June 9, 2008

Your House Without You

Have you seen this? Guess how many years it would take for your home to disappear - then watch...



And that seems to be not withstanding all the stuff that would be in your house.

From the site for Alan Weisman's new book, The World Without Us.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

I was off by a couple hundred years! That is amazing (and depressing, to say the least).

mainely stitching said...

Hmm. It does make me think of the remains of homesteads I've stumbled across during various wanderings....

this single spark said...

Only the plastic survives!

This reminds me of a novel by Richard (?) Wright, called "A Scientific Romance". I don't recall much of the plot (except that it was unsatisfying), but this guy hops a time machine to the future and finds himself in an unpopulated England where nature is happily just doing it's thing. The setting of the novel is very striking and gave me lots to think about. Much like this video!

f. pea said...

I think my vinyl siding would still be there. *sigh*

Unknown said...

Hallo I'm Chiara from Milano Italy.
Do you have seen that video? What do you think about?
http://www.koreus.com/video/telephone-portable-mais-popcorn.html
Ciao
Chiara

A&AC project said...

I saw a T.V program here with exactly that title (I didn't check but maybe that's a clip from it) with the same premise so obviously based on the book. It was an eye-opener indeed.
What I felt sorry for were domesticated pets who mostly wouldn't do very well in a world without humans otherwise it was good news for nature.

Wool-n-weeds said...

I think this is a bit of an exaggeration. In the town I live in, there are places that have only bits of crumbled brick or stone that used to be chimneys when I was a child and I'm only 35. I personally know of a house that was occupied by a nice and clean family that the roof has already fallen in and local wildlife has taken residence in. My own grandmother's house has only been vacant about 10 years, and is at least where the 200 year mark on the video shows. It's been just over 500 years that Europeans have been here in the states and less than that that those types of homes have been built, but there are barely footprints left. Don't believe the alarmist hype about us making things that will last forever.

Anonymous said...

I'm not sure what Angela's point was, but I have also seen this - just drive around Detroit sometime. You'll see formerly glorious houses from the 1920s now utterly beyond redemption. Sad.

I chuckled (ironically) when one of the last scenes was of the tire floating down the stream 400 years from now! Maybe our houses won't, but some things do last (almost) forever.

Ali P said...

In my experience Nature reclaims much much faster than this video leads one to believe, and I think that was Angela's point. Especially in the case of open ground such as lawns, parks, and fields. Within a few growing seasons they would be home to young trees of the 'first stage of reclaimation' sort.
It was funny for me with the woodpecker pecking at the house....I lived in a farmhouse and every Spring we had a woodpecker pecking at our pine clapboard siding. What a wake up!!!LOL

Anonymous said...

Great Video!!! However, we need a grass roots movement and a major call by many countries to turn to alternative energy vehicles and other forms of alternative fuel vehicles that need to be made and committed to. To continue fooling around with fossil fuels is totally folly on many levels!
Elmo the electric bikes and electric scooters guy