The Last Supper

The Last Supper
Episode Information
Episode	4
Season	2
No. in Series	14
Air Date	January 26, 2010
Directed by	Laura Verklan Armstrong
Produced by	Douglas J. Cohen (Executive Producer) Louis C. Tarantino (Executive Producer)
Wrtten by	Laura Verklan Armstrong
Episode Guide
Previous	Crypt of Civilization
Next	Home Wrecked Home

The Last Supper is the fourth episode of season two of Life After People: The Series. It originally aired on January 26, 2010.

Synopsis

In a world without people, the places where mankind satisfied their hunger fulfills an appetite for destruction. Grocery stores across the world transform into gastronomic nightmares and turns into breeding grounds for insects and vermin, ranging from produce, dairy products, snack cakes, freeze-dried food. and preservatives, as only one food that can survive and still be edible after people. A refinery for sugar reveals an explosive secret and guide dogs scavenge for food. Landmarks tribute to food may last against food, but won't last from decay as The Last Supper in the Santa Maria delle Grazie flakes and discoloured, Randy's Donuts in Los Angeles crumbles, and Taipei 101 succumbs to the force of its own weight, the damper system that stabilized it in the first place. The episode highlights the Mexia Supermarket from Fort Worth, Texas which was abandoned for three months with all the food still inside and explores Tranquille in the city of Kamloops, British Columbia, which was abandoned and closed in 1985.

Plot

1 Day After People

The last supper has been served and in over the 100,000 grocery stores around the world where humans came to buy their ingredients has an eerie silence to be prevailed. Automatic sprinklers keep the produce moist but gone are the sounds of carts squeaking down the aisles and registers ringing up sales. Hidden among the shelves is one item that would last for thousands of years but after 1 day, everything appears appetizing enough to eat and plenty of mouths to feed. Microscopic organisms and insects have already arrived and many of it have always been in the products. Small levels of bugs and animal parts were even allowed in grocery store food by the United States Food and Drug Administration in the time of humans which range from 8 rodent hairs in a package of noodles, 8 fly eggs in a can of tomato sauce, and 150 insect fragments in a jar of peanut butter. It was estimated that humans unintentionally ate 1 to 2 pounds of insects each year but without humans to consume the products, the insect eggs would begins to hatch, bacteria multiply, and animals ready for an aggressive assault.

2 Days After People

Sugar begins to show a side that's not sweet. In time of humans, 10 million tons of sugar was annually pumped out of 30 refineries scattered across the United States with a fraction of the 18 billion pounds consumed in the United States each year. The process begins by converting the juices from sugar canes and beets into crystals, but the process creates clouds of dust and sugar dust is flammable. Steven S. Ross stated that sugar dust, flour dust, and any wide variety of crystalline materials build up static charges by rubbing against one another. The clouds of sugar dust have turned the entire refinery into a ticking time bomb. There were 4 plant explosions in the United States in the time of humans due to a buildup of sugar dust in the air and human engineers tried to alleviate the risks through various means including proper ventilation and minimizing the overheating of machinery. After people, the safety measures are no longer in operation and after 2 days, one of the sugar refineries have let the static electricity to ignites dust inside the conveyor belt causing fire and the dust fuel fireball then travels to the two 100 foot silos which contribute to the growing disaster. Tanya Komas stated that if the fire continues to reach the level of 700 degrees, the moisture in the concrete in the aggregates that turns to steam at the high temperature would make it to explode. As the fire continues, mounds of sugary sludge squash out and solidify like cement. Steven S. Ross stated that if the fire gets hot enough, it decomposes the caramel into constituents that would burn and will have an enormous fire.

Around the world, food has inspired architecture large and small, with some saying a building located in Taiwan's capital city of Taipei, looks like a towering stack of takeout containers. It was known as Taipei 101 and was once the second tallest skyscraper in the world with home to some of the highest restaurants on the planet. In order to stabilize the 101 story skyscraper in high winds and earthquakes, engineers devised a technology that moves called a tuned mass damper system, which was installed and it is the largest in the world. The damper is a 720 ton steel pendulum made of 41 circular plates and it's suspended between the 92nd and 88th floors by 8 cables. Tanya Komas stated that it serves the function of dampering the swaying of a building which essentially it does by swaying the opposite of the building, cancels each other out and comes back to rest.

Across the Pacific at Randy's Donuts in Los Angeles, the whimsical building stands as a monument to mankind's love affair with sugary foods. At 32 feet high, the rooftop donut is one of the largest in the world and the 20 ton donut is made of rolled steel covered with concrete, however the rooftop icon clings precariously to its perch. Steven S. Ross stated that the donut isn't supported on top of the building instead was supported on two rods that go into the earth and the building built around the rods, essentially making it a very large heavy object being held up by lollipop stick.

3 Days After People

Around the globe, dogs are starving for both food and attention. Inside one home, a Labrador retriever had a special bond with its human companion and is a highly trained seeing eye or guide dog, who's accustomed to spending 24 hours a day by its owner's side. Tom Roach stated that without humans, a guide dog would be stressed out, wandering their person, scratching at the door, barking a little bit, and very likely start to chew on something to relieve anxiety. Labradors were often used as guide dogs because of their non-aggressive obedient nature and the behavior was shaped by a year and a half of intensive instruction. In the absence of its master, its food-avoiding training came to the test. Tom Roach stated that the dogs are taught not to get into the cupboards and never get into human food unless it's specifically handed to them. He don't think that they'll allow themselves to starve to death but it might be several days before they indulge in household treats. After 3 days, the guide dogs will power is gone and once the food in the house runs out, the canine has an advantage over others in the neighborhood where it's the only one to has seen inside a grocery store and knows the way by heart.

1 Week After People

Power went out in cities around the world and at grocery stores, lights off and the refrigeration is no more. Meat and dairy foods require temperatures of 41 degrees or less, but as the thermometer climbs, many items begin to spoil within hours. Ellen Bradley stated that there are three elements that speed decomposition known as heat, water, and oxygen, and with the temperature being hotter within a grocery store would cause the decomposition to happen faster. Airborne bacteria and fungi accumulate on all dead organic matter, as the microorganisms feed, they secrete enzymes that break down the once living matter which makes it easier to absorb and digest. The process of spoiling is preparing a different kind of meal for the microscopic predators. Ellen Bradley stated that two spoilage organisms common to meat, poultry, and produce are pseudomonas and lactic acid bacteria where the former creates the slimy texture on top of the products and the latter produces little bubbles and smells. She then explains about a bag of chicken which within hours, spoilage organisms on the chicken would produce gas and once the bag become bloated with gas within a few days, the bag would burst.

In the produce section, fruits and vegetables are emitting another type of gas called ethylene which causes them to ripen. As one overripe apple produces ethylene, it triggers receptors in the other apples to emit the gas and soon all the fruit becomes overripe and is quickly rotting. Steven S. Ross stated that once the refrigeration fails, there would be sticky rotten stuff everywhere and that would attract animal life.

The pungent odor sends out a welcome call to the world of rodents, and the first arrivals are rats which have a better sense of smell than dogs. In 2006, experts began to use rats to sniff out landmines in war-torn parts of Africa. After people, rats muzzle their way into grocery stores & supermarkets and feast with their eyes & noses on a 100-course meal. Also joining in on the feeding frenzy are hordes of insects from fruit flies being attracted to the fermenting smell of overripe food to blowflies attracted to the smell of rotting meat, and within 8 hours, each female lays 250 eggs which quickly hatch into maggots. Lynn Kimsey stated that if the blowflies could get into it, it will have maggots which causes hundreds of pounds of meat to be gross after a couple of days. Mold also feeds on everything. The green microscopic fungi begins as airborne spores and when it fall onto damp, moist food, it produces chemicals that make the food break down and rot.

10 Days After People

After more than a week waiting for its master to return, the guide dog ventures out of the house. Being more than other dogs, it is accustomed to routine and heads to a place where it thinks it'll find people and knows it'll find food. Tom Roach stated if there was a local coffee shop or a local grocery store they went frequented to on a regular basis, the dog would start looking for the person in the areas like when a typical blind person with a guide dog where is going to the same grocery store day after day and the dog would be habituated to the places. But everything in the grocery stores are rotting and the show questions has the guide dog arrived too late before answering to itself that most dogs have hearty stomachs which secrete hydrochloric acid many times stronger than humans. The acid kills most of the bacteria including pathogens and salmonella on raw meat. While most dogs chase after the rats, the guide dog steers clear. Tom Roach stated that guide dogs were trained to avoid dogs, cats, and anything else they're trained to ignore those things and tune the things out to do their job. He explains that if the dog encounter a strange animal, it will more than likely to try to avoid the animals. The grocery store have become a lifeline for a guide dog.

3 Weeks After People

Lactic acid bacteria has multiplied into the tens of thousands inside milk containers which causes the dairy products to curdle, sour, and eventually explode.

The lack of artificial refrigeration has caused most butter to go bad, but there is one place on Earth where butter survives after people, in the deep underground in northern Europe. Peculiar wooden barrels overflowing with fatty substances were unearthed in swampy Irish and Scottish peat bogs starting in the mid-19th century and archeologists determined it was containers of butter from 300 to 3,000 years old with some still edible. Ellen Bradley stated that because the peat moss is low in temperature and inhibits oxygen permeating the bog butter making it a reason why the products are preserved for hundreds of years. The bogs were not only used to preserve dairy products, the Germanic tribes of Iron Age northwestern Europe like to keep other things like human bodies. Victims of human sacrifice were buried in the bogs and some believe they may have have been pulled out from time to time to serve as honored guests at ceremonial feasts.

3 Months After People

Grocery stores become tombs for culinary corpses from fruits shriveled up, non-packaged meat decomposed with only the bones remaining. But in the time of humans, the horrifying scene had already played out in one American city in Fort Worth, Texas.

In 1999, a grocery store called Mexia Supermarket went bankrupt and the owners decided to abandon the market leaving everything inside. Within weeks, neighbors began to notice a horrible stench and after 3 months since it closed, the city's department of environmental management entered and discovered a gastronomic nightmare. Brain Boerner recalls that the smell was extremely bad outside and they don't have an accurate report on the inside because they put people in protective gear and oxygen tanks before moving in. The workers in hazmat suits and oxygen masks began the process of cleaning up the toxic mess. Brain Boerner stated that it was dangerous because they don't know what type of bacteria was inside but knew there were some potential disease issues. He recalls that they saw mice, rats, and anything that lives off of garbage or decaying matter with the report stating it was so bad that one could not see the hands because the flies were so thick. Each aisle the workers turned down brought a new and nasty surprise. Brian Boerner recalls that apples, lettuce, and bananas already rotted and you could see where it had been eaten or gnawed on, several of the milk containers had swollen and exploded because of decaying gases and the packaged meats look like it hadn't been touched but a lot of it was covered in this grayish-black goo.

After people, every grocery stores in the world has its own chamber of horrors. Rats moved from meat to dry goods as their teeth easily rip through paper and plastic-packaged goods which creates openings for other creatures to get in or out. Food was often manufactured and sealed with insects eggs already inside in the time of humans. Merchant grain beetles laid their eggs on nuts in the field and the eggs being too small to see with the naked eye, ended up in containers of nuts or products with nuts like chocolate bars where they sometimes hatch into larva. The larvae become beetles which feed on rice, noodles and cereals. Red ants nibble on dried apricots and cockroaches check into a roach motel inside plastic containers filled with cookies with plastic holds out moisture and oxygen that keeps the treats fresh for months.

If the pests let it last that long, packaging isn't the only way food was protected. Urban legend claimed a famous snack cakes was filled with preservatives that enabled it to last well beyond its original expiration date of 25 days. Ellen Bradley stated that snack cakes has sorbic acid inside that inhibit it from going moldy and once the package has been compromised, it still has few things like monoglycerides and polysorbate-60 which helps all the ingredients inside cling to each other and hold the moisture so it doesn't get stale. Experts determined that snack cakes could still be edible after 25 years.

6 Months After People

The 15th century fresco called The Last Supper adorns a wall in the convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan, Italy. The painting depicts the last Passover dinner Jesus shared with his 12 apostles when he announced one of them would betray him. While the masterpiece doesn't merely illustrate food, it's actually painted with it because the famed artist Leonardo da Vinci used a combination of oil paint and egg tempera, a pigment mixed with egg yolk. Jeffrey Morseburg stated that the traditional egg tempera uses egg yolk as the emulsion and shows the process by taking a small amount of pigment into the pallette and the yolk along with the approximately same amount of water which then mixes with the pigment. He then shows the lake red, being one of the pigments that Leonardo used on The Last Supper and shows it being mixed smoothly, and it will get a lovely red color. The stickiness of the egg allowed the pigment to adhere to a surface but a problem arises, while most frescoes are painted on wet plaster and when it dries, the pigment becomes part of the wall, Leonardo opted to paint on dry plaster making the colors to be much less permanent, and another problem to add is that The Last Supper was painted on a north-facing wall. Jeffrey Morseburg stated that Milan has cold wet winters where the rain, sleet, and snow come down and lash the city from the Alps and the north-facing wall would receives a great deal of moisture. Less than 5 years after its completion in 1498, The Last Supper had already begun to flake and by the 1990's, it had undergone nearly 6 different restorations with the last involved installing a dehumidifying system. After people and with the system off forever, the show then questions how long will it take to finish off The Last Supper.

1 Year After People

Produce has almost completely decomposed in grocery stores and some food will disappear forever like the banana. The most common and consumed banana in the world is a variety known as the Cavendish. Wild bananas were originated in Southeast Asia and Africa where it had large dark seeds while in North America, bananas were bred to be seedless to make it appealing to consumers. About 100 billion Cavendish bananas were consumed every year with each banana genetically identical to the original Cavendish plant brought from Southeast Asia to the Caribbean in the early 20th century, but the lack of genetic diversity left it vulnerable to disease. Paul Gepts stated that if it have a new strain of pathogen and infects one plant, it will able to infect the other plants and eventually the Cavendish banana would disappear.

2 Years After People

Insects finish off the last of the dried goods but many of the pests have evolved to rely on humans for food and after people, the insects are doomed. Lynn Kimsey stated that stored foods like oatmeal and wheat flour take a year or two to work through all the material and when there's nothing left, the insects would go extinct from store product pests, garden plants pests, and crop pests because the feed is gone.

Canned goods still rest on shelves protected from pests by their aluminum and steel containers. After 2 years, most have reached the predicted expiration dates but some of the food inside could remain edible for hundreds of years. Most cans are lined with a polymer coating which prevents small amount of sulfur present in most canned foods from reacting with the steel or aluminum which would cause contamination. However in hot humid regions around the world, canned goods can experience a different fate. Ellen Bradley stated that if one raise the temperature of the atmosphere around the can like 105 degrees, the spoilage organisms that are not killed off in the canning process called thermophilic spores begins to grow. As it multiplies, the thermophilic spores produce gas that builds up and eventually causes the cans to explode.

3 Years After People

The former guide dog has beaten the odds and has been relocated to a nearby park but in a sad twist of fate, his several thousand hours of training hinders his instincts to hunt. As the leftovers of human society become scarce, scavenging is no longer an option to the guide dog. Tom Roach stated that the Labrador and guide dogs are not the most agile and not the best breed for catching actual live prey. He continues that a large percentage of guide dogs and highly trained dogs will die of starvation and not be able to find enough to survive.

5 Years After People

Once the second tallest building in the world, Taipei 101 is struck by a typhoon bearing 200 mph winds causing the glass to shatters on the lower levels, allowing water to gush inside. Steven S. Ross stated that Taipei 101 will sustain relatively little damage even at 200 miles an hour but during the typhoon, some of the glass will fail, water will get forced into the structure in place where it's never been before and cracks would open up. The steel pendulum of the damper system sways to offset the gale force winds and it continues to stabilize the mega skyscraper.

20 Years After People

At Milan, Italy, 20 years after people has taken its toll on The Last Supper, Leonardo da Vinci's masterpiece. Jeffrey Morseburg stated that The Last Supper had a more difficult history than almost any painting in the history of art because it suffered one indignity after another. In the time of humans, The Last Supper was damaged during food fights instigated by French troops who took over the convent during the Napoleonic Wars and during World War II when Ally bombs struck the convent which expose the mural that only been protected by a flimsy tarp and sandbags. After 20 years, cracks begin to appear on The Last Supper as it flakes away and on its last leg.

25 Years After People

The land where mankind grew his food is reverting to nature, and it's already happened to one farming town in Canada where life after people begun by weather and erosion at Tranquille in British Columbia.

Tranquille, British Columbia

Visiting Tranquille, 25 years after people have let weather and erosion to gnawed away much of the land and infrastructure where mankind once depended on for food. Tim McLeod, along with Troy Bylsma and Andrew Watson, guide the place and explains its abandonment. Tranquille is located in a valley surrounded by rolling hills where nature quickly reclaimed it's former kingdom. The structures are hollow reminders of the food that was made to feed thousands with ferocious winds and winters almost blown of the metal top of the silo, rusted feeding stalls and dried hay all remains in the dairy barn where 350 dairy cows once supplied milk, and at the nearby slaughterhouse where the only faint smell of smoke emanates from where pigs were butchered and cured. Around the site has let the sagebrush and weeds to replace the neglected farmland and Tranquille is ghostly reminder of a mysterious community where a town was forced to reinvent itself time and time again until all hope was lost one day. Its history began in 1857 when the discovery of gold in the Tranquille River sparked the British Columbia Gold Rush making two families to erected a town to supply the miners. Because of its isolation, the town's people were forced to produce all of their own meat and produce and by the turn of the 20th century, the gold rush ended and Tranquille underwent a transformation. When tuberculosis, a contagious bacterial infection of the lungs, reached epidemic levels in Canada, Tranquille was converted into a Tuberculosis sanitorium in 1907 because of it's dry mountain air and endless days of sunlight. It is also believed that exposure to sunlight helped patients suffering from the disease. The Greens Hospital opened it's doors in 1929 but residents in the nearby town of Kamloops objected to the sanitorium being located close to their community. Troy Bylsma stated a lot of the first buildings were built and there were fear of contacting tuberculosis and he thinks that there was a rule not to spit on the streets because one might contact tuberculosis through anything like it. But when a cure for Tuberculosis was announced in 1958, Tranquille changed once again by becoming a sanitorium which is home for 600 mentally disabled. However, the site was closed in 1985, a victim of government program cuts that dispersed the mentally ill residents into group homes and other institutions.

Only 90 buildings barely remain standing, and at the Greens Hospital, a sterilizer chamber for surgical tools still remains in the walls of an operating room but the only needing surgery is the timber frame structure itself. Tim McLeod stated that when something gets abandoned and it have flat roofs and water, water will find its way into everything without maintenance. The trees encroach around the buildings and one has taken root on the roof. For 25 years, melted snow and ice has collected on the flat gravel and tar roof and flooded the drain system. Andrew Watson is at the top floor of the Greens Hospital and explains that water comes down through the ceiling, collapsing portions of the ceiling tile and pounded the floor where it deteriorated the tiles, soaked the timber flooring, rotting, and moved on to rot to the floor strayers where it to begin to collapse causing a hole to open and the process repeats until it reaches the bottom. Nature has tightened its death grip around the main building which constructed in 1910. Tim McLeod shows a tree that wrapped itself around the steel tread on the stair and it would eventually puncture holes right in the side of the building. He continues there would be all kinds of vegetation outside the building and the root systems would get into concrete and push it apart which brings in water. Inside, nature is working overtime as water eaten through the drywall ceiling that produce mold and fungi that release micro toxins. The poisonous chemicals would wreak havoc on wood and if inhaled by humans over a period of months or years, the mold grow inside the lungs and cause death. Tim McLeod stated that the ground is eaten by mold & moss and the room would be eaten away into nothing and the building will start to collapse in a position. In the modern days, developers plan to restore Tranquille back into a self-sustaining agrarian community, but it still remains a town of the verge of complete ruin.

30 Years After People

In the dilapidated places where mankind came to dine, Americans once consumed over 20 pounds of pasta per person per year, 1,400 million cups of coffee were once gulped down worldwide, and billions of hamburgers were served up annually, has any semblance of a prepared meal would appear to have vanished from the face of the Earth. There is an exception in the case of freeze-dried food. Freeze-drying is a dehydration process where it removes 98% of the water in perishable food to preserve it and make it lightweight for transport in camping, warzones, and outer space. Ellen Bradley stated that freeze-dried foods can last hundreds of years and a freeze-dried food was recently tested in the university study after 30 years compared against fresh and it was deemed by consumers to be almost as good as the fresh stuff. She continues that while it last after 30 years, it would last 50 or 100 years but haven't had the technology long enough to test the theory.

While freeze-dried foods may still be edible 30 years after people, the grocery stores that once sold the products have quickly deteriorated and after decades of snow and rainfall, the flimsy roof caves in. Steven S. Ross stated that plant life will colonize the inside very quickly and the parking lot would become a green lawn first, then a meadow and finally a forest.

60 Years After People

In Milan, The Last Supper has not lasted because mold and dirt obscure any remaining traces of the masterpiece.

Memorials to human food are on the verge of collapse around the globe like at Randy's Donuts in Los Angeles, where rainwater is eating away of one of the largest donuts in the world. Tanya Komas stated that in the case of Randy's Donuts, water would pool inside of it at the bottom of the hollow portion of the donut causing the base to fail first and then the top of the donut would come down on top of it. With its hollow steel structure corroding, Randy's Donuts crumbles, destroying the restaurant in the process.

200 Years After People

Taipei 101, a building that some thought resembled a stack of takeout containers, is being taken out by corrosion in a surprising way. The mass damper system responsible for stabilizing the structure during strong winds is no longer stable itself. The rusted cables of the damper suddenly snap and release the 720 ton steel pendulum ball. Tanya Komas stated that the ball would come falling down the middle of the building which destroys everything in its path and the remainders of deteriorating floor slabs would be pushed aside. The pendulum ball bulldozes everything in its path as it falls 88 floors. Like a meteorite, the wrecking ball crash lands below ground level and Taipei 101 collapses causing it to no longer be the world's second tallest skyscraper.

4,000 Years After People

No traces of grocery store remain, yet there is one 21st century item that could still be edible, the unbroken jars of honey that are found scattered in locations where cities once stood. Archaeologists found jars of edible honey in Egypt in the time of humans with one dated back to 1400 B.C.. Honey is a hygroscopic product, meaning if exposed to air, it absorbs moisture which cause fermentation. If it sealed in glass, it remains eternally fresh. Ellen Bradley stated that honey will last a very long time because of low water activity, moisture content, and pH which makes the three key things to help the product not to decompose overtime and given a glass jar of honey with a tight lid, it can last for a million years however it will get a little grainy and crystallized but it will taste great.

Epilogue

Throughout history, food has united communities around the world, driven science, and inspired architecture & art. Out of all of man's packaged foods, only honey remains as one sweet reminder of the human appetite in a life after people.

Transcript

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

Errors

• The Last Supper wasn't damaged by food fights by French troops, instead it was damaged by the French by spending their free time throwing rocks, bricks, and horse manure at it.
• During the collapse of Randy's Donuts, the restaurant can be seen shaking despite some of it doesn't.

Trivia

• The title is reference to the Last Supper, the final meal that Jesus shared with his apostles in Jerusalem before his crucifixion, as well as the painting named after it which is featured within the episode.
• It is the first episode where the episode highlights the side exploration being Mexia Supermarket.
• It is the first episode in Season 2 where the producer is uncredited, and the third episode overall with this error.
• The segment of the episode featuring the Mexia Supermarket is directly cited and referenced in a popular video series by Nexpo, featuring lost media. The footage episode was the only publicly available source of footage covering the cleaning process. More footage supposedly exists, though it has not been published.

Gallery

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