hashima island

By Linda Stasi, TV Critic
"Life After People"
[****] (Four stars)
Tonight at 10 on History
WHAT if everyone disappeared?
OK, if that included my upstairs neighbors, it wouldn't be a total loss. But what if even they went the way of all flesh?
History's very compelling, bigbudget new series, "Life After People," which was spawned from a hugely successful 2008 special, will tell the story of what would happen to the Earth if it were devoid of humans.

Tonights premiere episode, "The Bodies Left Behind," is kind of misnamed. Although it begins with what would happen to the 3,000- year-old Egyptian mummies if humans weren't around to keep them hermetically sealed and finishes up 100 million years later with the remnants of our modern-day skeletons, what the episode really shows - in computerized detail -is what would happen to the things that we've created in an attempt to be immortal.

From the Sistine Chapel to the Statue of Liberty to our skyscrapers and domed stadiums, homes and apartments, the destruction would be inevitable.

Without the constant hand of humans, eventually everything would revert back to nature.
Tonight's episode proves it by taking us to Hashima Island in Japan where the Mitsubishi company once housed 15,000 coal workers.

Abandoned only in 1974, the entire island of reinforced concrete apartment buildings, offices and medical facilities today looks more like 1,000-year-old ruins. So much for reinforced concrete and steel