Visit the ghostly villages surrounding Chernobyl (abandoned by humans after the 1986 nuclear disaster), travel to remote islands off the coast of Maine to search for abandoned towns that have vanished from view in only a few decades, then head beneath the streets of New York to see how subway tunnels may become watery canals. A visual journey, LIFE AFTER PEOPLE is a though-provoking adventure that combines movie-quality visual effects with insights with insights from experts in the fields of engineering, botany, ecology, biology, geology, climatology, and archeology to demonstrate how the very landscape of our planet will change in our absence.

What have past acts of destruction taught us about what will happen to mankind after the apocalypse? Is it inevitable that disaster will someday strike America on an unprecedented level? How has history prepared us? History's most dramatic events--Hiroshima, 9/11, Hurricane Katrina and others--are examined and analyzed with hard data gathered from their massive aftereffects. The disappearance of water and food supplies, the effects of deteriorated sanitation and health care on the remaining population, and the increased use of violence as a means of survival--all illustrate how societies have responded and survived.

Trends indicate that a major drought event is looming in the not-too-distant future. In as few as three decades we could experience conditions that would make the Dust Bowl of the 30s seem like an oasis. Efforts to conserve, while admirable and desperately necessary, may already be too late.

In stark detail MEGA DISASTERS projects a scenario seventy years down the road in which a twelve-year drought leaves the United States unstable and economically depressed. Western cities are abandoned, states clash for dwindling water supplies and society devolves into a battle for survival.

The "freak" weather of the last few decades--stronger hurricanes, more tornadoes, intense heat waves, to name a few--has signaled to scientists that the climate is changing rapidly and unpredictably. Events such as these were precursors to cataclysmic changes in the past. The great Mayan civilization was knocked out by drought in a few generations. The Little Ice Age battered Europe. Within a decade, freezing temperatures increased and incessant storms brought starvation, disease, and death to millions. Could this happen again?