Aftermath (2010 TV series)

Population Zero[2][3]

The special that started it all documents what happens if all humans suddenly disappeared from the planet. The History Television title for this show is "The World After Humans" and the National Geographic Channel title for it is "Population Zero".

Our world is seriously dependent on oil, but humans are using it up so quickly to the point that it may eventually run out one day, and the Earth will not have enough time to replenish it. It will happen within a timescale between twenty years to a century, but what if all the oil ran out today?

In the first few minutes, approximately 100,000 billion barrels (1.6×10¹⁶ L) of under-ground oil vanishes. Alarms in oil rigs sound as pipe pressure plummets. One day after oil, asphalt, diesel, petrol, and tar supplies become limited. This causes $US2 trillion of stock to become worthless. Oil-workers are sacked.

Consumers rush to petrol stations to fill their cars up for the last time. Oil tankers are called back to their countries of origin to save national reserves of oil. Every mode of international transport is now grounded. However, steel, food, medical supplies, and trash are not being moved.

Power-stations start running out of diesel. Power cuts start spreading across the world. Five days after oil, martial law is declared to stop rioting and looting. Unemployment rises to 30%. Farm animals die due to lack of food. Coal power stations face shortages of coal. Thirty days after oil, passenger trains are running on oil rations and the roads are empty of cars. Governments decide to start a program of biofuel planting.

Five months after oil, Chrysler, General Motors, and Ford are taken over by the American government. Famine and drug-resistant infections threatens death and migration as food shipments come every second day. Emergency vehicles are still getting oil rations. This inspires citizens to experiment with chemicals to produce their own biofuel. Governments start to wonder if they should plant crops for food or fuel. They later abandon biofuel planting altogether.

One year after oil, emergency vehicles start to be run either by lithium battery or biofuel. The price of lithium then shoots up. Populations of wild animals bounce quickly back. People resort to growing their own food, keeping livestock and hunting.

Ten years after oil, artificial satellites burn up in the atmosphere as parts are not being replaced. Electronic equipment is scavenged for precious metals as people start recycling on a huge scale. Algae is used as a bio-fuel. Trucks deliver supplies to hospitals.

Forty years after oil, skies are much clearer and cleaner as pollutants are washed out. Aeroplanes, trains, and ships now run on biofuel. Lithium battery cars are expensive. People only grow and farm what they need. New towns grow along railway points. A world trade based on biofuel and lithium is now growing. Eventually, lithium supplies may begin to run out, but balancing this with biofuel production means that humanity is able to prosper once again.[4][5]

There are currently 7 billion people living on Earth, and this number is rapidly increasing. As the world population grows, the planet is literally pushed to its limits as more and more people reap the Earth of its resources, placing it under pressure. What if the global population doubled again instantly?

Overnight, the population of the earth doubles, from about 7 billion to nearly 14 billion.[6][7]

The governments of the world attempt to cope at first by ordering the construction of gigantic high rise apartment complexes. However, the often outdated public works systems cannot handle this vastly increased load - bridges break and sewers fail, leading to contamination of the water supply. Much of the remaining woodlands of the earth are cleared to form new farms and housing. In the meantime, emergency rationing becomes commonplace. Rationing of water and food becomes common, and countries who formerly exported grain stop the exports, leading to a drastic shortage. Even in wealthy countries, food and water resources are becoming strained as countries struggle to support the doubled population. Electrical power grids have difficulty keeping up with the increased demand. New coal plants are built to relieve the pressure, but they result in worldwide air pollution.

Water shortage becomes the primary problem, with not enough water available for drinking or farming. Looting becomes a problem, and martial law is declared in many places. Desalination plants are built to deal with the water shortage. People in countries that lack water and food begin leaving the country in search of resources, prompting an unprecedented human migration. Many people head to the Great Lakes, forming massive tent cities. A population crash begins, resulting in the die-off of billions of people due to the carrying capacity being exceeded.

Thirty years after the doubling event, the population crash concludes. The total human population stabilises at 4 billion, leaving humanity at a similar number to as it was in the mid-1970's.

This scenario is unique because it doesn't happen overnight, but instead over a given period of time: The Earth revolves at 1,000 miles an hour but is gradually slowing down, yet this slowing is too slow to be noticed on human timescales. But what if it significantly slowed and eventually stopped? (The reason for this is because if the Earth stopped spinning instantly, everything on its surface, including buildings and trees, would be blown away eastward across the planet by winds over thousands of miles per hour, which would kill every living thing on the surface in the process)

The spin of the Earth starts slowing down dramatically. In this scenario, Earth would stop spinning in as little as five years. The first effect is the isolation between the Global Positioning System satellites and ground-based atomic clocks. Then stock markets crash because of uncertainty about humanity's future. As time goes on, the oceanic bulge of water at the equator moves northward and southward. The water floods Russia, Canada, Antarctica, and Northern Europe. The atmosphere, once shaking solar heat out over the world and shifting air, stops, and whirls to the poles. The atmosphere starts to thin at the equator, and people have to migrate to more northerly and southerly cities to keep up with denser air. There is a higher risk of solar radiation as the magnetosphere weakens because of the slowing inner core. As the Earth slows, the crust, mantle, and the molten core slow down at different a speed. The massive friction from reduced rotational speed creates tremendous earthquakes where there have never been earthquakes before.

Humans and other animals start suffering from sleep fatigue as their bodies cannot properly work in a day longer than 60 hours.

The new oceans at the poles start inundating the Contiguous United States and Mediterranean Europe around this time. As the ocean water has moved to the poles, the sea recedes from around the equator, revealing new a new gigantic landmass which spans the entire planet's midsection. Canada, Russia, Antarctica, and most of Europe are underwater.

Eventually, the Earth stops spinning altogether. The scorching light of day lasts for six months, while the remaining six months of the year are ice-bound darkness of night. The planetary landscape now consists of one ocean approximately 10 miles deep in the north, one in the south, and a girdle of land around the equator. Most of the new continent is uninhabitable due to thin air, but the former ocean floor has sufficient air pressure for human life. A team of scientists sets sail for the new continent, but harsh storms near the equator wreck their boat and wash the survivors ashore, where they face an uncertain future.

Survivors living in places such as Kansas, Nebraska, and Oklahoma are safe from flooding and have sufficient air pressure to sustain human habitability. But in the new stable climate of the still Earth, little to no precipitation occurs, dooming the survivors— even worse, because the electricity supply has collapsed due to the flooding, the survivors are unable to desalinate the oceans for water for several years. Although the inhabitants of the Midwest face a perilous outlook from there on, the possibility of finding food remains as large numbers of sea fish live on in the drowned landscapes beyond. Survivors living in Hawaii, now part of the new equatorial supercontinent, are better off than survivors residing in Kansas, Nebraska, and Oklahoma because the colony is about 1000 miles north from the edge of the Sun's path. Survivors living there can get sufficient amounts of water from rain to last the year. They would be able to fish without having to break through the ice and put their lives at risk.

Swallowed by the Sun[8][9]

Life on Earth is dependent on the Sun's light and heat in order to survive, but our Sun won't live forever and eventually it will die one day. However, the Sun's death will not happen for billions of years. But what if the Sun started aging rapidly at an accelerated rate?

The sun gradually becomes hotter as the hydrogen at it's core is consumed through nuclear fusion, resulting in the accumulation of helium, which causes the remaining hydrogen to fuse faster to maintain radiation pressure against the sun's gravity. The average global temperature goes up by 36 °F (20 °C). In Greenland and Antarctica, snow and ice would begin to melt, causing sea levels around the world to rise by more than 200 feet (61 m), submerging coastal cities. Regular temperatures this hot, around 130 °F (54 °C), are hard for us to handle. If our body temperature increases by 6 °F to 7 °F (3-4 °C) for an extended period of time, we can suffer permanent injury or death.

At 212 °F (100 °C), we can't survive on the surface. The heat, hot enough to boil water, would blind and suffocate humans and animals as the alveoli in their lungs are cooked. The magnetosphere, an invisible field circling our planet that protects us from solar subatomic particles, would begin to weaken. Animals without lungs, including hardy creatures like cockroaches, survive longer, but eventually also succumb to the heat. The only place humans could survive is underground, and to explore the Earth's surface, humans have to wear spacesuits.

At 300 °F (149 °C), water would begin to evaporate much faster than it does today. The concentration of water vapor increases in the atmosphere, displacing oxygen, but despite the intense heat, oxygen levels become so low that fires can't start. Rain evaporates before reaching the ground.

At 700 °F (371 °C), all human life on Earth is rendered extinct. Even humans living underground are eventually killed by the intense heat as eventually they reach the point where the planet's own internal heat from the mantle prevents burrowing deeper to escape the rising temperatures. Every last drop of water evaporates, turning the former ocean floors into salt pans. The air pressure resulting from the vaporized oceans would increase to 4000 pounds per square inch (almost three times that of Venus), destroying even pressurized containers. Anything made of plastic or other synthetic materials melt. Concrete deteriorates as the water inside it evaporates explosively, resulting in collapsing buildings quite literally turning into dust. Oxygen levels shoot back up after the water molecules are split into hydrogen and oxygen due to the sun's increased ultraviolet radiation, and the lighter hydrogen escapes to space. The planet would start turning red as the iron in Earth's crust begins to rust. The return of oxygen also causes spontaneous combustion to consume anything flammable which remains.

At 2,400 °F (1,320 °C), stone structures such as Stonehenge and the Egyptian Pyramids melt down, destroying the last human constructs. Earth's crust itself melts as well.

The sun eventually enters its red giant phase after last of its hydrogen is consumed, and temperatures at its core reach the point where the helium begins to fuse. As it does so, the planets Mercury and Venus are destroyed as its radius increases to reach their orbits in succession. As the sun continues to expand, its massive outer edges begin to slow the Earth's orbit. The wreckage of the planet, now molten magma, would spiral inward towards the sun and be incinerated. Eventually the dying star stops expanding before it reaches the orbit of Mars, the sole survivor of the inner planets, now the only rocky planet in the entire solar system.

History Television title is "Red Giant", the National Geographic Channel title is "Swallowed by the Sun".