Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Hello, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the podcast
Speaker 1: that looks at the future and says I'm fixing a
Speaker 1: hole where the rain gets in. I'm Joe McCormick, and
Speaker 1: I'm Lauren Bolcabama and our regular host Jonathan Strickland is
Speaker 1: not with us today. He is out prowling the grounds
Speaker 1: of cs or he might actually be on an airplane
Speaker 1: at the moment, coming back home, arresting from his journalistic
Speaker 1: predatory technology right. It is well deserved ressed. I think
Speaker 1: he has been working his little heart out out there.
Speaker 1: But anyway, today we're joined by a special guest co host,
Speaker 1: our friend and co worker, Christian. Christian introduce yourself. Hey guys,
Speaker 1: I'm Christian Sager. I'm a writer and host here at
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works. I started out working on Stuff of Genius,
Speaker 1: one of our shows, and I'm currently a writer with
Speaker 1: these guys on both Brain Stuff and What the Stuff.
Speaker 1: Those are two of our video shows video shows. It
Speaker 1: is a distinct pleasure to have you with us today. Christian. Thanks,
Speaker 1: I'm happy to be here, especially since we're going to
Speaker 1: be talking about various features of destruction and decay, and
Speaker 1: that's actually what we think about when we think of you.
Speaker 1: It's what I associate mostly with your face. It makes sense. No,
Speaker 1: not in plock marks and the age. No no, no,
Speaker 1: no no no, not not your face as a decaying thing.
Speaker 1: But like um, next to those concepts sort of in
Speaker 1: the dictionary, there's the idea of Christian Sager. That's accurate.
Speaker 1: You are pretty metal, so I'm probably I mean, I
Speaker 1: don't want to put myself on the back, but I'm
Speaker 1: probably the most metal person at out stuff works. Well,
Speaker 1: we are glad that we could have you here to
Speaker 1: to talk about ruins and the future of ruins, right, ruins.
Speaker 1: I mean, usually we don't get to talk about ruins
Speaker 1: on a podcast about the future because ruins are something
Speaker 1: we associate with the past. But since we are talking
Speaker 1: about ruins, I thought it would be the only occasion
Speaker 1: I ever get to read Percy Biss Shelley on the
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking podcast. So we will begin with a short
Speaker 1: reading of Ozzymandias by P. B. Shelly. Do it. I
Speaker 1: met a traveler from an antique land who said, two
Speaker 1: vast and trunkless legs of stones stand in the desert
Speaker 1: near them on the sand, half sunk, A shattered visage
Speaker 1: lies who's frown and wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command?
Speaker 1: Tell that it's sculptor. Well dos passions read? Which yet survives?
Speaker 1: Stamped on these lifeless things, the hand that mocked them,
Speaker 1: in the heart that fed on the pedestal, these words appear.
Speaker 1: My name is Ozzymandias, King of kings. Look on my works,
Speaker 1: he mighty and despair. Nothing beside remains round the decay
Speaker 1: of that colossal wreck, boundless and bear the loan and
Speaker 1: level sands stretched far away. He's nicely done. Thank you
Speaker 1: for that won the poetry slam. And I also that
Speaker 1: if Shelley was alive today, he would totally be the
Speaker 1: singer in a black metal band. I know it is
Speaker 1: very black metal. It's like it's very serious and death
Speaker 1: and destruction and time watches everything away. But it's also
Speaker 1: got a kind of great, cheesy dust in the wind
Speaker 1: quality to it. Yeah, so yes, part black metal, part Kansas. Yeah. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: and I like the schadenfreud to it too, like it's
Speaker 1: it's very much like like let's suck a look at
Speaker 1: that guy. Well, I like how the line look on
Speaker 1: my works you mighty, and despair takes on an ironic
Speaker 1: double meaning, I believe in the way the king. I
Speaker 1: think he's referring to the Egyptian King Ramsey's the second,
Speaker 1: also known as Ozzy Mandius. Uh. He's sang at the
Speaker 1: other kings like, look at this stuff I've built you stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can't build anything like this. You should despair. But really,
Speaker 1: to the reader, it starts to take on the idea
Speaker 1: of time. We're all going to look on his works
Speaker 1: in despair because this happens to all of us, everybody
Speaker 1: in the Yeah, the loan and level sands where we
Speaker 1: get brought down by time. Now, this may sound like
Speaker 1: kind of a bleak place to begin a podcast about
Speaker 1: the future, and so it's not going to be all
Speaker 1: death and destruction. We wanted to look at the physical
Speaker 1: features of civilization and imagine what they're going to look
Speaker 1: like in the future. What what will the cities of
Speaker 1: today look like in five hundred years, a thousand years,
Speaker 1: two thousand years from the present. What will future humans
Speaker 1: see if they visit the ruins that are to them,
Speaker 1: What the ruins of ancient Rome are to us? Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so how would you like to start with that, Joe. First,
Speaker 1: let's limit the scope a little bit of what we're
Speaker 1: talking about here, Like, let's let's put out some definitions. Okay,
Speaker 1: So if we're going to try to imagine the future
Speaker 1: ruins of modern civilization, we should sort of define our terms.
Speaker 1: And one of the first things I want to get
Speaker 1: out of the way is the definition of civilization, because
Speaker 1: sometimes the word civilization can take on a value judgment connotation,
Speaker 1: like a thing that is civilized is good. A thing
Speaker 1: that's uncivilized is like impolite or improper. You know, you'd say, Oh,
Speaker 1: my friend Johnny, he's always urinating in public. That's uncivilized behavior.
Speaker 1: Or oh she doesn't serve that kind of tea in
Speaker 1: her home, how uncivilized, right right? Or as Henry Rollins
Speaker 1: has been known to say, you're so civilized, do you
Speaker 1: get brutalized? Yes, that is not at all the way
Speaker 1: we mean the word here. We mean civilization more in
Speaker 1: the historical or archaeological sense, which has a lot of connotations,
Speaker 1: but overall denotes a settled lifestyle in densely populated urban areas,
Speaker 1: or in word cities city life, and in fact, the
Speaker 1: English words city and civilization. I think both have their
Speaker 1: root in the same Latin terms like civitatum or civitas, which,
Speaker 1: from what I can tell it has kind of an
Speaker 1: abstract and complex definition. But it has to do with
Speaker 1: being a citizen or the citizen ry. And what does
Speaker 1: that have to do with ruins? Well, most, though certainly
Speaker 1: not all, ruins as we experience them today, come from
Speaker 1: these larger civilizations as opposed to the less populous and
Speaker 1: less civilized in this sense, cultures, cultures that don't build
Speaker 1: large monuments or large buildings, you know, right, certainly functional
Speaker 1: or artistic either one. Um and you know by which
Speaker 1: we what we really mean is that it's easier for
Speaker 1: people to kind of trip across a four fifty foot
Speaker 1: tall pyramid UM than even very complex systems of roads
Speaker 1: or eerie aation that might be buried under a few
Speaker 1: layers of sediment in a dessert somewhere. UM. And we
Speaker 1: are getting better at the ladder, by the way, And
Speaker 1: there's some really interesting research going into that through like
Speaker 1: new satellite imaging techniques and other technologies. But that is
Speaker 1: a subject for an entirely different podcast. Yeah, that's interesting
Speaker 1: that it brings up the issue of that there's sort
Speaker 1: of a differential survival rate for different physical remnants of society.
Speaker 1: So you have some things that we build in our
Speaker 1: cities that are still easily visible hundreds of years in
Speaker 1: the future, and other things that you might be able
Speaker 1: to find evidence of if you're really looking for, but
Speaker 1: the average person wouldn't necessarily notice it. Yeah, depending on
Speaker 1: the maintenance of those artifacts, on maintenance, and also on
Speaker 1: just the climate and other other surroundings. But we will
Speaker 1: get into those in a minute. Let's define what ruins
Speaker 1: are the same way we define what civilization is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there are actually a lot of interesting theories of ruins
Speaker 1: of you know, ruination theory. That'd be a wonderful like
Speaker 1: sub specialization that you could study. I wish I could
Speaker 1: say I was an expert on ruination. I'm not, though,
Speaker 1: if I could go back and start my education over,
Speaker 1: I might go down that path. But anyway, in the
Speaker 1: general sense, ruins are sort of what's left behind when
Speaker 1: human made structures are partially destroyed or they just fall
Speaker 1: out of the cycle of use and maintenance. So if
Speaker 1: if a building is very old but you're still using
Speaker 1: it daily and living and working and shopping in it,
Speaker 1: and you're making repairs, fixing cracks, maybe replacing parts of it,
Speaker 1: You probably wouldn't call that an example of ruins, even
Speaker 1: if it's very old. Yeah, the other hand, ruins tend
Speaker 1: to be things that people might visit, but they don't
Speaker 1: remain in use and kept up through maintenance. So there's
Speaker 1: this piece that I came across when we were doing
Speaker 1: our research, which was in National Geographic and they did
Speaker 1: a trio blog posts called a Dialogue of Civilizations conference.
Speaker 1: It was in Guatemala, and so apparently it was like
Speaker 1: their notes based on the conference, and they talked. They
Speaker 1: had a whole section that was all about the ancient
Speaker 1: past as a window to the future, looking at ruins
Speaker 1: and thinking about this very concept. And one of the
Speaker 1: things that they came up within that was that they
Speaker 1: think of ruins as being emblems of our vanity. They
Speaker 1: are basically, uh, but not just that, but that they
Speaker 1: are also signs of whatever civilization they represent, part of
Speaker 1: their identity or their ideology. So I think it's important
Speaker 1: to keep in mind as we're talking about ruins today,
Speaker 1: like or the ruins of the future in particular, how
Speaker 1: are the emblematic of our vanity as a culture or
Speaker 1: our particular ideologies. Right, you can you can feel almost
Speaker 1: the desire to be worshiped emanating from many of the
Speaker 1: monuments and ruins of old you see, like the Pyramids
Speaker 1: of Giza. At least for me, when I look at
Speaker 1: something like that, it radiates this sense of somebody wanting
Speaker 1: to be seen as powerful. It's the idea of immortality
Speaker 1: through uh through an artifact longer than you will, or
Speaker 1: even your legacy. Yeah, and so whatever it is that's
Speaker 1: so important to you that you want to make it
Speaker 1: big enough to last. So if you think about the
Speaker 1: modern day equivalent of something like a pyramid or the
Speaker 1: Arc de Triumph, for something that shows off the power,
Speaker 1: the splendor, the glory of the civilization, what is that today? Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, just off the top of my head. We
Speaker 1: we are in Atlanta right now, and looking out the window,
Speaker 1: what I see are skyscrapers and malls and public transportation hubs,
Speaker 1: a lot of cars, a lot of highways. These are
Speaker 1: the things that we seem to venerate nowadays. They're not
Speaker 1: necessarily built to last in the way that the pyramids were.
Speaker 1: Um maybe like for Atlanta in particular, one of the
Speaker 1: things I always think about is the stuff that they've
Speaker 1: built downtown when the Olympics were here in the nineties.
Speaker 1: So there's stuff like that that is probably meant to last.
Speaker 1: But what else, what do you guys think? You know,
Speaker 1: what I think of is I think of uh, public
Speaker 1: use areas like sports stadiums, yeah, yea, and things like that.
Speaker 1: Those to me shout a kind of and and I
Speaker 1: don't know if the way in which they're physically constructed
Speaker 1: means they'll actually last longer than any other type of building.
Speaker 1: They might or not, but they at least speak to
Speaker 1: me like this is a it seems to embody values
Speaker 1: and to scream power projection of the Colosseum of our time.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, I mean also also very lart, like we've
Speaker 1: got a six Flags just outside of Atlantic there. Uh yeah.
Speaker 1: Roller coasters, they're they're beautiful. I don't know if you've
Speaker 1: ever seen any of the images from Coney Island, but
Speaker 1: I have been to Coney Island and Countists. So the
Speaker 1: Cyclone is the world's maybe the world. It might just
Speaker 1: be the United States most oldest roller coaster and uh
Speaker 1: most oldest you know, yeah yeah, yeah, uh, And it's terrifying.
Speaker 1: I've written on it. It's just wood and nails. Well,
Speaker 1: how do you ride on it? Now? They just put
Speaker 1: you in a paper bag and push you down the
Speaker 1: top hill. Yeah, well they just draped whales to your
Speaker 1: arms and legs. It's but yeah, no, it's it's really scary. Yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: Another thing that seems to be suggested by the idea
Speaker 1: of ruins is something about decline. Because with lots of
Speaker 1: the structures we have, I mean, on their own, they
Speaker 1: could fall into disrepair and become ruins, but we keep
Speaker 1: them up. So what leads to people not being able
Speaker 1: to keep up their structures? Well, it assumes I think,
Speaker 1: like one of two things probably that we can boil
Speaker 1: it down to that there is either the civil zation
Speaker 1: has either gotten to a point where it's mismanaging it's
Speaker 1: structures so much that it's neglecting them, or there's some
Speaker 1: kind of external force that has come in and it
Speaker 1: has done damage to it, like in war for instance.
Speaker 1: And perhaps there's been some kind of event that has
Speaker 1: forced the population to move to a new area, something
Speaker 1: climate related perhaps. Sure. Yeah, that's the other thing that
Speaker 1: sort of touches on what I wanted to add to
Speaker 1: complicate this. I don't think it's necessarily always mismanagement, though
Speaker 1: that can be part of it, because there can also
Speaker 1: be just the fact that people don't care about certain
Speaker 1: things up and leaving the stuff. Yeah yeah. Or perhaps
Speaker 1: for example, when coal production fell to oil production, a
Speaker 1: lot of a lot of places were kind of abandoned
Speaker 1: because those factories were not or there's mining towns were
Speaker 1: not necessary. And we're going to jump ahead because one
Speaker 1: of these places that we're going to talk about is
Speaker 1: exactly that. Now we'll save it fort well, we'll save it, yeah,
Speaker 1: we can. We can reference back in a second spoilers.
Speaker 1: We're gonna talk about Cole. Just one more distinction that
Speaker 1: might be interesting is the difference between what we would
Speaker 1: often call ruins and then something more like monuments, and
Speaker 1: they can sort of leed together. But I just wanted
Speaker 1: to think about the fact that you wouldn't always look
Speaker 1: at something like the Pyramids of Giza and call that ruins,
Speaker 1: right because nobody lived there, right. Well, I mean people
Speaker 1: might have camped out there, I don't know, but generally
Speaker 1: meant is like a thing to behold about some of
Speaker 1: these other ones that like we think of as wonders
Speaker 1: of the world, so the pyramid is one of them, right,
Speaker 1: What about like the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, Well, as
Speaker 1: far the funny thing about that is, I think it's
Speaker 1: disputed whether the Hanging Gardens of Babylon actually existed from
Speaker 1: whatever call. But yeah, there are plenty of monuments and
Speaker 1: things like you could look at, like Mount Rushmore or
Speaker 1: things like that. If if after a long time Mount
Speaker 1: Rushmore becomes sort of eroded and it's not maintained, would
Speaker 1: you call that a ruin? I don't really, but you'd
Speaker 1: call Machu Picchu a ruin, right, certainly? Sure? Or um
Speaker 1: if for some reason everyone had to flee Paris and
Speaker 1: and um Notre Dame was still standing, you could call
Speaker 1: that a ruin. Yeah. So I don't know exactly what
Speaker 1: the dividing line is there, but I think today we
Speaker 1: want to talk about both. I mean, we want to
Speaker 1: talk about monuments and the things you'd more traditionally call ruins,
Speaker 1: the structures we build that without maintenance can fall into disrepair.
Speaker 1: Although it is certainly anthropologically interesting that these days some
Speaker 1: of our largest and most impressive structures are not something
Speaker 1: of religious and cultural significance, like the pyramids, but rather
Speaker 1: something of practical cultural significance, like the Hoover Dam. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's true, right, Like also like the Golden Gate Bridge.
Speaker 1: That's probably one of the things that will although we'll
Speaker 1: talk about this later how long bridges will last after
Speaker 1: humans are stopped taking care of them, But that's probably
Speaker 1: something that people would look back on as being a
Speaker 1: ruin or relic of humanity. Yeah. And then there are
Speaker 1: there are, of course structures that are not really lived
Speaker 1: in spaces, but they're also not really monuments of symbolic significance,
Speaker 1: or at least not entirely that they have some kind
Speaker 1: of practical use, like say the Roman aqueducts or the
Speaker 1: Great Wall of China. I think, Christian, you've actually been
Speaker 1: to the Great Wall of China, haven't. Yeah, it was
Speaker 1: a long time ago, over twenty years ago, but yeah,
Speaker 1: I spent some time in Beijing when I was younger. Uh,
Speaker 1: And the Great Walls fascinating because it was essentially designed
Speaker 1: as like a defense mechanism against different invaders. Heard it
Speaker 1: didn't work very well, right, well, and then you know
Speaker 1: it was multiple walls that, over the course of various
Speaker 1: empires were redesigned and linked up together, etcetera. Etcetera. But uh,
Speaker 1: you know, it's been neglected for over three hundred years
Speaker 1: now and a lot of it's in disrepair. However, at
Speaker 1: the same time, because it is I don't know, necessarily
Speaker 1: that's a ruin, but because it's a monument, it's one
Speaker 1: of those things that is a tour attraction as well,
Speaker 1: and the tourism industry that comes to the Great Wall
Speaker 1: of China helps in the deterioration of it. I myself,
Speaker 1: twenty years ago, uh, when I was but a boy,
Speaker 1: carved my initials in the Great Wall of China. It's
Speaker 1: not the kind of decision I would make today. That's
Speaker 1: good to hear. I probably would have done something like
Speaker 1: that when I was a kid. I was there. What's
Speaker 1: wrong with us? We all want to leave our market,
Speaker 1: which is really what all of this podcast is about.
Speaker 1: U though, though I would argue that that stuff like
Speaker 1: tourism um, although it does degrade these structures at a
Speaker 1: certain point just through normal wear and tear, in addition
Speaker 1: to things like vandalism, you also wind up having governments
Speaker 1: um looking at these structures as being a useful monetary
Speaker 1: agent and therefore having you know, making the decision to
Speaker 1: to restore and repair them to at least protect them. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: crime do you do what A and the funds from
Speaker 1: the tourism industry would probably go into their restoration, whereas
Speaker 1: if people weren't visiting it, there wouldn't there wouldn't be
Speaker 1: that fun. Yeah, okay, Well, let's transition from thinking about
Speaker 1: these ancient to modern ruins to thinking about modern ruins
Speaker 1: that got their ruinations started really recently. Yeah, because there
Speaker 1: are a few places on this planet, as populated as
Speaker 1: it tends to be, that that we can call ruins
Speaker 1: like right now today that we're created less than a
Speaker 1: century ago. Okay, And I want to start with one
Speaker 1: that if you've never looked at pictures of Prepriot Ukraine,
Speaker 1: go pause this and go google it right now that
Speaker 1: that's that's the Chernobyl site. Yes, okay, are you back? So?
Speaker 1: Prepriot Ukraine was a city that was evacuated due to
Speaker 1: the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster in nineteen six when
Speaker 1: they had a major melt down and lots of dangerous radiation.
Speaker 1: Was least. They had to abandon the area and it
Speaker 1: has been uninhabited by humans ever since. So that's been
Speaker 1: like twenty nine years now, almost thirty years. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: we're closing in on the thirty year mark. So what
Speaker 1: happens in a place like that where there's been nobody
Speaker 1: to keep up the repair, the maintenance, the weeding, the
Speaker 1: all the things we need to do to keep a
Speaker 1: city functioning like it normally. Does I think what happened?
Speaker 1: The things that's fascinating about that from what I read
Speaker 1: in the research is that despite the nuclear incident, that
Speaker 1: there is still uh pervasive plant life there that is
Speaker 1: growing through the structures and and and breaking them apart. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it's very interesting. So we should think about
Speaker 1: this place as a complete dead zone. It's been tainted
Speaker 1: by nuclear radiation. You know, this should be just a
Speaker 1: poisoned place that's become like the moon, at least we
Speaker 1: would imagine that, But then when you actually look at it,
Speaker 1: it's almost like a nature preserve out Yeah. The report
Speaker 1: that lots of species have bounced back there, right, Like
Speaker 1: one of the things that I was reading was that
Speaker 1: you wouldn't normally see like particular species of wolves in
Speaker 1: the civilized still populated areas around there, but that they're
Speaker 1: very prevalent within the ruins of this town. That's funny.
Speaker 1: It's like our presence is more poisonous than a radiation leak.
Speaker 1: Also certainly to to lots of parts of nature. Um,
Speaker 1: but but humans are certainly not going to go back
Speaker 1: in there any time, particularly soon. You can contrast that
Speaker 1: with the kind of conditions that you see in other places,
Speaker 1: like for example, Hashima Island a k A good Kanjima,
Speaker 1: which is an island off of Japan that was kind
Speaker 1: of famously used as a set piece for the most
Speaker 1: recent James Bond movie, Skyfall. It was that creepy abandoned
Speaker 1: city where the bad guys hanging out. Yeah, however your
Speaker 1: bard m gets all up on Daniel Craig and one
Speaker 1: of the buildings. Yeah, and what's fascinating about it in
Speaker 1: real world, not in the film is that spoilers Here
Speaker 1: we go. It was a coal mining production facility. So
Speaker 1: this island was populated largely by Korean forced laborers, Korean
Speaker 1: and Chinese forced laborers. And this was going on largely,
Speaker 1: I believe, in the nineteen twenties through the fifties. I
Speaker 1: think it was shut down circ of nineteen Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think that the last people left the island in the
Speaker 1: early seventies, I read, because petroleum had based basically taken
Speaker 1: over the industry from coal and there was no longer
Speaker 1: need for them to run the island the way they were.
Speaker 1: So what do the structures actually look like now? Well,
Speaker 1: all the all the glasses gone, the concrete is kind
Speaker 1: of starting to erode. All of the wooden bits that
Speaker 1: were outsides of the structures forming um, and any kind
Speaker 1: of like like lattice work or porches or things like
Speaker 1: that have all fallen to the ground. Um. It's it's desolate.
Speaker 1: It's also super dangerous from what I was reading, because,
Speaker 1: like sky Fall, they actually only used exterior shots for
Speaker 1: the stuff that they shot there because the production crew
Speaker 1: deemed it too dangerous to shoot on the island. Yeah,
Speaker 1: certainly with principal actors. Yeah, they recreated look to the extras. Um, No,
Speaker 1: they they recreated one of the courtyards on on the
Speaker 1: Pinewood Studio sets out in the UK in order to
Speaker 1: to film the scenes that you see of them standing there. So, um,
Speaker 1: Hollywood magic, y'all back to this island. Yeah, well that's
Speaker 1: There's this really cool thing I want to mention about
Speaker 1: the island is that there's a stairway within the ruins
Speaker 1: that goes up to the highest point on the island,
Speaker 1: which is like a rooftop shrine, and you can see
Speaker 1: all of the ruined structures from there. The stairway is
Speaker 1: called the Stairwood Hill. Yeah, and it requires like special permits,
Speaker 1: Like they basically only let a very few people go
Speaker 1: out to the island at all because it's so dangerous
Speaker 1: and you have to have a second special permit to
Speaker 1: climb the stairway to hell. All right, So before we
Speaker 1: get into our our third example here, let's pause for
Speaker 1: a second. How stoked would you guys be to go
Speaker 1: to that island? So stoked? Like the most stoked I
Speaker 1: would be would have your barden be there when they're there.
Speaker 1: I mean, he'll drive the boat, but you don't, he's
Speaker 1: not there with you. But also Chernobyl, I'm kind of
Speaker 1: fascinated by, Like I would totally. I mean, if I
Speaker 1: could go there, yeah, yeah, if I could go there
Speaker 1: relatively safely, then then it would be well. I mean,
Speaker 1: I mean, Hashima Island is is a little bit of
Speaker 1: a weird situation because it was it was a death camp.
Speaker 1: I mean, it was absolutely a very very terrible place
Speaker 1: for very many people. Um, but there's something What I'm
Speaker 1: getting at here is there's something inherently compelling about these
Speaker 1: ruined structures that seemed to fascinate us as human beings. Yeah.
Speaker 1: People have been into the idea of ruins for a
Speaker 1: long time. I mean you could see that. It's not recent.
Speaker 1: It's something that you know, Medieval and Renaissance people were
Speaker 1: obsessed with the ruins of the Roman Empire, and you
Speaker 1: could see it in the Romantic period. I think that
Speaker 1: was a big thing, like the Romantic writers were really
Speaker 1: into the ruins of castles and Gothic ruins. And also
Speaker 1: when um, when Egyptology became really popular in the Victorian
Speaker 1: era or so, it became so posh too. I mean
Speaker 1: it has always been in certain circuits of the world
Speaker 1: very posh to go into old ruins of places and
Speaker 1: take stuff and put it in your house. Um. That's yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: But that maybe that offends our sensibilities today because we've
Speaker 1: got our own feelings about what should be done with ruins,
Speaker 1: Like we have this current sensibility that no, no, no,
Speaker 1: ruins need to be preserved. As if there was like
Speaker 1: a certain point where it's like, well, now they are
Speaker 1: in their natural state, and we can't alter them from
Speaker 1: this point on when tons of stuff has happened to
Speaker 1: them already. You know. In fact, some people have even
Speaker 1: been so obsessed with the idea of ruins and this
Speaker 1: kind of romantic notion of ruins that they've planned what's
Speaker 1: known as ruined value into the initial construction of buildings,
Speaker 1: Like when they're making new buildings, they say, you should
Speaker 1: think about how this will look when it falls into
Speaker 1: disuse in hundreds or thousands of years. Unfortunately, one of
Speaker 1: the main names that gets associated with this idea of
Speaker 1: ruined value is Albert Spear, who was a German architect
Speaker 1: who is a Nazi in Hitler's government. Who. I mean,
Speaker 1: you could argue to what extent this idea of ruined
Speaker 1: value is inherently associated with fascism or Nazism. But but
Speaker 1: I think one of the things that's fascinating about him,
Speaker 1: that you and I were talking about earlier, is that
Speaker 1: apparently none of the structures that he had planned around
Speaker 1: this philosophy of ruined value really lasted or or because
Speaker 1: of the war. Yeah, well, I mean it is interesting
Speaker 1: to think about he He in his tells this story
Speaker 1: of how you know, he was seeing a building demolished,
Speaker 1: because one building was being demolished to make room for this,
Speaker 1: I believe Zeppelin landing field that he wanted to build.
Speaker 1: And as he saw sort of the guts of the
Speaker 1: building being torn out, he saw these steel girders and
Speaker 1: it was just like, that is hideous. I mean, that
Speaker 1: is just awful. We should build buildings with stone so
Speaker 1: that when they fall apart, it will be this beautiful
Speaker 1: organic falling apart, rather than this ugly mangold falling aplo.
Speaker 1: Once again, we're going back to emblems of vanity and
Speaker 1: legacies of men who want to be remembered forever. It's
Speaker 1: also a cultural value judgment on the particular beauty of
Speaker 1: of different objects. And and I would argue that if
Speaker 1: he had existed in a postmodern artistic culture that perhaps
Speaker 1: he would have felt differently about about the beauty of
Speaker 1: steel rebar. Sure. Sure, And it might be what some
Speaker 1: people would accuse this of being sort of the the
Speaker 1: inherent Nazism of this idea of ruined value, because it's
Speaker 1: this idea that you're going to have this huge, you know,
Speaker 1: reich that lasts forever and it must be remembered as Gloria,
Speaker 1: and it must have a certain esthetic value. Yeah. Absolutely, Yeah,
Speaker 1: But let's let's not talk about Nazis too much, shall we.
Speaker 1: Let's instead talk about North Korea. Yeah, they're far better.
Speaker 1: So the third example that we have to talk about
Speaker 1: as being a sort of modern day quote unquote ruin
Speaker 1: is the Korean d m Z, the demilitarized zone between
Speaker 1: North Korea and South Korea. Um so, so real quick
Speaker 1: and facts. It's a hundred and fifty five miles long,
Speaker 1: it's two point five miles wide. It's basically mountainous area.
Speaker 1: And before it was the d m Z, it was
Speaker 1: populated by rice farmers who had their patty fields out
Speaker 1: there and who were basically living there and working the land,
Speaker 1: I mean for like five thousand years. Like this was
Speaker 1: a civilization for a very long time. Yeah, So I
Speaker 1: wonder what of that kind of settled area remains after
Speaker 1: you've removed human life from it. Well, So it's interesting. Um.
Speaker 1: One of the guys that we were researching, who's done
Speaker 1: a lot of homework on this stuff, Alan Wiseman, actually
Speaker 1: went there and was checking out out as part of
Speaker 1: his research into what happens to civilized areas after human
Speaker 1: beings are removed from them. And uh, the interesting thing
Speaker 1: is that it's basically gone back to being this strip
Speaker 1: of land that you can barely discern is having been
Speaker 1: populated by human beings. And that's just in like sixty years, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: something like that. Uh, it's just marshland now, and that
Speaker 1: there's just been these uh a large push of cranes
Speaker 1: have come back into the area and repopulated the area.
Speaker 1: Oh you mean the birds the white I think they
Speaker 1: were both both would probably have major problems with actual
Speaker 1: crane like mechanical cranes driving through I like, how to
Speaker 1: us the mechanical cranes are the actual crane birds? Neither
Speaker 1: of you grew up in Florida, stupid birds. Well, okay, well,
Speaker 1: let's look at what a couple of people have actually
Speaker 1: said about how the civilizations of today are going to
Speaker 1: decay in the future. First, I think we can just
Speaker 1: run through a quick list of all the different things
Speaker 1: you have to consider about what's going to happen to structures,
Speaker 1: Because it doesn't have to be just a bomb, say,
Speaker 1: or a tornado that takes down a building. You've got
Speaker 1: things like the freezing and thawing cycle. This is something
Speaker 1: Alan Weissman we just mentioned a second ago, and we're
Speaker 1: going to mention again in a minute something he talks about.
Speaker 1: That's that's when um, due to the heating and cooling
Speaker 1: over the course of a year season, uh, water will
Speaker 1: for ease and then thaw. And as we all know,
Speaker 1: one of those spectacular properties of water is that it
Speaker 1: expands when it freezes. So if it happens to be
Speaker 1: in a crack in wood or cement or anything else
Speaker 1: porous like that, it will expand, pushing the material outward,
Speaker 1: and then when it thaws and leaves the material, it
Speaker 1: leaves a crack. It's like when you get frost heaves
Speaker 1: on the highway before yeah. Uh yeah. And of course
Speaker 1: that's not the only weathering you have. You have wind erosion,
Speaker 1: you have water erosion. You could have water damage from
Speaker 1: flooding and from rain. You could have fires. I mean,
Speaker 1: fires aren't something that's just set by a kid playing
Speaker 1: with matches. Even if an area is uninhabited, it can
Speaker 1: have fires affecting it because lightning can strike. Whiteman's whole
Speaker 1: thing is that after a couple of years, there will
Speaker 1: be so much build up of vegetation and dead leaves
Speaker 1: from the continual cycles that one lightning strike could set
Speaker 1: an entire city on fire. Yeah, there's plant growth. That
Speaker 1: was something that we read about affecting pretty Ukraine. Actually
Speaker 1: is you might not think about this often, but over time,
Speaker 1: the growth of say roots through the ground can displace
Speaker 1: a building, break it apart. Yeah. I mean you've probably
Speaker 1: seen this on a small scale on sidewalks when the
Speaker 1: trees roots have grown up under a sidewalk and caused
Speaker 1: it to go all wonky. Yeah, and it's a scientific term.
Speaker 1: Of course. You can have animal invasions, human damage of
Speaker 1: all kinds. You know, it doesn't It's not just when
Speaker 1: we leave it alone. It's also sometimes when we mess
Speaker 1: with it that things go wrong. Well sure, sure you
Speaker 1: either from right, I mean, human damage can can be
Speaker 1: from bombings, or from from chemical decomposition due to various
Speaker 1: stuff that we've put into the atmosphere, or or due
Speaker 1: to intentional vandalism. Yeah. Well, let's let's go straight to
Speaker 1: Weisman now. So this guy named Alan Weissman wrote a
Speaker 1: book called The World Without Us. I think it came
Speaker 1: out in two thousand and seven. That sounds about right,
Speaker 1: And he did Uh. Interview with I believe it was
Speaker 1: Scientific American, where you knows it was like a press
Speaker 1: tour basically promoting the book, where he talked about the
Speaker 1: basic tenants of the what he was proposing in the book.
Speaker 1: And then also he wrote a piece himself for Discover
Speaker 1: magazine that was essentially like a long abstract of the book.
Speaker 1: And so his basic premise for the book is if
Speaker 1: all the humans on Earth just were to immediately disappeared,
Speaker 1: poof and vanish, what would happen to the earth. And
Speaker 1: a lot of what he talks about is environmental, but
Speaker 1: we wanted to focus on what he said about the
Speaker 1: structures we've created and the kind of ruins that would
Speaker 1: be left behind, because he really delves into those causes
Speaker 1: that you just mentioned of damage. Um. One of the
Speaker 1: first one he really looked at Manhattan very closely as
Speaker 1: a as like a case study. And and one of
Speaker 1: the first things that he noted, which I would have
Speaker 1: not known this at all, and I've been to New
Speaker 1: York a lot, is that there would immediately be water
Speaker 1: damage because there's so much water are being pumped away
Speaker 1: from Manhattan because of rainfall and groundwater and local streams
Speaker 1: that if humanity was gone within like days, it would
Speaker 1: lead to flooding and underground corrosion. I had no idea
Speaker 1: about the scene, talking about how much water is constantly
Speaker 1: pumped out of the subway system. It was just unbelievable.
Speaker 1: And then his second example is the fires we were
Speaker 1: talking about earlier, So he sees that I think his
Speaker 1: his number is like five years. Within five years of
Speaker 1: humanity leaving, like an urban area like Manhattan, there would
Speaker 1: be enough build up of leaves and tall grass that
Speaker 1: if lightning hit and just the right way, it could
Speaker 1: set all the roofs of all the buildings on fire.
Speaker 1: And the next thing he talks about is the plant growth.
Speaker 1: So he's talking about the flora that's going to grow
Speaker 1: up in around in and around Manhattan that will ultimately
Speaker 1: take over. And like we were talking about before break Apart,
Speaker 1: the buildings got really specific about that day. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: was curious about exactly, like how strong can that plant
Speaker 1: invasion be? Very strong? Yeah? Yeah, I mean, according to him,
Speaker 1: here's a direct quote, I like this, sweet carrots would
Speaker 1: quickly devolve to their wild form, and there would be
Speaker 1: unpalatable queens and lace. The horrors white broccoli, no wild broccoli, cabbage,
Speaker 1: cab broccoli, cabbage, brussels sprouse, and cauliflower would regress to
Speaker 1: their unrecognizable broccoli ancestor. And so basically it's like wild
Speaker 1: broccoli that would just be tearing the links apart. I
Speaker 1: feel like this should be an attack of the Killer
Speaker 1: Tomatoes sequel like that. That's amazing. Uh so, so what
Speaker 1: about what about wildlife coming in? Yeah? Set all these
Speaker 1: unmentionable carrots? He was, Yeah, right, he's speculating about the
Speaker 1: the feral animals that would eventually show up. And if
Speaker 1: I remembering correctly, because I can't see it in my
Speaker 1: notes right now, I think it was that rats would
Speaker 1: be the first that would like immediately overpopulate and just
Speaker 1: cover the city, and then you would get feral dogs
Speaker 1: from the leftover pets that were left behind. That this
Speaker 1: is assuming like humans just like disappear rapture style, I guess,
Speaker 1: but that all other animals were hanging out, Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: that they would all stick around, and so feral dogs
Speaker 1: would also dominate the city. He didn't mention feral cats,
Speaker 1: and I was kind of wondering about that. I wonder,
Speaker 1: why do you guys have any ideas um, cats hate Manhattan, Okay, Okay,
Speaker 1: so they would all go to the they would all
Speaker 1: go to cat have An Island in Brooklyn. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think they're they're Connecticut animals really okay. Uh. And
Speaker 1: and his other thing was was wolves. Obviously the wolves
Speaker 1: would start to close in and that there would eventually
Speaker 1: be like fights between these feral dogs and wolves. And
Speaker 1: I'm sure that the interaction I think that's him of
Speaker 1: what he was talking about here was was it the
Speaker 1: interaction of all of these things, the free cycle and
Speaker 1: the animals and the plant life. I mean, because animals
Speaker 1: are going to eat plants and deposit seeds, and also
Speaker 1: like we need to consider as well that like these
Speaker 1: what we what we would consider from our perspective now,
Speaker 1: they would be invasive species, right, that they would be
Speaker 1: coming in and destroying these structures, just doing their daily things,
Speaker 1: just making homes out of them, or like leaving waste behind.
Speaker 1: And I can bring some knowledge from one of the
Speaker 1: episodes that I've previously written for our show brain Stuff
Speaker 1: about raccoons. How raccoons do this in Japan? Uh, They've
Speaker 1: been destroying temples throughout Japan for the last like I
Speaker 1: think thirty years because there was an invade. Invasion isn't
Speaker 1: really the right word. They were imported to Japan and
Speaker 1: there's so many raccoons there now and they can't control
Speaker 1: the poem and pets, right. I think they were imported
Speaker 1: as pets and then people realize that they're terrible creepy pets. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: and they imported them as pets because there was a
Speaker 1: cartoon about a raccoon that made everybody want to have
Speaker 1: a pet raccoon. Uh, don't have a pet raccoon, kids,
Speaker 1: don't do it. Go to brand stuff show dot com
Speaker 1: and you can watch me talk on video about why
Speaker 1: you shouldn't have a pet raccoon. But anyways, in the
Speaker 1: same way, all these other animals would do the same thing.
Speaker 1: They would destroy these structures over time. You know, I'm curious.
Speaker 1: So we've talked about the different things that will be
Speaker 1: destroying the structures, and I wanted to add one more thing.
Speaker 1: If you don't believe that plant roots can destroy stone buildings,
Speaker 1: just go google pictures of the interior of the Angkor
Speaker 1: Watt Temple in Cambodia, where there are these tree roots
Speaker 1: that are moving these huge stones. But anyway, I wanted
Speaker 1: to think about what structures would remain in Manhattan, Like,
Speaker 1: so you've got all these forces acting to destroy the
Speaker 1: things humans have built. What's going to be there the longest? Well,
Speaker 1: we talked earlier about how bridges seem to have like
Speaker 1: a bit more longevity to them than like houses and
Speaker 1: stuff houses and and even buildings made out of metal
Speaker 1: and glass. Um that bridges would probably last for a
Speaker 1: couple of hundred years, that their bolts would stay together,
Speaker 1: and they they for the most part, hold up. Although
Speaker 1: that that arch based bridges would last a lot longer than,
Speaker 1: for example, suspension bridges because of the way that the
Speaker 1: I mean the same way that arches and have held
Speaker 1: up in old Roman ruins for thousands of years. It
Speaker 1: sounds generally kind of like we're saying that stone lasts
Speaker 1: longer than metal. It does. Indeed, that's because stone doesn't
Speaker 1: oxidize the way that metal does. Basically, I mean, there's
Speaker 1: there's a lot of factors involved there, but chemical decomposition
Speaker 1: of one kind or another. Our chemical wearing, I think
Speaker 1: decomposition is the wrong word, has a lot to do
Speaker 1: with it. He also did talk about about stone materials specifically, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he mentions like examples of building is that he thinks
Speaker 1: would outlast all of the our traditional metal and glass.
Speaker 1: He calls them glass boxes, which are essentially the kind
Speaker 1: of skyscrapery buildings like the one we're recording in right now.
Speaker 1: It's a metal frame with a bunch of windows. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: that um old stone buildings would last much longer. So
Speaker 1: his examples were Grand Central Station and the Metropolitan Museum
Speaker 1: of Art. Obviously, Uh yeah, I could totally see that,
Speaker 1: having been to Grand Central a lot of times. That
Speaker 1: actually sounds like a great ruin to visit in the
Speaker 1: so you go on your adventure tourism trip package to
Speaker 1: to ancient Manhattan and everything else is leveled, but there
Speaker 1: you've got the met Grand Central Station that sounds great,
Speaker 1: with trees everywhere. I'm sure after a couple of hundred years,
Speaker 1: the food court under Grand Central would be even better
Speaker 1: than it is now. I think that's a science fact, Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: one thing though that makes me wonder even about rocks,
Speaker 1: because I mean, obviously physical forces can wear down anything
Speaker 1: over time. The rocks are pretty resilient. You know, Weathering
Speaker 1: can over a long long time knock them down, wear
Speaker 1: them down, grind them away. But what about chemical reactions? Yeah,
Speaker 1: so this was one of the things he briefly talks about.
Speaker 1: Um is that, like we've invented chemical combinations like for instance,
Speaker 1: pollutants or pesticides or industrial chemicals that we use for
Speaker 1: cleaning or whatever. We don't really know how long they're
Speaker 1: gonna last, but they'll probably last a long time, like
Speaker 1: maybe longer than those bridges. Yeah, and we don't necessarily
Speaker 1: know what they're going to do if if if they
Speaker 1: got out into the environment on I mean, if they
Speaker 1: were through the water cycle or whatever, washed into modern
Speaker 1: buildings plastic two. That's another one. And his point is
Speaker 1: that like most of these things didn't even exist before
Speaker 1: World War Two, we invented them all after that, so
Speaker 1: fun exciting things to discover. Maybe those are the ruined
Speaker 1: legacies that will have in the future, is like milk bottles. Uh. Well,
Speaker 1: so Weissman had a had had a timeline. We've already
Speaker 1: mentioned quite a few things in it where he sort
Speaker 1: of predicted after X number of years this would happen.
Speaker 1: But there were a few things I think we didn't
Speaker 1: get to yet. What are they? Well, we talked about
Speaker 1: how the subway system would flood. He says that would
Speaker 1: happen within two days, and then after a year, all
Speaker 1: the street pavement would split and buckle because of the
Speaker 1: freeze effect that we talked about, the thawing two. Within
Speaker 1: two to four years, all those streets would be filled
Speaker 1: with weeds because there would be plant life growing up
Speaker 1: out of them, which was subsequently turned into trees, which
Speaker 1: would upheave the sidewalks in the streets even more and
Speaker 1: damage the sewers. Yeah, and it's after four years that
Speaker 1: that thing we mentioned earlier, the freeze thaw cycle. He
Speaker 1: predicts after four years that would really cause build things
Speaker 1: to begin to crumble. Because we don't often think about
Speaker 1: heat as benefiting the building itself. It just benefits us.
Speaker 1: But it actually can benefit the building. It can help
Speaker 1: protect the building from the freeze thawing cycle it would
Speaker 1: naturally undergo. Well. Also, certainly anything like like like water pipes.
Speaker 1: This is a thing that all of us probably have
Speaker 1: a little bit of experience within the winter if you
Speaker 1: let water freeze in a pipe and then it will
Speaker 1: first time. Yep. Oh, that reminds me I should have
Speaker 1: probably from the tap on today. Oh well, well, we'll
Speaker 1: see what happens when I get home. For those of
Speaker 1: you out there, this is one of the few days
Speaker 1: of the years in Atlanta where we get pullout freezing.
Speaker 1: So also then five years, So there's a little bit
Speaker 1: of dispute here between these, like these are arbitrary dates.
Speaker 1: And I don't think that Wiseman has like a crystal
Speaker 1: ball that he's looking into and he knows exactly what
Speaker 1: they are. Well, I wouldn't call him arbitrary, but their speculation, yeah,
Speaker 1: they're they're clever speculation. He's done his research, but there's
Speaker 1: dispute among other people of research educated. So for instance,
Speaker 1: he says within five years there would be enough growth
Speaker 1: that a lightning strike could set the city on fire.
Speaker 1: Other people say, like fifty years. I don't know, five
Speaker 1: years sounds reasonable to me. Actually, yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1: Depends it's I mean, it all depends on the location
Speaker 1: of the strike, right right, Yeah. Well, and also I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, you have to take into consideration that Manhattan
Speaker 1: is not like Tampa, and so there's a relative small
Speaker 1: amount of thunderstorms there. But but still, yeah, absolutely, after
Speaker 1: about a hundred years, he says that the roofs of
Speaker 1: nearly all houses are going to be caved in. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and of course that makes it worse for the frame
Speaker 1: of the house itself. Then at three hundred that's when
Speaker 1: we start losing suspension bridges. The arch bridges last a
Speaker 1: little bit longer, and then he jumps. He goes from
Speaker 1: three hundred thousand plus years, that's when the stone buildings,
Speaker 1: like what we were talking about with Grand Central, those
Speaker 1: buildings would start to fall because advancing glaciers would close
Speaker 1: in on New York. At that's a good thing to
Speaker 1: point out because one of the things we haven't thought
Speaker 1: all that much about is climate change, so not just
Speaker 1: the effects of weather temporarily, but as the climate, the
Speaker 1: long term climate of the area actually shifts. And if
Speaker 1: you've got New York turning into a more you know,
Speaker 1: ice age Arctic kind of environment and you've got glaciers
Speaker 1: pushing things down, obviously that's going to destroy a bunch
Speaker 1: of ruins. I mean, it might leave nothing left. And
Speaker 1: now we've talked about how the theory is that traditional
Speaker 1: metal and glass buildings reinforced with concrete or not necessarily
Speaker 1: going to last very long. But he speculates that there
Speaker 1: is one kind of metal that's going to be around
Speaker 1: for almost ten million years, and that's bronze, particularly bronze sculptures.
Speaker 1: It surprised me, but it made me want to look up. Well, okay,
Speaker 1: if bronze is going to be around for ten million
Speaker 1: years and and actually retain its shape, as he says,
Speaker 1: what are some of the coolest and biggest bronze statues
Speaker 1: in the world that we will still have that far
Speaker 1: in the future. What I found is the African Renaissance Monument.
Speaker 1: This looked interesting to me. It's one hundred and sixty
Speaker 1: ft or forty nine bronze statue in Dokar, Senegal, and
Speaker 1: the monument was inaugurated in two thousand ten and designed
Speaker 1: by a North Korean firm called the men Suday Art Studio.
Speaker 1: And if you look at it, it looks kind of
Speaker 1: like that Soviet Realism sculpture. It's got this very like strong,
Speaker 1: powerful looking man peering ahead into the future and holding
Speaker 1: a baby up in the air and holding a woman
Speaker 1: on his other arm, and like they're pointing up into
Speaker 1: the future and and the woman is pointing back into
Speaker 1: the past. And it's sort of this thing suggesting a
Speaker 1: change in in eras I think, So, what kind too
Speaker 1: beautiful and and also kind of propagandistic at the same time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So what we're kind of saying here is, if you
Speaker 1: want your legacy to last for at least ten million years,
Speaker 1: uh that you know, have a bronze statue built of you.
Speaker 1: I'm sure that's probably not that expensive. So it makes
Speaker 1: me think we may have ten million years yet for
Speaker 1: the bronze Horseman of St. Petersburg, Russia. Right, Yeah, that
Speaker 1: was on. It's for a couple of reasons. Actually, it's
Speaker 1: basis the thunderstone, which as far as I know is
Speaker 1: still the biggest stone that humans have ever moved. Wow.
Speaker 1: And then of course on top it's got a bronze
Speaker 1: horse and a rider. Also, we're gonna have the bronze
Speaker 1: fawns for a long time. Y'all ever seen the bronze fawns? No,
Speaker 1: look this up. It's in Milwaukee. It's the fawns. A
Speaker 1: it's bronze, it's a it's a monument to culture. Okay,
Speaker 1: note to self, I either have to have enough money
Speaker 1: to build a bronze statue of myself or be as
Speaker 1: famous as Henry Winkler. Yeah, okay, okay, one or the
Speaker 1: other can work. To work on it yet, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm already starting here. I'm kind of sad that. So
Speaker 1: we have a bronze fawns, but we don't have bronze
Speaker 1: statues to the characters Henry Winkler plays in Arrested Development
Speaker 1: or in Scream You remember that. Yeah, yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: I like to think of the bronze fawns is encapsulating
Speaker 1: all of them. That's probably how they meant it. Well.
Speaker 1: In addition to Alan Weissman's speculation, there was some more
Speaker 1: well researched speculation from somebody named Bob Holmes, who wrote
Speaker 1: an article for New Scientists in two six about what
Speaker 1: would happen if humans disappeared from Earth. Now, of course
Speaker 1: we're not imagining humans are going to disappear from Earth,
Speaker 1: but that's just a good scenario in which to say,
Speaker 1: what would happen to these buildings if that fell into disuse.
Speaker 1: We are imagining it, we're not predicting it. So the
Speaker 1: interesting thing about holmes research is that a lot of
Speaker 1: it overlaps with Wiseman's. But there is a couple of
Speaker 1: things in this article that he adds that I think
Speaker 1: provides some details that weren't necessarily in Wiseman's for instance,
Speaker 1: I didn't know this, but he says that modern buildings
Speaker 1: such as the one that we're in right now are
Speaker 1: typically engineered to only last for sixty years. That is
Speaker 1: not much time. Bridges are only designed to last for
Speaker 1: a hundred and twenty years nowadays, and dams for two
Speaker 1: d and fifty. And is that assuming that people are
Speaker 1: taking care of these structures for that entire time, but
Speaker 1: after that they'll just kind of like shiver and fall apart. No,
Speaker 1: I should. I should make the distinction here that he's
Speaker 1: not talking about buildings that are receiving constant Okay, well,
Speaker 1: that's more comforting. Think about how many modern buildings just
Speaker 1: in metropolitan Atlanta that are around that have been abandoned
Speaker 1: for one reason or another, that are probably closing in
Speaker 1: on sixty years old. Yeah they're dangerous, Yeah, but of
Speaker 1: course that is talking about these modern buildings. He also
Speaker 1: points out, likewise men, that the ones that are made
Speaker 1: of stone or concrete are going to be around a
Speaker 1: lot longer, like they could last thousands of years. And
Speaker 1: so I think that we're beginning to form a good
Speaker 1: picture for the kind of thing we would see in
Speaker 1: the future. I'd imagine that the future Ruins tourists would
Speaker 1: see lots of strangely punctuated sites because the way cities
Speaker 1: are laid out now, you might have an area that
Speaker 1: has a lot of solid stone buildings, and then the
Speaker 1: next block might have, you know, these modern buildings, and
Speaker 1: the next block might have houses, you know, for which
Speaker 1: there's just no trace left at all, their wood or
Speaker 1: brick houses where the roofs will cave in and the
Speaker 1: frame will eventually collapse, like we've read about here, I'm
Speaker 1: trying to picture it, and I'm imagining like Manhattan, for example,
Speaker 1: the one we've been talking about, kind of a flat
Speaker 1: landscape where many of these buildings are just gone and
Speaker 1: there's nothing, and then suddenly there are these huge, huge
Speaker 1: tall stone monuments left right. There is research being done
Speaker 1: into the the long time survivability of the kind of
Speaker 1: things that we're building with today and how those structures
Speaker 1: are going to be impacted by by whether disuse or
Speaker 1: any other number number of things. And it kind of
Speaker 1: comes down to the quality of the building, which I mean,
Speaker 1: it sounds obvious when you say it out loud, but uh,
Speaker 1: but for example, we put steel bones basically in our
Speaker 1: concrete buildings because it's a kind of quick and easy way,
Speaker 1: relatively an expensive way to to prop up all of
Speaker 1: this concrete. Okay, Um, the problem with that is that
Speaker 1: if you don't measure and pour and seal everything extremely precisely. Uh.
Speaker 1: When carbon steel is in contact with with air, and
Speaker 1: particularly humid air, which is basically air, it oxidizes. It
Speaker 1: will begin to rust and begin to warp and bend.
Speaker 1: It's also more more susceptible to heat and cold. Um.
Speaker 1: And by susceptible, I mean that that it shrinks and
Speaker 1: and and expands more than the concrete surrounding it, which
Speaker 1: can lead to cracks in the concrete and uh spawling,
Speaker 1: which is an industry term for like flaking of that
Speaker 1: kind of spawling. I know right right, your face is
Speaker 1: Spallen's harsh as a second old joke you guys have
Speaker 1: made at me. I'm just my first time on the show.
Speaker 1: It wasn't at you, that was that was at the
Speaker 1: room in general. That's but that's that's up there with
Speaker 1: nano Rod, I think for me, in terms of great
Speaker 1: insults that we've come up with here on forward thinking,
Speaker 1: you nano Rod, you never heard to say that. I mean,
Speaker 1: I haven't heard you say it, but it sounds bad,
Speaker 1: sounds sounds well, we'll talk about nano rods later. Sounds
Speaker 1: kind of sure, frankly. The other question that arises when
Speaker 1: we're thinking about the effects of our human processes on
Speaker 1: on what would be modern ruins is the question of pollution, because,
Speaker 1: especially back in the eighties, we heard so much about
Speaker 1: acid rain and uh and and and we still worry
Speaker 1: on a sort of civilization scale about what the pollution
Speaker 1: that we're creating is is going to do to all
Speaker 1: of these structures now and into the future. And the
Speaker 1: thing is that we don't really know. Yeah, um, I
Speaker 1: mean because because there's a lot of natural chemical weathering
Speaker 1: that happens. You know. The thing is is that atoms
Speaker 1: and compounds do not usually stay the way that we
Speaker 1: leave them. Um, All kinds of things happen. Water reacts
Speaker 1: chemically with basically everything. It's called the universal solvent for
Speaker 1: a reason. Um. And it's it's also a really good
Speaker 1: physical carrier of stuff. And what stuff am I talking about?
Speaker 1: Both natural and manmade dust in the atmosphere, made of
Speaker 1: all kinds of chemicals, uh, bacteria and other microfauna, and flora, seeds,
Speaker 1: um and and anything it runs across on the ground,
Speaker 1: you know, from from natural deposits of salt, which is
Speaker 1: a very cursive material, um to whatever minerals or bits
Speaker 1: and pieces of weird trash that we've left around. So, uh,
Speaker 1: it depends, is basically the answer. Yeah, And I would
Speaker 1: assume to based on that this is a complete assumption,
Speaker 1: not based on research whatsoever, but that cities that are
Speaker 1: built by the ocean and the sea are going to
Speaker 1: be more likely to corrode faster because the amount of
Speaker 1: salt content. That's yeah, I think, yeah, that's interesting. There's
Speaker 1: definitely you can um see on the outer walls of
Speaker 1: Hashima the salt erosion that has happened to the buildings
Speaker 1: versus the interior walls. Yeah. So this makes me wonder,
Speaker 1: now that we've sort of imagined this future city as
Speaker 1: it lies in ruins, how long will it take for
Speaker 1: even those ruins to disappear? Like, have any of these
Speaker 1: writers speculated on at what point we will see pretty
Speaker 1: much nothing left? So Holmes thing is he says that
Speaker 1: it would take a few tens of thousands of years,
Speaker 1: So that's pretty vague at most, before every trace of
Speaker 1: human existence is wiped out. Um, and his thing is
Speaker 1: that if visitors came here in a hundred thousand years,
Speaker 1: they would have no obvious signs that we had ever
Speaker 1: been here. Now, I imagine though, that would be talking
Speaker 1: about on the surface, right, like they could still dig
Speaker 1: and excavate there. There were parts of it where he
Speaker 1: talked about the of course, yet like, for instance, the
Speaker 1: pesticides that we're mentioning earlier, that may in fact last forever,
Speaker 1: that they would be able to dig that stuff up.
Speaker 1: And so I find a trace of culture and civilism,
Speaker 1: maybe a bronze statue in a milk bottle or something, right, Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: the bronze statue is gonna last for ten million years,
Speaker 1: but it would probably be buried exactly. Well, I want
Speaker 1: to talk about one last thing, and it's uh, is
Speaker 1: that thing in Planet of the Ape is going to
Speaker 1: happen to the statue of Liberty? Well, you know, I
Speaker 1: don't know. It's it's highly unlikely given the beach topography
Speaker 1: that we saw in the first Planet of the End
Speaker 1: that exactly what would happen to it. I was like,
Speaker 1: what is this that does not look like the New
Speaker 1: York Harbor unless maybe the statue of Liberty floated somewhere,
Speaker 1: maybe the apes dragged it as a trophy to a
Speaker 1: different area. Yeah. No, I do actually want to have
Speaker 1: one final thought here at the end, which is the
Speaker 1: question of can cities of the past disappear into the
Speaker 1: cities of the present or the future, because we we've
Speaker 1: been talking about ruins a lot of times in the
Speaker 1: context of cities and areas being left behind, people either
Speaker 1: move away or even in these hypothetical scenarios, we just
Speaker 1: imagine if people disappeared. More realistically, people you know, just
Speaker 1: migrate to a different area, but a lot of times
Speaker 1: people continuously inhabit the same areas. You can actually look
Speaker 1: up there's a Wikipedia page that's a list of oldest
Speaker 1: continually inhabited cities. So it's just this huge list of
Speaker 1: settlements that have had people in them for thousands of
Speaker 1: years continuously, and like human beings, they're just shedding flakes
Speaker 1: basically and re regenerating over the years. But by constantly
Speaker 1: inhabiting a single location for hundreds or thousands of years,
Speaker 1: and you're always making repairs, refurbishing, updating, maintaining buildings, and
Speaker 1: often tearing down old buildings to make space for nuance?
Speaker 1: Are you effectively erasing the static remnants of older versions
Speaker 1: of the city, Like, the better we get at maintaining
Speaker 1: civic infrastructure, the better we get at keeping our cities
Speaker 1: nice and clean and well repaired and up to date.
Speaker 1: Are we actually really keeping less remains of the older
Speaker 1: versions of the civilization? I mean, apart from whatever you
Speaker 1: intentionally preserve in an archaic state? Sure, right, yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean And obviously this taps into the idea of urban renewal,
Speaker 1: which I think is like a totally different topic that
Speaker 1: we can't tackle right now. But but the city of Atlanta,
Speaker 1: where we're at right now, is a fascinating example of
Speaker 1: what you're talking and that there is constant, uh, not
Speaker 1: only restructuring of neighborhoods, but also of just the buildings themselves.
Speaker 1: Think of, for instance, our our new home for how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works is going to be in a building called
Speaker 1: Pont City Market, which is was once an old Sears
Speaker 1: and Roebuck building distribution center. Yeah, and then for a
Speaker 1: number of years it was a branch of city Hall, right,
Speaker 1: and then it's at dormant for a bit a long time,
Speaker 1: and often office space. One of the coolest things about
Speaker 1: this city I think is like that, that renewal, the
Speaker 1: restoration of old properties. A lot of my favorite restaurants
Speaker 1: are are built with like the original brick, uh you know,
Speaker 1: and they used to be auto garages or whatever. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but of course when that building needs repairs because it's
Speaker 1: still got a restaurant in it, you might have to
Speaker 1: replace this wall or this pillar, or at some point
Speaker 1: maybe even knock it down. It's just in too bad
Speaker 1: a state. And of course it's good property. You know,
Speaker 1: there's there were businesses there, so somebody's going to build
Speaker 1: something on top of it. It's sort of I imagined
Speaker 1: it like this. It's the difference between doing multiple drafts
Speaker 1: of a document on a typewriter, where you've got saved
Speaker 1: copies at each stage. You could think of that as
Speaker 1: equivalent to, you know, building a civilization and then moving away,
Speaker 1: versus keeping a document updated in a digital format, Like
Speaker 1: you've got a word document and every time you revise it,
Speaker 1: you make changes, you edit, and then you save over
Speaker 1: what you had before, sort of erasing the evidence of
Speaker 1: the pre vi a straft. Yeah, I think your metaphor
Speaker 1: would would work perfectly with paper and pencil, right if
Speaker 1: you had written a document on a single sheet of paper,
Speaker 1: and then you wanted to change something about that document.
Speaker 1: You're raced over it, and then you you wrote over
Speaker 1: that part that you were raised, but there would still
Speaker 1: be slight remnants of the original writing. Yeah, And it
Speaker 1: makes me wonder which physical civilization disappears faster and more completely.
Speaker 1: Is it the one that's been abandoned to the elements
Speaker 1: of the earth, into weathering and all those things we
Speaker 1: talked about earlier, or is it the one that's constantly
Speaker 1: being saved over, like which city is maintained farther into
Speaker 1: the future, the one we keep living in, or the
Speaker 1: one that we leave behind to nature. For from what
Speaker 1: we've seen, of the three examples we talked about, the
Speaker 1: island off the coast of Japan, the Chernobyl area, and
Speaker 1: then the d m Z Zone, I mean, I guess
Speaker 1: I would say that it's those areas that are abandoned
Speaker 1: because those have only been Let's see which one of
Speaker 1: those is the oldest, since there's been human population there,
Speaker 1: and the d m Z is the one that, as
Speaker 1: far as you know, Wiseman says, you can barely tell
Speaker 1: that human beings lived and worked there. It was also
Speaker 1: less structured. I mean that's something the didn't have, like
Speaker 1: metal tall buildings the way that the island did. Yeah right,
Speaker 1: hash Hashima was actually the site of some of the
Speaker 1: first concrete skyscrapers that were ever built. So so maybe
Speaker 1: a better thing to look at would be the difference
Speaker 1: between ancient cities with stone buildings that were abandoned versus
Speaker 1: ancient cities with stone buildings that have been continuously inhabited.
Speaker 1: I don't know which the answer is, But if you're
Speaker 1: listening and you have an opinion on this, why don't
Speaker 1: you write in and let us know. Yeah, there's a
Speaker 1: few way that a few ways that you can get
Speaker 1: in touch with us. Um. You can email us at
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Speaker 1: can find us on Facebook and Twitter and Google Plus,
Speaker 1: where our handle is FW thinking. UM. You can go
Speaker 1: to our website, which is FW thinking dot com in
Speaker 1: order to find many podcasts and videos of your potential interest.
Speaker 1: And but before we sign off here, let's give one big,
Speaker 1: last warm thank you to Christian for joining us on
Speaker 1: this adventure. Oh, thank you, thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: I loved having me on the show that I can
Speaker 1: live up to Jonathan Strickland's uh gravitas. I think you
Speaker 1: have at at the very least, you've brought the baritone
Speaker 1: voice that we needed into the podcast room. Um, where
Speaker 1: can Where can Everyone find your work mainly on brain
Speaker 1: Stuff show dot com, although I'm more recently writing for
Speaker 1: our house Stuff Works YouTube channel for the show What
Speaker 1: the Stuff that We Do that Lauren performs on, and
Speaker 1: both Lauren and Joe help write with as well. Cool.
Speaker 1: Thank you, thanks again for joining us, and thanks again
Speaker 1: for listening. We will talk to you all again really soon.
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