Revealed: what the world will look like when we've gone
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The prophetic forecast for the longevity of our 21st-century civilisation is contained in research for a TV documentary, Life After People.

And it's not guesswork. The two-hour special uses scientific expertise and understanding of history in order to predict the future.

Principal advisor on the TV programme is a 53-year-old Scot, Gordon Masterton, former president of the Royal Institution of Civil Engineers.

He says: "The lights will start going out around the world almost immediately. The last power will be produced by wind turbines but, after a few weeks, the planet will be plunged into a deep darkness it has not experienced since primitive Man huddled around camp fires."

After only six months, urban areas will begin to be repopulated - by animals, including former domestic pets.

Within 20 years wolves and bears will be the master species, roaming the streets. Any buildings made of wood will start to crumble, especially where termites flourish. But concrete and steel structures will also begin to be affected.

Looking 40 and 50 years into the future, the corrosion of steel, incursion of vegetation roots and effects of the weather mean that modern buildings will start collapsing.

Within a century nearly all automobiles will have rusted away.

Eventually glass buildings will topple, stone buildings crumble; successive freezing and thawing would turn streets to rubble, ground water will rise, underground railways flood, sewers crack and lightning will ignite overgrown grasses, engulfing cities in flames.