The glaring innacuracies and refusal to really consider any place other than NYC made it pretty boring too. How about desert cities? Why is it that NYC becomes a jungle exactly? And the cats...oh man, yeah, they'll evolve into gliding-cats in 200 years?! Finally, as a Canadian I gotta bitch about the Sears tower clip, "North America's tallest man-made structure". CN Tower anybody?

That about sums it up. Seriously though, go read some aforementioned books cause this is a waste of time and brain power. Plus I now despise David Brin.

mr4fingers

Zombat

NoPunk.

92BuickLeSabre

As a genre of art, a setting for media, nothing beats the abandoned world, for me. Something about the atmosphere of a forgotten, empty factory or the riverside victorian ruins in my city, simply.. whispers evil and wonderful things to me.

Jacquar

idoru45

I still have 'em and man they are freaky.

njudah

joneez

axelate

wishnevsky

wishnevsky

Tool-using, horse-riding apes become the dominant species until they are visted by a time-traveling Charlton Heston.

Imipolex_G-Unit

Oh, and because of the global warming, everything will start shedding their winter coats permanently, which will end up killing them in a freak winter snap.

cde

Marcus117

Biggrz

And yes, the fact that they ignored plastics all together had me scratching my head a bit by the end.

joemono

Actually, according to the special, smaller dogs will die out while average size dogs will become feral and scavenge for food, possibly even learning to hunt in packs.

Cats, meanwhile, will inherit the earth. With vertical vegetation climbing the abandoned buildings of our cities, it'll draw in the mice and birds who used to depend on our scraps, giving cats a hunting ground they'll never need to leave.

rockosolido

tetracycloide

However, if you postulate a virus with a real long incubation and total mortality, then it might work, but then people have a chance to develop counter measures, as in the case of AIDS.

And the TV show requires all humans to die. In cases of large scale mortality like the Black Death, the survivors reach a more prosperous place in a generation, and recoup their losses pretty fast.

SF idea;

A) Evil Ecologists kill off everybody with a tailored virus to let the Earth go back to a natural state.

B) People leave for another planet/dimension/plane of existence leaving Earth to regenerate.. See "City."

wishnevsky

They skipped over several topics altogether, such as the extreme longevity of plastics, nuclear waste, and our excess carbon footprint; also the book had some interesting things to say about how evolution itself was reshaped by man since he learned to walk erect (such as the extinction of megafauna) and how that may rsume in our absence.

Also notable was the complete non-involvement of Alan Weisman, the author of 'World Without Us'

choinski

joemono

Nebris

BTW here's a site that's kind of a 'complementary' to the above: [www.surrealcoconut.com]

Nebris

Gann

...hmmm...I kinda assumed he'd still be aound once all the people were gone...

ged

Anyway, I think I read that too, but what scared me most was that all those crazy Xtians were misreading the book as an outright celebration of the idea of a human-free world instead of a caution against pride, complacency, and selfishness.

Ray Gunn

Gopherit

And for the population groups that aren't in contagion lines--well, they probably also aren't going to be maintaining the cities that are falling apart, either.

braak

wishnevsky

But this is just the freak out de Jour.

BTW, the old book "Earth Abides" is worth a look. George R. Stewart, still in print.

wishnevsky

irishthunder

Though it's always nice to have a litlte fuzz-ball curl up in your lap. :)

Gopherit

Falconfire

Gopherit

I read some crap on an Xtian site that called the book "The World Without Us" - which probably inspired this show - the 'most evil book ever written'.

Nebris

irishthunder

neoshaman

Did they mention cats at all? They mention them on their website.

Emilia

I thought the same thing.

irishthunder

That said: plague.

braak

Benjo

irishthunder

But we should get off the planet anyway, just in case.

wishnevsky

Even better due to the hunting grounds highrises are going to become for mice and smaller animals, cats may even adapt into a hybrid flyer like some squirrels.

Falconfire

papercup mixmaster

Seeing how just before this momentous program the "History" Channel aired a special on the prophecies of Nostradamus or some such horseshit that featured "experts" straight-facedly discussing the likelihood that Osama bin Laden is actually the Antichrist, one could naturally assume that everyone was effing Raptured.

I'd be a bit wary of the truth value of anything after that.

Ray Gunn

ManchuCandidate

notquiteunderground

I loved every miniute of the show! Not only was it visually stunning as mentioned above, but the theory and "questions" it proposes in ones own mind sets your imagination into overdrive.

The show is definitely worth 2 hours of your time!

-TheMuffinMan-