Aftermath: Population Zero

Being aired on NATGEO, "Aftermath Population Zero" it must be factual, right???. Wrong!!! I first noticed that there was no mention of water expanding when frozen, causing concrete cracks to expand. Then they said that the cracks exposed the re-bar in the concrete to carbon dioxide, causing the re-bar to rust. ??? Excuse me, but air consists of only 0.038% carbon dioxide, but oxygen is about 20.95%. Rust is ferrous oxide. The oxygen in the air is going to contribute 500 times more to the rusting process than carbon dioxide. Then I remembered having heard "carbon dioxide" several times before the concrete part, and noticed "carbon dioxide" continuing to be mentioned again and again. It was then that I suspected that this was more an example of poor science and propaganda than factual. I lost interest, but do not recall any mention of plant-life absorbing carbon dioxide and giving off oxygen.

The movie itself was well done as far as graphics, effects, and realism. The thing that was disappointing was how far fledged and inaccurate the predictions were when compared to solid science. It always bothers me when I watch a documentary that portrays fiction as fact.

It would be nice to see a scientific documentary where science and fact is used to educate without being riddled with politics and opinion that stretch the facts or even outright lie to support an agenda. Science is interesting and beautiful in itself.

Don't take my word for it though.If you do watch the movie, do some research to decipher fact from fiction:) I did some quick searches online and found a lot of solid information that offered scientific basis contrary to those portrayed in the movie.

I have a theory on why this is so ... because this isn't a documentary, it's a fantasy ... a fantasy by people who decry extinction, but in reality long for the extinction of one species. It's not hard to figure out which group they belong to and what their ultimate goal is.

There is no doubt, from the beginning of this "documentary" that there is a definite bias here. The film claims to be about man's impact on the world but it is really just a film about how man has damaged it, and despite our constant chaos, the Earth will thrive if it weren't for us. This was obviously written by a Green Freak and me, being a man who refuses to buy into the corporate and political lie that is the Green Movement, finds this film condescending, ugly, and unremarkable. It has hard to show an impact when the film continues to show recycled stock footage of the same forests and fields over and over. They overgrown landmarks of man look like late 90s video game graphics and the overall look of the film is just ugly. It tries to persuade its viewers into thinking it's a smart hypothetical by showing the chaos that will ensue immediately after man disappears. However, this is quickly drowned out by the narrator's condescending tone and downbeat morality. I hated this doc. It is certainly no Planet Earth.

In the middle of this show there could be a fairly interesting documentary. There are some well researched facts such as those about nuclear facilities and the way concrete buildings collapse. There's also a lot of repetition and a lot of *DUNK*DUNK* very obvious statements. Still, it might have been an ok doc IF they had got rid of whatever idiot made the decisions about music and foley (sound effects). In film, the number one thing music and foley have to do it NOT intrude on the narrative, but they do the opposite in this one. Every five seconds there's a different godawful breakbeat sample or over-dramatic sound effect that totally drowns out the voiceover. It seems as if it was edited to the lowest common denominator, that is IF WE DON'T CONSTANTLY SCREAM AT THE ATTENTION DEFICIENT FOUR YEAR OLD WHO WE THINK IS OUR AUDIENCE THEY'LL TURN THE CHANNEL!! Take the narration, cut out the repetition, use subtle music and foley, cut the weird obsession about what will happen to first world landmarks and you could have had an ok documentary.