pierce the sky for 200 miles and if a plane was in the radius, waves would bounce back from it which provides critical information about where the plane was and how fast it was flying. The capacity made Edgar part of the first early warning system but it also put the base ear the top of the enemy target list. Marshall Swartz stated that radar can be honed in on by the coming forces and naturally the Soviet Union would like to knock their eyes out so they they couldn't see the Soviets which makes them very vulnerable in Edgar. Life was always on edge at Edgar. Marshall Swartz stated that it was very tense for everyone.

The radars at Edgar searched the skies for 12 years until in 1964 when the station was made obsolete by a longer range radar base needed for a new threat, intercontinental missiles and over the years, as attack times shrank from hours to minutes, the job of advanced warning rose to the ultimate vantage point, the satellites in outer space. Although radar operations at Edgar were removed, the remainder of the base was used by civilians until 1999 when it was closed for good. 10 years of decay has taken its toll with the movie theater having an audience of none, a children's playground is conceding its turf to nature, and a single woman's dorm that has long been empty with the entryway faded but not the memories of what once happened. Marshall Swartz recalls his moment of the propose marriage to his fiancée, Joy. The gymnasium that was Edgar's home court is home to birds and the guileless celebrations once held are distant memories. Marshall Swartz recalls that the gym where the location of their engagement at the New Year's Eve ball for the rest of the base. The floors have buckled and almost beyond recognition. Steven S. Ross shows the green line is the out-of-bound line for basketball court and explains that small amount of water caused the damage which creates a wave of wood. The episode conclude the exploration that the community that once watched the skies for an attack is under assault from above and in the new war, the buildings of Edgar are defenseless.

15 Years After People

Powered by the sun, radio station KTAO still broadcasts some of the last human voices to be heard on Earth but inside the computer that automatically plays the music, the bearings of the cooling fan grind to a halt. Across the windswept hills of the Southwest, birds chirp, coyotes howl, and as the station computer overheats, the music of mankind falls forever in silent.

20 Years After People

Cassini spacecraft continues to orbit Saturn but it also has more than 50 moons making any orbit fraught with peril. After 20 years of orbit, the spacecraft smashes into one of Saturn's moon. It may be the last of Cassini, but the moon has something that was never expected in the frigid depths of space around Saturn.

30 Years After People

On the distant horizon of the prairie, a dark cloud blacks out the sun and within minutes, a frenzy crush of insects from a swarm is big enough to cover the entire state of Delaware pours out of the sky. Once so few in numbers that many scientists believed they're extinct, the Rocky Mountain locusts returns. Jeffrey Lockwood stated that humans are hesitant to use the "E" word in ecology and entomology and "E" word being extinction and the reason is call the Lazarus Effect. The Lazarus Effect is when any species thought to be gone forever is found as if it came back from the dead. The return of the locusts is tied to their cousins that live outside Yellowstone Park, grasshoppers. After people, grasshoppers no longer controlled by pesticides and their population explode causing the birds that kept locusts in check for decades gorges on grasshoppers instead. For the first time in more than a century, the Rocky Mountain locusts flourish and when they sense their territory is becoming overcrowded, the instinct tells to take to the air and mass in search of more food. After 30 years, the Rocky Mountain locusts swarms into the skies of the American Midwest once again.

35 Years After People

Some of the highest glaciers in the world inch down Mount Everest. Entombed within the ice are the refuse that climbers once tossed away and were believed the colossal ice would crush it to smithereens. Brent Bishop stated that there is a theory that the glaciers with millions of tons of ice will grind up trash that was dumped into the crevasse into the dust and one will found 30 years later that things came out from the foot of the glacier relatively intact. 35 years after people, a length of rope with a climber's gloves still curled around it emerges from the glacial ice. However, the frozen citadel of Mount Everest has yet one more secret inching it's way down the mountain.

50 Years After People

The KVLY-TV mast, the tallest structure in North America, still soars the equivalent of more than 150 stores into the North Dakota sky. It was built to withstand almost all forms of extreme weather with the exception of severe ice and wind. It happened on the second tallest structure in North America and the TV tower sister station, KXJB. Located less than 10 miles away, it was just 3 feet shorter. It occurred in April of 1997 when a severe ice storm struck, the fierce wind and weight of the ice sent the second tallest structure crashing to the ground. 50 years after people, an ice storm blows in and buffeting the nearly 900,000 pounds of tower. As the ice builds up, it adds hundreds of thousands of pounds to the structure and the huge stress of the extra weight sheers section bolts right off which snap the tower in the middle. The top of the tower plummets for more than 10 seconds and can accelerate to nearly 250 miles an hour before smashing into the Earth. Its reign as the tallest structure on the continent is cut short.

Across the country in Washington, D.C., the Spirit of St. Louis rocks in the wind and whistles through the National Air and Space museum. In 1976, curates had the plane carefully inspected and apart from minor rust and small tears in the cotton fabric of the fuselage, the aircraft was perfectly fit to fly. The weakness is not with the plane but the system that holds it aloft. The 3 cables and clamps that secure it to the ceiling are strong enough to hold 5 times the weight of the plane but the cables loop through standard steel bolts and is never designed to withstand decades rocking in the wind. Being expose to the elements combine with the chafing of the cable to weaken the bolts until each fails and the plane that so sensationally opened the doors to global air traffic makes one final plunge.

125 Years After People

The only two buildings remaining at the Los Angeles International Airport are the steel-reinforced control tower and the LAX Theme Building. In the time of humans seismologists discovered a major fault line just a few miles away and they calculated that the odds of a massive quake were just 1 in 8 in the next 125 years. As part of the overhaul of the Theme Building in 2010, engineers installed 1.2 million pounds of steel on rubber rollers to counteract the devastating shockwaves of a quake called a mass damper. The systems are typically placed underneath or inside buildings but the space age architecture of the Theme Building made it unworkable. Steven S. Ross stated that the Theme Building's four stilts are not connected to one another till it get up to the restaurant level and one want the four stilts to all move perfectly together and there'll be no way to guarantee in an earthquake. Instead, it became the first building in North America with a mass damper on the roof. 125 years after people, a violent 6.5 earthquake strikes at dawn, the mass damper saves the Theme Building as the LAX Control Tower collapse and leaving it the only structure at the airport still standing.

5,000 Years After People

A glacier on Mount Everest is in a spring melt once again and what thaws is a shocking remnant, a frozen corpse of a climber. The episode knows that humans can be preserved in glaciers because of Otzi the Iceman. He was found on a melting snow-pack in the Italian Alps in 1991, some 5,300 years after he died. His body had been perfectly preserved that scientists could determine what he had even for his final 2 meals from the contents of his stomach. Of more than 180 climbers who died on Mount Everest, as many as 50 were never recovered. Brent Bishop stated that there had been climbers caught in avalanches, trapped in the Khumbu Icefall, and tons of ice have shifted and it's likely that most of the people are still trapped in the mountain, entombed in the ice. After people, the sun and flow of glacial ice have freed one climber but there's no scientists to greet him and only water & bacteria make quick work of his remains.

2 Million Years After People

Cassini is long gone but its stowaways have flourished because the moon it smashed into was a very special one named Enceladus, one of the few places in the Solar System believed to have liquid water. Gregory Laughlin stated that if Cassini were to crash on Enceladus, it's possible that the bacteria that hitched a ride on the spacecraft could survive in the region just below the solid ice surface and in a thousand years, there would have growing colony of bacteria in the environment of Enceladus and over millions to billions of years, the bacteria might evolve into a whole ecosystem. He continues that it would be quite remarkable if the final legacy of human technological society on Earth was the greening of another moon in the Solar System.

Epilogue

Where humans reached for the sky, it appears that the sky was not in fact the limit due to the cold and dark space that has proven surprisingly open to Earth's most unstoppable force, life.

Transcript

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

Errors

• The acronym used for Extinction is EX. E was just the first letter to begin the word before explaining the Lazurus Effect.
• The collapse of KVLY-TV mast was not synch to each views and the bird eye's view show the bottom part of the mast to fall slow than the rest.

Trivia

• The term sky's the limit means that that there are no limits and that anything is possible.
• In 2014, the Rocky Mountain locusts, scientifically named Melanoplus spretus, was formally declared extinct by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

Gallery

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