History Series / Aftermath

* Main/BittersweetEnding: Despite the chaos and trauma of the first few decades, gradually humanity is able to adapt to a post-oil world with renewable technologies, urban farming, and mass transit.

* DaylightHorror: Given that the earth's rotation is slowing, plenty of horrific scenes happen in daytime.

* CozyCatastrophe: For some countries, such as Brazil, which were working towards conversion to biofuel at the time, the crisis is mitigated somewhat. [[FridgeLogic Why more technologically advanced countries such as the United States don't start a crash biofuel project is left unanswered]], especially since the US military had such a program in development for years at the time the show was aired precisely to address the PostPeakOil scenario.
* DaysOfFuturePast: Eventually, people start growing their own food and keeping livestock as people usually did prior to the second half of the 20th century. While there is technology that fills in the gap left by the absence of oil, it's prohibitively expensive and only shows up in a few upper-class enclaves. Later still, once lithium and biofuel technology becomes widespread, new towns are formed along railroad tracks, in much the same way settlements during the 19th century were founded in places like the American Midwest.

* DaysOfFuturePast: Eventually, people start growing their own food and keeping livestock as people usually did prior to the second half of the 20th century. While there is technology that fills in the gap left by the absence of oil, it's prohibitively expensive and only shows up in a few upper-class enclaves.

* HopeSpot: The survivors who head to the American Midwest manage to build subsistence farms and fish for their food, [[spoiler: but face ever-decreasing rainfall as the Earth continues to slow. When it stops completely, there's no longer any Coriolis Effect. Without any wind to push storms at sea over land and not enough energy or resources to desalinate ocean water, they're doomed to starvation.]]

* ThreeLinesNoWaiting: The special follows three different groups: one heading for low-lying states like Kansas, one staying in Miami and one leaving San Francisco to colonize the new supercontinent. [[spoiler: The first is ultimately doomed to starvation when the Coriolis Effect shuts down, the second abandons Miami once their resources run out and the latter-most manage to build a small colony. After a year, the Miami group manages to migrate westward and joins up with them.]]

* MisplacedVegetation: Early on, the higher temperatures and lower levels of carbon dioxide cause maples, oaks and evergreens to experience a mass dieoff. This allows plants like bamboo and long grasses to move northward, resulting in Chicago and Toronto having foliage like that of Southeast Asia.

* FireWaterJuxtaposition: Two of them. One is the difference between the poles and the equator as the earth slows. While the poles are flooded, the equator not only is dry, but also has a atmosphere too thin to sustain human life. The other is the "day/night" cycle left after as the Earth slows and eventually stops. The hot, scorching day, and the dark, freezing night.

* BigDamPlot: The Hoover Dam eventually collapses after 200 years, restoring the Colorado river's free access to the sea.

* BeneathTheEarth: Where humans are eventually driven due to the levels of radiation and heat. [[spoiler:They die out when Earth's surface temperature reaches 371 °C, as the internal heat from Earth's mantle prevents them from going low enough to escape the heat from the surface.]]

* HumanitysWake: [[spoiler:After humanity goes extinct, concrete structures and objects made of synthetic materials are the first to crumble. Stone structures like the Great Pyramids and Mount Rushmore last longer, but they eventually melt when Earth reaches 1,320 °C. Ultimately subverted, as some people escaped to the outer planets, where temperatures have now reached habitable levels.]]

* BitersweetEnding: Despite the chaos and trauma of the first few decades, gradually humanity is able to adapt to a post-oil world with renewable technologies, urban farming, and mass transit.

* HiddenSupplies: Deconstructed; people who have conserved or hoarded gasoline find out that it has a limited shelf life (a few months to a year). One family [[KickTheDog learns this the hard way]] when it tries to drive a sick child to the hospital.

* CosmicHorrorStory: After humanity vanishes, most signs of its civilization disappear within a few centuries time, the remainder after the next ice age. Other lifeforms move on and adapt. Planet Earth is 4.5 billion years old, the universe three times that; humanity's whole existence was just the blink of an eye.

* NextSundayAD: Humans vanish without a trace on June 13th of an unspecified year.

* HumanitysWake: [[spoiler:After humanity goes extinct, concrete structures and objects made of synthetic materials are the first to crumble. Stone structures like the Great Pyramids and Mount Rushmore last longer, but they eventually melt when Earth reaches 1,320 °C.]]

* EscapedAnimalRampage: All animals have to escape their confines or starve, as humans are no longer there to feed them. This leads to such unusual sights as bush elephants migrating through suburbs and lions desperately trying to catch monkeys hiding out in playgrounds.

* MonumentalDamage: Famous monuments such as the Eiffel Tower and the Art/StatueOfLiberty begin to degrade from unaddressed rust decay and erosion after about a century. The Eiffel Tower eventually disappears in a new swamp that appears in the Paris metropolitan area, the Statue of Liberty falls apart and its pedestal is ground down by the expanding Ice Age glacier in North America and even the pyramids of Egypt eventually end up buried underneath the desert sand.

* MonumentalDamage: Famous monuments such as the Eiffel Tower and the Art/StatueOfLiberty begin to degrade from unaddressed rust decay and erosion after about a century. The Eiffel Tower eventually disappears in a new swamp that appears in the Paris metropolitan area, the Statue of Liberty falls apart and its pedestal is ground down by the expanding Ice Age glacier in North America.

* {{Irony}}: Despite the fact that it gets too hot for humans to walk on the surface of the earth without a spacesuit, at that very same point, there is not enough oxygen for flames to be possible.

* BeneathTheEarth: Where humans are eventually driven due to the levels of radiation and heat. [[spoiler:They die out when Earth's surface temperature reaches 371 °C.]]

* BeneathTheEarth: Where humans are eventually driven due to the levels of radiation and heat.
* HeatWave: As the sun rapidly ages, the earth's temperature also rises.
* HumanitysWake: [[spoiler:This scenario leads to human extinction on Earth.]]

* NextSundayAD: When each scenario occurs

Humans, as a species, have existed for a relatively short time in Earth's history and are still relatively young compared to certain other species. Yet of all species that have walked the earth, humans are unique in that we are the only species known to have created lasting structures and buildings and to have hed a lastingly massive impact on the earth's ecology. However, on June 13th of an unspecified year, all humans have vanished without a trace for no explicable reason. Population Zero then details what has happened to the artifacts that humans have left behind after the long years without usage or maintenance, as well as what happens to the earth's ecology after humans have been removed from the equation.

* MonumentalDamage: Famous monuments such as the Eiffel Tower and the Art/StatueOfLiberty begin to degrade from unadressed rust decay and erosion after about a century. The Eiffel Tower eventually disappears in a new swamp that apears in the Paris metropolitan area, the Statue of Liberty falls apart and its pedestal is ground down by the expanding Ice Age glacier in North America.

This episode is unique among the episodes of Aftermath in that nothing happens specifically overnight. The earth's rotation is already slowing, though at such a low rate that it's barely even measurable. It's just that one day, right out of the blue, this slowing starts to accelerate to the point where the earth stops spinning entirely 5 years after the start of the earth's rotation's accelerated deceleration. This was probably done because if the Earth did stop spinning in an instant, everything on the surface would be thrown eastward at more than a thousand miles per hour.

* EarthquakesCauseFissures: We don't see the full effect of this, but it's explained that one consequence of slowly slowing the Earth down would be extremely powerful earthquakes in places that had never seen Earthquakes before; Earth's magnetic field relies on the fact that the layers of the Earth spin at their own speeds. Change that speed, and the change varies from layer to layer, resulting in ungodly amounts of friction coming into play, manifesting as gigantic quakes.
* EverytownAmerica / FlyoverCountry: Ironically enough, one of the safer places to be once the Earth has completely stopped is what's left of the American Midwest. It's just out of reach of the flooding and the worst of the solar radiation, though humans living there would only just be able to make by through subsistence, and face a perilous first few years there without desalination plants to extract water from the ocean.

* HereWeGoAgain: [[spoiler: In the last segment, 40 years after the oil disappeared, rechargeable electric batteries have become commonplace especially for vehicles. A news clip discusses the approach of 'peak lithium' in a few years when the world's lithium supplies are no longer commercially viable...meaning the scenario is likely to repeat itself.]]

* EverytownUSA / FlyoverCountry: Ironically enough, one of the safer places to be once the Earth has completely stopped is what's left of the American Midwest. It's just out of reach of the flooding and the worst of the solar radiation, though humans living there would only just be able to make by through subsistence.

* TheApocalypseBringsOutTheBestInPeople: Inverted with the United States closing its borders entirely because of the influx of refugees and migrants. Played straight, however, in that the various problems that result from the increased population result in scientists uniting to solve them and, most importantly, in ways that ensure everyone's survival.
* DepopulationBomb: The [[spoiler:ironic]] result of this scenario. The world population is [[spoiler:4 billion]] 35 years after the world's population doubled overnight to 14 billion.

* OverpopulationCrisis: The episode explores exactly this, when the population of Earth spontaneously doubles overnight. At first humanity tries to cope by rationing resources and rapidly expanding construction, but eventually society breaks down, resulting in huge population movements and an eventual DepopulationBomb.

* CozyCatastrophe: For some countries, such as Brazil, which were working towards conversion to biofuel at the time. [[FridgeLogic Why more technologically advanced countries such as the United States don't start a crash biofuel project is left unanswered]], especially since the US military had such a program in development for years at the time the show was aired precisely to address the PostPeakOil scenario.
* DaysOfFuturePast: Eventually, people start growing their own food and keeping livestock as people usually did prior to the 20th century. While there is technology that fills in the gap left by the absence of oil, it's prohibitively expensive and only shows up in a few upper-class enclaves.

* EverytownUSA/FlyoverCountry: Ironically enough, one of the safer places to be once the Earth has completely stopped is what's left of the American Midwest. It's just out of reach of the flooding and the worst of the solar radiation, though humans living there would only just be able to make by through subsistence.

* EscapedAnimalRampage: All animals have to escape their confines or starve, as humans are no longer there to feed them. This leads to such sights as bush elephants migrating through suburbs and lions desperately trying to catch monkeys hiding out in playgrounds.

'''''Aftermath''''', premiering as ''Aftermath'': Population Zero'' was produced in Canada, but premiered on the Creator/NationalGeographicChannel. Its titular premise is a hypothetical scenario of what would happen if [[HumanitysWake all humans suddenly vanished without a trace]]. Eventually, more follow-up episodes were produced based on the same concept of coming up with a hypothetical scenario, doing copious research into what exactly that change to the status quo would impact, and then filming an episode the occurrence of the scenario as well as its aftermath.

''Aftermath: Population Zero'' was produced in Canada, but premiered on the Creator/NationalGeographicChannel. Its titular premise is a hypothetical scenario of what would happen if [[HumanitysWake all humans suddenly vanished without a trace]]. Eventually, more follow-up episodes were produced based on the same concept of coming up with a hypothetical scenario, doing copious research into what exactly that change to the status quo would impact, and then filming an episode the occurrence of the scenario as well as its aftermath.