DVD Review: “Life After People”

An amusement park ride in Prypiat, Ukraine, abandoned 20 years ago following the nuclear meltdown at Chernobyl. 

Following the success of Alan Wiseman’s 2007 book, “The World Without Us,” both the History Channel and National Geographic Channel televised documentaries positing the same question: what would happen if humanity completely disappeared from Earth? The History Channel’s “Life After People” was the first, an engrossing look at how mankind’s environment and infrastructure would respond, both in the short term and the long view, to spontaneous abandonment.

“Life After People” never bothers to say what happened to humans. But we are gone, and after the electricity goes out, creeping, untrimmed vegetation takes its toll on streets and buildings; animals run wild in formerly bustling cities; and skylines eventually crumble, transformed into verdant archipelagos. The seas brim with life, and the impact of humanity’s multiple millennia of dominion over Earth becomes negligible.