The curse of Emmerdale

All the talk of Chernobyl as we approach the 20th anniversary of the accident, coupled with concerns about dwindling oil supplies and global warming, suggest that the human race will probably be extinct within the next couple of centuries.

In perhaps a thousand years from now, aliens will finally discover an Earth with many overgrown physical remnants of human existence but no representatives of its civilisation left to greet them.

You can imagine their archaeologists exploring ruins, burial sites etc and speculating on what caused the final extinction of the human race.

Then somewhere in England a time-capsule will be found which provides the definitive reason for the disappearance of the human race. A corroded video tape of Emmerdale is finally decoded and alien anthropologists are unanimous in their conclusion: in-breeding.