【整理】Life After People 人类消失后的世界-1
What would happen if every human being on Earth disappeared? At some point in the future, this could be the fate of our planet. This isn't the story of how we might vanish. It is the story of what happens to the world we leave behind.
The disappearance of humans may seem like science fiction. But eventually there will come a day like this. A day when people no longer walk the Earth.
reactor then
“It’s no great stretch to imagine humans disappearing from the face of the Earth. Every generation has its tales of Armageddon or apocalypse. We are the first generation that could by deliberate actions cause its own doom.”
What would life be like after people? "We are tantalized by our myth about our own destruction, but also tantalized by the notion, hey, maybe it’s the turn of someone else. What would they do if we are gone? What would the Earth do when I'm gone? It’s the most natural question in the world.
Time has run out for man. Our hold on the planet is over. Welcome to Earth. Population: zero. Within hours after we are gone, lights start going out around the world. More than 70% of power in the United States is generated by the burning of fossil fuels.
“The plant will only continue to produce electricity as long as the fuel takes to be consumed. If there’s no one around to provide the new fuel into the generating plant, then it will be quite quick before the lights start going out in cities all over the world.''
Armageddon
【圣经】 世界末日的战争：预言将在世界末日出现的善恶力量最后决战的情景
doom
(n) (rhet 修辞) death or ruin; any terrible and inevitable fate 死亡; 毁灭; 劫数; 厄运: meet/go to one's doom 死亡 * send a man to his doom 使某人陷入绝境.
(vt) to make someone or something certain to fail, die, be destroyed etc
be doomed to failure/defeat/extinction etc
　Many species are doomed to extinction.
　The plan was doomed from the start .
be doomed to do sth
　We are all doomed to die in the end.
【整理】Life After People 人类消失后的世界-2
Nuclear power plants are unlikely to melt down. The average reactor holds enough fuel to keep running for two years. But without human's consuming the power generated by the plant, the reactors will automatically shut down into a safe mode in as little as two days.
“Even wind generation can't last forever. The turbines require bearings and lubrication of those bearings in order to keep operating. If there is no one around to maintain the turbines, the electricity doesn't get produced.”
As generating plants go down, outages on the power grid contribute to a cascade of failure worldwide. After a few weeks, the planet has plunged into a deep darkness it has not experienced since humans first huddled around camp fires. Perhaps the last glow of artificial lights on earth will be seen in the American southwest.
Here, the mighty Hoover Dam Hydropower Plant takes little notice of the absence of humans. Its source of fuel is virtually limitless. "At Hoover Dam, power fuel supply is actually the water in the reservoir in Lake Mead behind Hoover Dam.  So as long as there is water in the reservoir, this power plant can keep running. There is water in the reservoir keeps supplying the water to the hydro-turbine generators. These generators are operating automatically, and that will continue as long as all of the systems are functioning normally. If I and my staff were to leave tonight, and not come back to Hoover Dam, say just in the condition that the plant is in right now, this would continue operating without us here. That would still be true after about a week, several weeks, several months, maybe even a couple of years, everything would still be running normally. In a live after people, it is possible that Hoover Dam would be one of the last power plants still running."
As the power goes out around the world, other systems are also quickly beginning to fail. "Beneath all major cities, there is a complex network of underground tunnels, and these are there for drainage purposes, or for cabling purposes, and in the case of the big cities, for transportation as well. There're many of those sit below the level of the water table, and in order to keep them dry, we have to have a system of pumps that are switched on when necessary to drain the tunnels."
Deep within New York City subways, more than 700 pumps constantly struggle to keep out a flood of groundwater, an average of 13 million gallons a day.
"Now if all these people were not around, there would be nobody to switch the pumps on. It's estimated that the tunnels would fill with water in about 36 hours."
lubrication

版权声明：本站内容均来自互联网，仅供演示用，请勿用于商业和其他非法用途。如果侵犯了您的权益请与我们联系QQ:729038198，我们将在24小时内删除。