Exploring the Abandoned Planet (urban exploration after people)

We may think about life after death but it's our own death we consider. What happens to the planet, the culture, machines, and animals we leave behind when (if) there were no people left on the Earth to maintain and build them?

Whether you think about something small like a goldfish in a bowl or big, like pollution... have you ever wondered how much impact humans have on the planet and how the Earth would change once we were all gone?

Life After People is a video series based on the idea that people (all of us) have disappeared from the planet. There is no discussion about what happened to us. Once the documentary begins we become irrelevant (except for everything we have left behind and how we left it).

If you have seen the series or one of the movies, do you watch it for the science fiction, the illustrations of abandoned civilization or out of curiosity to see what happens to everything when we (who think we are so important) are not here any longer?

I must admit, as an urban explorer (one who explores abandoned, derelict and ruined places and things) I do love to soak in the illustrations. I could spend the entire length of the documentary just pouring over the details of the ruined places. I would enjoy time to look at still images and catch all the details of the abandoned cars, roads, homes, and all the rest.

However, this series is so great because they go beyond the everyday places and things you would think of. Places like abandoned amusement parks, churches, historical monuments. Things like domestic livestock, family pets and oil leaking from cars in parking lots over time. The series of movies would have to go on forever to capture every last detail but you can find out so much in just an hour, or two.

The Neverending Adventure of our Planet, Life and Everything

I'd like to live forever. Not because I'm afraid of death but because I want to see how the story goes here on our planet. How far do people evolve and what big inventions and changes come along? Can we clean up the planet, control over population and give the animals some habitat back? What happens to the planet.. does the sun die out and leave the Earth cold, barren and out of luck? Does the moon last or some day get hit by space junk we created? So many questions, all leading to the end of time, and farther. How long can the story go? We don't even know where it all began. So many questions and so few answers we can count on 100% as fact. I'd like to know!

We can read so many ideas in science fiction but no one really knows anything, it is all just ideas based on what we know or think we know so far.

If I could have my three wishes... the first would be for health and losing weight, the second would be to live forever and be able to get around exploring the world and seeing it al for myself. Actually seeing it all, rather than reading about it in paper and print. As a bonus I'd take photographs with a digital camera which never runs out of battery life or memory space.

The third wish I would keep in reserve, you just know something will come up and I'm going to need that extra wish somewhere through all time and space.

Are you Afraid of the Future?

I don't see it that way myself. I think things will go on, changing as we evolve. Overall, I have high expectations for people to change for the better and make things work. I don't think the worst of the destruction and mayhem will really happen. Why would we let it? Why would our future people (the children now and their children after them) let things end? We all want to live, to survive. People seem to lose track of that basic fact when they get into creating end of the world scenarios.

So, I look at the apocalypse art, the end of the world stories as fiction, creative and imaginative and a warning to those who can make decisions to keep the really bad things from happening. Actually, that's all of us, in case you were in doubt. We all make big and little decisions which can cause change or leave things the way they are.

What are you Doing About It?

Are you littering or recycling? Isn't that such a small thing and yet it's a choice each person can make everyday, several times a day. On this planet we live on, are you a recycler or a litterer? Do you keep things going, care about what you're doing or do you casually throw it all away expecting someone else to come along and clean up your mess? You might be waiting a long time for someone else to clean up your mess... maybe right to the end of the world.

Think about that next time you flick a cigarette butt out the window or onto the grass. Think about that next time you throw out paper instead of recycling it. Think about that next time you're shopping and buy items you don't really need and then think about it again as you throw out all that packaging from the thing you didn't really need. War isn't the only thing that can end our world, one way or another, it's all about the people in the world and what they do with it.

People (myself included) have a fascination with the end of the world. Maybe it's based on fear. We grew up during the Cold War (some of us). Always there has been war, or the threat of war, hanging over us. School teachers bring it up in current events. Newspapers print about the latest fighting news. It's all around us. No wonder we can't get it out of our minds. No wonder we are curious about what will happen afterwards, to the people left here. What will happen to our planet, our civilization, our governments and our businesses? Will our empire Earth still be around once everything really does hit the fan?

I'd like to know. Of course, I don't expect to live long enough to see it. So, I like to see what other people think about it and see as possibilities. Often the possibilities are on the grim side. But, there is a fascination with death, destruction and violence.

Overcome Fear of Doomsday Predictions

This year the Mayans are the predictors of doom. On December 21st, this year, the Mayans predicted a major catastrophe, an end of the world if not the planet itself. No one knows exactly what to expect. People are afraid, even those who are reluctantly afraid or skeptical.

How do you avoid the fear of this doomsday prediction or the next prediction of doom?

Keep in mind this is not the first time doom, apocalypse, Armageddon the end of the world, has been predicted. Every time the century changes, since people started using a calendar, there have been big upsets over the changing of the date. Predictions are usually about the date, the sequence of numbers or something to do with how the planets are moving in the universe around our own planet.

Look up past doomsday predictions Read and learn about them and see how much they have in common with current and future doomsday predictions. It's easy to be afraid of change - that doesn't mean the world will end.

If you are concerned about a particular prediction, do your own research about it. Don't rely on second opinions, gossip and rumours. Find out yourself and decide what you do or don't believe.

Be skeptical. Don't believe in a prediction just because it made the news, got talked about in school, at work, on the bus ride home, etc. Being popular and talked about, doesn't make it true.

Watch out for people who see patterns and believe in doomsday predictions. You can work on any idea long enough and find some kind of pattern. Try it yourself. Or work backwards and disprove the current pattern or conspiracy theory leading to the end of the world and civilization as we know it.

Stop listening. Stop reading the websites, stop listening to theories or reading about patterns and predictions.

Be optimistic. Don't waste too much time upset about something that hasn't happened and may never happen. Even if we are doomed you can only do so much to be prepared. The rest of the time you could be enjoying your life. Don't waste your time being negative about something that's only a prediction after all.

Curiousity and Urban Exploration

I like to see how the world might look in the future. I like to see buildings, those which crumble, but mostly those that survive and remain standing. I like to see how our roads, and all of our great man-made achievements weather and get taken over by nature and time.

This is the same curiousity which drives me to be an urban explorer. Whether I'm in a city, a town or in the middle of nowhere something like a rusty nail, weathered bricks, or a unidentified object possibly used in pioneer days will lure me over for a better look and a photograph.

Originally posted to HubPages. Laura has been photographing historical, abandoned, and rural ruins in Ontario since getting her first digital camera in 2006.

I like thinking about the possibilities without having to know or consider all the cold, hard facts. I like thinking about time travel, robots, aliens and my favourite… how civilization staggers upright after an end of the world catastrophe. It’s all creative ideas. True, it should grounded in facts somewhere along the way. But that doesn’t mean it has to be taken 100% seriously either. It should make your mind work, make you wonder.

If you could time travel where would you go, past or future? One of the things that bugs me most about eventually dying is not being here. Think of all the things I will be missing. It’s so unfair. That’s why I would go into the future. I want to see what gets invented. Like reading ahead to see how a really good book ends. Only, we assume, there really is no end to this story.

I want to believe in aliens too. It just seems silly to think that of all the stars and all those planets we are the only one capable of supporting life. Quite likely we are arrogant enough to assume all that life is very much like our own, breathing air, washing in water and walking around on land. What if life really was something that would fry our brain cells just trying to understand it.

Other stuff, like the paranormal interests me too. I’d like to think dragons are out there. I don’t believe it but I prefer to keep the possibility open. Why close that door completely if I don’t have to? Ghosts spook me, I do believe I have seen something, had some contacts in that direction. I don’t want to further those kind of contacts. I believe there is a lot we still have to learn about our own human brains and it’s very likely psychic powers are up there floating around in your very own grey matter. We just don’t know how to work it, no one has the instruction manual. Would you actually read it, if you had one?

I wouldn’t. It would kind of spoil it, to know everything and have all the answers too soon. Someday people (or whatever we become) will know the things we only wish we knew. But, we won’t be here. I wonder if there was a woman living a thousand years ago who was sitting doing her laundry one day and thinking, wishing she could take a peek into life a thousand years ahead. I wish she could be here for coffee and chat. It would be quite the conversation.

We tend to think of things we want right now, or in the near future. Yesterday I was watering the garden (watering in the compost really) and I began thinking about what I want 10,000 years from now.

Besides the fact that I would like to be immortal and actually see the world in 10,000 years, I would like to see seeds from the plants I'm tending now. Imagine seeing the new seedlings growing from their great-great-great-grandparents, which you watered 10,000 years ago. I like to think that I made a difference, however slight. Maybe I will never have fame and fortune, but there will be trees here which I helped grow.

At least, there should be. If not for that band of rogue aliens which come to Earth in 8462 and torch the whole place, for no reason. Just some freak road rage incident.