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00:00What would happen if every human being on Earth disappeared?
00:10This isn't the story of how we might vanish.
00:15It is the story of what happens to the world we leave behind.
00:23In this episode of Life After People,
00:26the places where mankind satisfied his hunger
00:30now fulfill an appetite for destruction.
00:35Grocery stores transform into gastronomic nightmares.
00:40Some common foods reveal an explosive secret.
00:44This famous meal doesn't have a prayer of a chance.
00:49See what happened when this Texas supermarket was abandoned
00:53with all the food still inside.
00:56Welcome to Earth.
00:58Population zero.
01:00One day after people.
01:07One day after people.
01:23Now that the last supper has been served,
01:31in the over 100,000 grocery stores around the world
01:35where humans came to buy their ingredients,
01:38an eerie silence prevails.
01:45Automatic sprinklers keep the produce moist.
01:48But gone are the sounds of carts squeaking down the aisles
01:55and registers ringing up sails.
02:00Hidden among these shelves is one item that will last for thousands of years.
02:06But for now, everything appears appetizing enough to eat.
02:14And there are plenty of mouths to feed.
02:18Microscopic organisms and insects have already arrived.
02:22In fact, many of them have always been here.
02:28In the time of humans, small levels of bugs and animal parts were even allowed in grocery store food
02:35by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
02:39Eight rodent hairs in a package of noodles.
02:42Eight fly eggs in a can of tomato sauce.
02:48One hundred fifty insect fragments in a jar of peanut butter.
02:53It was estimated that humans unintentionally ate one to two pounds of insects each year.
02:59Now, without humans to consume these products,
03:08insect eggs hatch, bacteria multiply,
03:12and animals ready themselves for an aggressive assault.
03:25Two days after people.
03:29Sugar begins to show a side that's not so sweet.
03:35Ten million tons of sugar was annually pumped out of 30 refineries scattered across the United States.
03:45Just a fraction of the 18 billion pounds consumed in the U.S. every year.
03:52Granulated sugar is made by converting the juices from sugarcane and sugar beets into crystals.
03:59But the process creates clouds of dust.
04:03And this sugar dust can be flammable.
04:05Sugar dust, flour dust, any wide variety of crystalline materials build up static charges as little dust particles rub against one another.
04:18These clouds of sugar dust become a ticking time bomb.
04:21Even in the time of humans, there were four plant explosions in the United States due to a buildup of sugar dust in the air.
04:34Human engineers tried to alleviate the risks through various means, including proper ventilation and minimizing the overheating of machinery.
04:44But without workers around, these safety measures are no longer in operation.
04:51Now, in one refinery, static electricity ignites dust trapped inside a conveyor belt.
05:01The dust-fueled fireball travels to two 100-foot silos, contributing to the growing disaster.
05:11If that fire were to continue and reach the level of about 700 degrees, the moisture in the concrete, in the aggregates, that turns to steam at that high temperature, they explode.
05:22And they'll burn through the ground.
05:31Mounds of sugary sludge slosh out and solidify like cement.
05:37If the fire gets hot enough, it decomposes the caramel into constituents that will burn.
05:43You could have an enormous fire.
05:47with its architecture, large and small.
05:53Some say this building, in Taiwan's capital city of Taipei,
05:57looks like a towering stack of takeout containers.
06:01Known as Taipei 101,
06:04it was once the second tallest skyscraper in the world
06:07and was home to some of the highest restaurants on the planet.
06:11To stabilize the 101-story skyscraper in high winds and earthquakes,
06:17engineers devised a technology that moves.
06:21A tuned mass damper system was installed,
06:25the largest in the world.
06:28It's a 720-ton steel pendulum made of 41 circular plates.
06:34It's suspended between the 92nd and 88th floors by eight cables.
06:41It serves the function of dampering the swaying of a building.
06:46Essentially, what that mass damper does is sways opposite the building,
06:50cancels each other out, and then comes back to rest.
06:54In a life after people,
06:56will this sphere of steel be the building's savior,
07:00or will the mass damper become a weapon of mass destruction?
07:04Across the Pacific,
07:11at Randy's Donuts in Los Angeles,
07:14this whimsical building stands as a monument to mankind's love affair with sugary foods.
07:20At 32 feet high,
07:24the rooftop donut is one of the largest in the world.
07:27The recipe for this 20-ton treat?
07:32Rolled steel covered with concrete.
07:36But the rooftop icon clings precariously to its perch.
07:41The donut isn't actually supported on top of the building at all.
07:45It's supported on two rods that go into the earth,
07:49and then the building was built around those rods.
07:52You have a very large, heavy object,
07:55basically held up by a lollipop stick.
07:58Three days after people.
08:13Around the globe, dogs are starving for both food and attention.
08:20This Labrador retriever had a special bond with his human companion.
08:25He's a highly trained seeing eye, or guide dog,
08:29who's accustomed to spending 24 hours a day by his owner's side.
08:38With no human around,
08:39a typical guide dog is probably going to start to get a little stressed out,
08:42wondering where their person is.
08:43They're probably going to scratch at the door.
08:45They may bark a little bit.
08:46Very likely they're going to start to chew on something to relieve anxiety.
08:49That's how dogs relieve stress.
08:51Labradors were often used as guide dogs
08:54because of their non-aggressive, obedient nature.
08:58The dog's behavior has been shaped by a year and a half of intensive instruction.
09:04But the absence of his master is putting his food avoidance training to the test.
09:09They've been taught not to go into the cupboards
09:13and never, never to get into human food unless it's specifically handed to them.
09:17I don't think they will allow themselves to starve to death,
09:20but it might be several days before they indulge in, you know, household treats and whatnot.
09:26After three days, the guide dog's willpower is gone.
09:30And once the food in the house runs out, this canine has an advantage over others in the neighborhood.
09:40He's the only one that has ever seen the inside of a grocery store and knows the way by heart.
09:47One week after people, power is out in cities around the world.
10:06At grocery stores, this means lights off and no more refrigeration.
10:12Meat and dairy foods require temperatures of 41 degrees or less.
10:19As the thermometer climbs, many items begin to spoil within hours.
10:25There are three elements that speed decomposition.
10:29Heat, water and oxygen.
10:32The hotter the temperature is within a grocery store, the faster decomposition will happen.
10:37Airborne bacteria and fungi accumulate on all dead organic matter.
10:43As these microorganisms feed, they secrete enzymes that break down the once living matter,
10:50making it easier to absorb and digest.
10:54The process of spoiling is just preparing a different kind of meal for the microscopic predators.
10:59Two spoilage organisms common to meat, poultry and produce are pseudomonas and lactic acid bacteria.
11:09Pseudomonas creates the slimy texture on top of these products and lactic acid bacteria is what produces the little bubbles and smells.
11:20If you consider a bag of whole chicken, within hours spoilage organisms on the chicken would produce gas.
11:29The bag would become bloated with gas and within a few days, the bag would burst.
11:34In the produce section, fruits and vegetables are emitting another type of gas, ethylene, which causes them to ripen.
11:45As one overripe apple produces ethylene, it triggers receptors in the other apples to emit the gas.
11:53Soon all the fruit is becoming overripe and quickly rotting.
11:57Once the refrigeration fails, you're going to have sticky rotten stuff everywhere.
12:04And that's certainly going to attract animal life.
12:07The pungent odors send out a welcome call to the world of rodents.
12:12Rats actually have a better sense of smell than dogs.
12:17In fact, in 2006, experts began using rats to sniff out landmines in war-torn parts of Africa.
12:25Now, rats muscle their way into supermarkets and feast their eyes and noses on a 100-course meal.
12:36Hordes of insects also join in on the feeding frenzy.
12:41Fruit flies are attracted to the fermenting smell of overripened fruit.
12:46Blow flies are attracted to the smell of rotting meat.
12:50In eight hours, each female lays 250 eggs, which quickly hatch into maggots.
13:00If the blow flies can get into it, then you'll have maggots.
13:03100 pounds of meat could be quite gross after a couple of days.
13:10Mold also feeds on everything.
13:12The green microscopic fungi begin as airborne spores.
13:18When they fall onto damp, moist food, they produce chemicals that make the food break down and rot.
13:25As man's food supply becomes a feast for new creatures,
13:31Could it be the last days for the last supper?
13:3810 days after people.
13:49After more than a week of waiting for his master to return,
13:54this guide dog ventures out of the house.
13:57More than other dogs, he is accustomed to routine and heads for a place where he thinks he'll find people and knows he'll find food.
14:08If there was a local coffee shop that they frequented or a local grocery store that they went to on a regular basis,
14:13the dog would probably start looking for the person in those areas.
14:16Your typical blind person with a guide dog is going to go to the same grocery store day after day after day and the dog would be habituated to those places.
14:27But with everything in the store rotting, has he arrived too late?
14:34Most dogs have hardy stomachs, which secrete hydrochloric acid many times stronger than humans.
14:43The acid kills most of the bacteria, including pathogens like salmonella on raw meat.
14:54While most dogs might chase after the rats, the guide dog steers clear.
15:00Guide dogs in particular are trained to avoid dogs, cats, anything else, they're trained to ignore those things and tune those things out and do their job.
15:08If it were to encounter strange animals, more than likely it would try to avoid those animals.
15:16The grocery store will now be this dog's lifeline.
15:22But how long will this free lunch last?
15:24Three weeks after people, lactic acid bacteria has multiplied into the tens of thousands inside milk containers, which causes the dairy product to curdle and sour.
15:45The lack of artificial refrigeration has caused most butter to go bad.
15:52But there is one place on earth where butter survives after people.
15:58Deep underground in Northern Europe.
16:02Starting in the mid 19th century, peculiar wooden barrels overflowing with fatty substances were unearthed in swampy Irish and Scottish peat bogs.
16:11Archeologists determined they were containers of butter from 300 to 3,000 years old, some still edible.
16:18Because peat moss is low in temperature and inhibits oxygen from permeating the bog butter, we think that's why these products are preserved for hundreds of years.
16:34And these bogs were not only used to preserve dairy products.
16:41The Germanic tribes of Iron Age Northwestern Europe liked to keep other things in them, like human bodies.
16:49Victims of human sacrifice were buried in the bogs.
16:53And some believe they may have been pulled out from time to time to serve as honored guests at ceremonial feasts.
17:02Three months after people.
17:17Grocery stores become tombs for culinary corpses.
17:21Fruits have shriveled up.
17:29Non-packaged meat has decomposed.
17:33Only bones remain.
17:36In the time of humans, this horrifying scene had already played out in one American city.
17:42In 1999, a Fort Worth, Texas grocery store went bankrupt.
17:49The owners decided to abandon the market, leaving everything inside.
17:54Within weeks, neighbors began to notice a horrible stench.
17:59Three months after it closed, the city's Department of Environmental Management entered.
18:05And discovered a gastronomic nightmare.
18:09The smell was extremely bad outside.
18:11And we really don't have an accurate report about what it was inside because we always put people in protective gear before we went in.
18:18Workers in hazmat suits and oxygen masks began the process of cleaning up the toxic mess.
18:25It was extremely dangerous.
18:28We did not know exactly what type of bacteria may be in there.
18:31We knew that there were some potential disease issues.
18:33You saw mice, rats, anything that would live off of garbage or decaying matter is what you saw.
18:41And the report was it was so bad that you could not see the hand at the end of your arm. The flies were so thick.
18:47Each aisle they turned down brought a new and nasty surprise.
18:52Things like the apples and lettuce and the bananas that had already rotted.
18:57And you could see where those had been eaten or not on.
18:59Several of the milk containers had swollen and exploded just because of the decaying gases.
19:05The packaged meats looked like it hadn't been touched, but a lot of it was this grayish black goo.
19:11Now, in a life after people, every grocery store in the world is its own chamber of horrors.
19:24Rats have moved from meats to dry goods.
19:27Their teeth easily ripped through paper and plastic packaged goods, creating openings for other creatures to get in or out.
19:40In the time of humans, food was often manufactured and sealed with insect eggs already inside.
19:46Merchant grain beetles laid their eggs on nuts in the field.
19:52The eggs, too small to see with the naked eye, ended up in containers of nuts.
19:59Or products with nuts, like chocolate bars, where they would sometimes hatch into larvae.
20:04The larvae become beetles like these, which now feed on rice, noodles, and cereals.
20:12Red ants nibble on dried apricots.
20:15Cockroaches check into a roach motel inside plastic containers filled with cookies.
20:20The plastic holds out moisture and oxygen to keep the treats fresh for months, if the pests let them last that long.
20:31And packaging isn't the only way food was protected.
20:36In the time of humans, urban legend claimed this famous snack cake was filled with preservatives that enabled it to last well beyond its expiration date of 25 days.
20:47This snack cake has sorbic acid in it that will inhibit it from going moldy over time.
20:56Once the package has been compromised, it still has a few things going for it.
21:01It is made with mono and diglycerides and polysorbate 60.
21:06This helps all the ingredients inside kind of cling to each other and hold that moisture in so it doesn't get stale.
21:12Experts had determined these snack cakes could still be edible after 25 years.
21:28Six months after people, the 15th century fresco, The Last Supper, adorns a wall in the convent of Santa Maria della Grazia in Milan, Italy.
21:39The painting depicts the last Passover dinner Jesus shared with his twelve apostles when he announced one of them would betray him.
21:49The masterpiece doesn't merely illustrate food, it's actually painted with it.
21:56The famed artist Leonardo da Vinci used a combination of oil paint and egg tempera, a pigment mixed with egg yolk.
22:07Traditional egg tempera uses egg yolk as the emulsion.
22:13We take a small amount of pigment and we would spread that on a pallet and then take the yolk and then we're going to add approximately the same amount of water.
22:26Then we mix that with the pigment. The lake red is one of the pigments that Leonardo used on the actual Last Supper painting.
22:37You can see if you get this mixed smoothly, you get a lovely red color.
22:42The stickiness of the egg allowed the pigment to adhere to a surface.
22:47But there's a problem.
22:50Most frescoes are painted on wet plaster, so when it dries, the pigment becomes part of the wall.
22:57But da Vinci opted to paint on dry plaster, which made the colors much less permanent.
23:03Adding to the problem, the Last Supper was painted on a north-facing wall.
23:07Milano, of course, has the cold, wet winters where the rain and sleet and snow come down and lash the city from the Alps.
23:18The north-facing wall receives a great deal of moisture.
23:23In fact, less than five years after its completion in 1498, the Last Supper had already begun to flake.
23:31By the 1990s, it had undergone nearly six different restorations, the last of which involved installing a dehumidifying system.
23:44Now, with that system off forever, how long will it take to finish off the Last Supper?
23:53And which of man's foods will last forever?
23:56One year after people, produce has almost completely decomposed in grocery stores.
24:14And after humans, some foods will disappear forever, like the banana.
24:20The most common and consumed banana in the world is a variety known as the Cavendish.
24:30Wild bananas originated in Southeast Asia and Africa.
24:35They had large, dark seeds.
24:38In North America, bananas were bred to be seedless, which made them appealing to consumers.
24:43About 100 billion Cavendish bananas were consumed every year.
24:50Each banana was genetically identical to the original Cavendish plant, brought from Southeast Asia to the Caribbean in the early 20th century.
25:01But this lack of genetic diversity left it vulnerable to disease.
25:05So if you have a new strain of a pathogen and it infects one plant, it will also be able to infect all the other plants.
25:14Eventually, this Cavendish banana is going to disappear.
25:17Two years after people, insects finish off the last of the dried goods.
25:34But many of these pests have evolved to rely on humans for food.
25:39So in a life after people, they are doomed.
25:42In terms of stored foods, especially dried things like oatmeal, wheat flour, and so on, it might take them a year or two to actually work through all that material.
25:55And then there's nothing left for them.
25:57So they'll go extinct too.
25:59Stored product pests will be gone.
26:01Pests of garden plants will be gone.
26:03Crop pests will be gone.
26:05Because what they feed on is gone.
26:06Canned goods still rest on shelves protected from pests by their aluminum and steel containers.
26:15Two years after people, most have reached their printed expiration dates.
26:21But the food inside some of them could remain edible for hundreds of years.
26:28Most cans are lined with a polymer coating.
26:31It prevents the small amount of sulfur present in most canned foods from reacting with the steel or aluminum, which would cause contamination.
26:44Still, in hot, humid regions around the world, canned goods can experience a different fate.
26:49If you raise the temperature of the atmosphere around that can maybe into 105 degrees, spoilage organisms that are not killed off in the canning process, called thermophilic spores, would actually begin to grow.
27:08As they multiply, the thermophilic spores produce gas that builds up and eventually causes the cans to explode.
27:29Three years after people, the former guide dog has beaten the odds.
27:34He's relocated to a nearby park.
27:37But in a sad twist of fate, his several thousand hours of training now hinder his instincts to hunt.
27:51As the leftovers of human society become scarce, scavenging is no longer an option.
27:57The lab, and guide dogs in particular, they're not the most agile.
28:02They're not going to be the best breed out there for catching actual live prey.
28:06A large percentage of guide dogs and highly trained dogs are going to die of starvation.
28:12And they're not going to be able to find enough to survive.
28:14Five years after people, Taipei 101, once the second tallest building in the world, is struck by a typhoon bearing 200-mile-per-hour winds.
28:32Glass shatters on the lower levels, allowing water to gush inside.
28:46Taipei 101 will actually sustain relatively little damage, even at 200 miles an hour.
28:51But during that typhoon, some of the glass would fail.
28:57Water would get forced into the structure in places where it's never been before.
29:03Cracks would open up.
29:06The steel pendulum sways to offset the gale force winds.
29:11The massive damper system stabilizes the mega skyscraper for the moment.
29:1720 years without people has taken its toll on da Vinci's masterpiece.
29:33The Last Supper's had a more difficult history than almost any painting in the history of art.
29:39It's suffered one indignity after another.
29:42In 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.
29:52During World War II, Allied bombs struck the convent, exposing the mural, which had only been protected by a flimsy tarp and sandbags.
30:02Now, the Last Supper is on its last legs.
30:09A quarter century after people, the land where mankind grew as food is reverting to nature.
30:26It's a future that's already happened to one farming town in North America, where life after people has already begun.
30:3825 years after people, weather and erosion has gnawed away at much of the land and infrastructure mankind once depended on for food.
30:59It's a future that has already happened at an abandoned farm community.
31:06This is Tranquil, located in the heart of British Columbia, Canada.
31:15Here, in a valley surrounded by rolling hills, nature has quickly reclaimed its former kingdom.
31:28Today, these structures are hollow reminders of the food that was made to feed thousands.
31:36Ferocious winds and nasty winters have almost blown off the metal top of the silo.
31:46Rusted feeding stalls and dried hay is all that remains in the dairy barn, where 350 dairy cows once supplied milk.
31:57At the nearby slaughterhouse, only the faint smell of smoke emanates from where pigs were butchered and then cured.
32:09Around the site, neglected farmland has been replaced with sagebrush and weeds.
32:16Today, Tranquil is a ghostly reminder of a mysterious community.
32:22A town that was forced to reinvent itself time and time again until one day, all hope was lost.
32:33In 1857, the discovery of gold in the Tranquil River sparked the British Columbia gold rush.
32:40Two families erected a town to supply the miners.
32:45Because of its isolation, the townspeople were forced to produce all their own meat and produce.
32:51By the turn of the 20th century, the gold rush ended and Tranquil underwent a transformation.
33:00Tuberculosis, a contagious bacterial infection of the lungs, reached epidemic levels in Canada.
33:08In 1907, Tranquil was converted into a TB sanatorium because of its dry mountain air and endless days of sunlight.
33:18It was believed exposure to sunlight helped patients suffering from the disease.
33:25In 1929, the Greaves Hospital opened its doors.
33:33But residents in the nearby town of Kamloops objected to the sanatorium being located so close to their community.
33:41When a lot of the first buildings were built, there was a fear of contacting tuberculosis.
33:48I think there was even a rule not to spit on the streets because you might contact TB through anything like that.
33:56When a cure for TB was announced in 1958, Tranquil changed once again.
34:05The sanatorium became home for 600 mentally disabled.
34:11In 1985, the site was closed.
34:16A victim of government program cuts that dispersed the mentally ill residents into group homes and other institutions.
34:26Today, 90 buildings barely remained standing.
34:31At the Greaves Hospital, a sterilizing chamber for surgical tools still remains in the wall of an operating room.
34:41But now, the only thing needing surgery is the timber-framed structure itself.
34:47When anything gets abandoned and you have flat roofs and you have water and no maintenance, water finds its way into anything.
34:57Trees encroach around the buildings.
35:02One has even taken root on the roof.
35:06For 25 years, melted snow and ice has collected on the flat gravel and tar roof and then flooded the drain system.
35:15We're on the top floor of the Greaves Building.
35:18Water has come down through the ceiling, collapsing portions of the ceiling tile, and ponded on the floor.
35:23As you can see beneath me, the ponded water on the floor has deteriorated the tiles, soaked into the timber flooring, rotted it, and then moved on to rot through the floor stringers.
35:36They begin to collapse and a hole opens up into the floor, allowing water to go down onto the next floor.
35:42We can continue down one floor at a time until it reaches the bottom.
35:49Nature has also tightened its death grip around the Moon Building, constructed in 1910.
35:58What you've got down here, if you look, you can see how the tree has actually wrapped itself right around the steel tread on the stair.
36:04So it'll eventually puncture holes right on the side of this building.
36:09So outside the building, you've got all kinds of vegetation moving in on the building.
36:15So the root systems are what gets into concrete, and it'll push the concrete apart, which brings in water.
36:26Inside, nature's demolition team is working overtime.
36:30Water has eaten through the drywall ceiling, producing mold and fungi.
36:36In turn, they release mycotoxins, poisonous chemicals that wreak havoc on wood.
36:43If inhaled by humans over a period of months or years, this mold could grow inside the lungs and cause death.
36:51The ground here is now being eaten by this mold and moss.
36:58This room will be actually eaten away to nothing.
37:02And we will be in a position where this building starts to literally collapse.
37:07Today, developers plan to restore Tronquil back to a self-sustaining agrarian community.
37:20But until then, it remains a town on the verge of complete ruin.
37:2625 years after people, as nature hungers to reclaim its past, what will be the sole survivor from the supermarket shelf?
37:4530 years after people, in these dilapidated places where mankind came to dine,
38:04Americans once consumed over 20 pounds of pasta per person per year.
38:081,400 million cups of coffee a day were once gulped down worldwide.
38:16And billions of burgers were served up annually.
38:21Any semblance of a prepared meal would appear to have vanished from the face of the earth.
38:29Except in the case of freeze-dried food.
38:31Freeze-drying is a dehydration process.
38:38It removes 98% of the water in perishable food.
38:42To preserve it and make it lightweight for transport and camping.
38:47War zones.
38:49And even outer space.
38:51Freeze-dried foods can last hundreds of years.
38:55A freeze-dried food was recently tested in a university study.
38:59After 30 years compared against fresh.
39:02And that food was deemed by consumers to be almost as good as the fresh stuff.
39:08That was after 30 years.
39:10Absolutely will last 50 or 100 years.
39:12We just haven't had the technology long enough to test the theory.
39:18Freeze-dried food may still be edible 30 years after people.
39:23But the grocery stores that once sold these products have quickly deteriorated.
39:27After decades of snow and rainfall, the flimsy roofs cave in.
39:34Plant life would colonize the inside very quickly.
39:38The parking lot would become basically a green lawn first, then a meadow, then a forest.
39:4360 years after people, the Last Supper has not lasted.
39:59Mold and dirt obscure any remaining traces of the masterpiece.
40:02And memorials to human food are on the verge of collapse around the globe.
40:11In Los Angeles, rainwater is eating away one of the largest doughnuts in the world.
40:16In the case of Randy's doughnut, water is going to pool inside of that, at the bottom of the hollow portion of that doughnut.
40:26So the base might fail first, and then the top of the doughnut would come down on top of it.
40:31With its hollow steel structure corroding, Randy's doughnuts crumbles.
40:38200 years after people, Taipei 101, a building that some thought resembled a stack of takeout containers, is now being taken out by corrosion in a surprising way.
41:00The mass damper system responsible for stabilizing the structure during strong winds is no longer stable itself.
41:11Its rusted cave suddenly snapped, releasing the 720-ton steel pendulum ball.
41:20You can imagine this enormous ball falling down the middle of the building, destroying everything in its path.
41:27The remainders of deteriorating floor slabs would be pushed aside.
41:37The pendulum ball bulldozes everything.
41:41As it falls 88 floors, like a meteorite, the wrecking ball crash lands below ground level.
41:49Taipei 101 is no longer the world's second tallest skyscraper.
41:58Taipei 101.
42:04TACY HOLDEN
42:064,000 years after people.
42:09No trace of a grocery store remains.
42:13Yet there is one 21st century item that could still be edible.
42:19Unbroken jars of honey are found scattered in locations where cities once stood.
42:24In the time of humans, archaeologists had found jars of edible honey in Egypt, one dated
42:33back to 1400 BC.
42:38Honey is a hygroscopic product.
42:41This means if it's exposed to air, it absorbs moisture, which can cause fermentation.
42:48But if sealed in glass, it remains eternally fresh.
42:53Honey will last a very long time.
42:55It has low water activity, a low moisture content, and a low pH.
42:59Three key things that help this product not to decompose over time.
43:04Given a glass jar of honey with a nice tight lid, it could last for a million years.
43:11It would probably get a little bit grainy and crystallized, but it still tastes great.
43:19Throughout history, food has united communities around the world, driven science, and inspired
43:26architecture and art.
43:28Now, of all man's packaged foods, only honey remains as one sweet reminder of the human
43:37appetite in a life after people.
43:43In the next episode, life after people hits home.
43:48From humble houses, to magnificent mansions, to the highest residences in the world, there
43:58goes the neighborhood.
43:59There goes the neighborhood.