The World Without Us... [Old thread bumped]

[alltherage]

This is a cool site I found... it details how humanity's footprint would all but completely vanish over thousands of years, but the timeline starts just 2 days after human extinction.

http://www.worldwithoutus.com/did_you_know.html

[JohnnyB]

A prof of mine used to describe life as an unending battle against entropy. Seems topical in this thread.

Anyways, none of this is particularly revolutionary. Did anyone think otherwise? It's cool going to places like Angkor Wat and seeing how quickly the environment will take something back over, like the temple with all the trees that was featured in that second Tomb Raider movie, but it's hardly shocking. It's not like most things are built to last even a few hundred years with maintenance anyhow.

[ricosuave]

great book

[FlamesAddiction]

It would suck to be in New York. j/k

Seriously, I did find it interesting. I think that over a few billion years though, another species would evolve human-like intelligence. Although our "intelligence" has been a thorn to the planet, I think that under the right conditions, it can also play an important roll in an ecological niche.. It's either going to take great catastrophe for us to realize it, or we will become extinct... but eventually, nature will get it right.

[Language]

Makes you think that even if Mars didn't have "intelligent" life akin to humans, maybe some form of animal or animals did thrive there billions of years ago, and environmental effects simply wiped traces of them beyond the point where we would ever know.

Who knows, a billion years from now some advanced civilization could happen to come across the Earth and it will look just like Mars, with no visual evidence of what inhabited the planet time ago.

[alltherage]

Originally Posted by leonk19

Makes you think that even if Mars didn't have "intelligent" life akin to humans, maybe some form of animal or animals did thrive there billions of years ago, and environmental effects simply wiped traces of them beyond the point where we would ever know.

Who knows, a billion years from now some advanced civilization could happen to come across the Earth and it will look just like Mars, with no visual evidence of what inhabited the planet time ago.

Whoa.

[Kidder]

Good to know that in billions of years in galaxies far far away beings with the right technology can still enjoy a Flames game.

[Thunderball]

Originally Posted by leonk19

Makes you think that even if Mars didn't have "intelligent" life akin to humans, maybe some form of animal or animals did thrive there billions of years ago, and environmental effects simply wiped traces of them beyond the point where we would ever know.

Who knows, a billion years from now some advanced civilization could happen to come across the Earth and it will look just like Mars, with no visual evidence of what inhabited the planet time ago.

We wouldn't really know unless we had an incredibly indepth archaeological expedition which yields buried fossils and artifacts from long dead civilizations.

[NuclearFart]

Very slick, I like it. I wouldnt mind reading this book.
________
Can you get high off darvocet

[Devils'Advocate]

I think I saw this author on the Daily Show. He said that cockroach populations would plummet. This is because they generally depend upon humans for food and heat.

But other than cockroaches and domesticated animals, most other living creatures would likely increase in population.

[llama64]

Originally Posted by Kidder

Good to know that in billions of years in galaxies far far away beings with the right technology can still enjoy a Flames game.

That is strangely comforting...

[badnarik]

i wonder if humans would re-evolve

[simonsays]

Am I the only one who didn't like this at all? My problem was the one year scenario: Animals would return to the sites of nuclear reactors, which would have all melted or burned. Erm, wouldn't the resulting fallout from all of our nuclear power plants kinda change some of these predictions?

[ken0042]

Thought it was worth giving this thread a bump- there is a 2 hour show on Global tonight showing how long it would take nature to wipe out the evidence of human civilization. Might be interesting to see.

[HOOT]

Thanks!

PVR'd

[GoinAllTheWay]

Originally Posted by simonsays

Am I the only one who didn't like this at all? My problem was the one year scenario: Animals would return to the sites of nuclear reactors, which would have all melted or burned. Erm, wouldn't the resulting fallout from all of our nuclear power plants kinda change some of these predictions?

I picked up on that too. How many nuclear reactors around the world would exlpode? Pretty sure earth would be a bit of a nuclear disaster for some time.

[Russic]

Wasn't there a show on this a few months back? It was really cool. It touched on all the reactors of the world blowing up as well.

Edit: hmmm ... 10 million years hey? *builds bronze statue of self grinning like a jack-ass*

[chris lindberg]

Isn't there a tv show that's coming on soon about this topic.... what the world would be like if all humans vanished?

I think whatever came back to life on Earth (if we wiped ourselves out) would form something human like as our DNA would be all over the planet, over millions of years of course.

[FFR]

Originally Posted by chris lindberg

Isn't there a tv show that's coming on soon about this topic.... what the world would be like if all humans vanished?

I think whatever came back to life on Earth (if we wiped ourselves out) would form something human like as our DNA would be all over the planet, over millions of years of course.

Dude....did you read the thread? That's why the thread was bumped.

[Locke]

If I'm going down I'm going to carpet bomb the hell out of this wretched place and take the Earth with me.

There shouldnt be an Earth without me...

On that note, who has the time to speculate about how long the earth will take to recover once all of the humans are gone? Is this seen as a practical and reasonable allocation of research resources? Why not speculate on how many jellybeans can be put in every jar on earth? Isnt that information just as useful?

Sure, ecological recovery stats have their uses, but isnt this taking it a little far? If it ever happened there'd be nobody around to care or even determine whether the initial estimate was anywhere close. They could say anything they wanted.

I propose a boycott....whos making signs?