Friday 8 November 2024

An Earth Without Us On It

Mother Nature doesn't roll with the punches anymore like she used to and despite what we think, she doesn't doesn't need us and if anything it isn't in her interest to keep us all alive and things would be a lot less bothersome if we weren't but what would happen to our Planet if one day we all just disappeared?
With Climate Change ramping up alongside Global pandemics and nuclear war, it isn't an impossible scenario anymore to us being eliminated or stupidly eliminate ourselves which is the subject of the book, 'The World Without Us'  by Environmental Journalist, Alan Weisman.
His research found that without people around to keep things running, water and electricity would quickly stop flowing so the power plants would stop working, nuclear plants would overheat and melt down and cities would flood.
Fires would rage unextinguished and earthquakes would wear down and topple structures and wooden houses would degrade quickly and rot and fall apart within 20 years while although the steel and glass skyscrapers would last longer, water damage and flooding would cause the streets to corrode and collapse.
Stone and brick buildings would remain standing the longest but after a few centuries they would also fall into ruin with motorways being the last remaining sign of human infrastructure but within 2,000 years even they would be gone and in a million years all evidence that we were here would be gone except some sculptures, plates and mugs which would be buried under sediment and mud and fossilised remains.  
As for the Earth, in our absence most other life would continue but the damage we have done to the Climate would take centuries to correct itself once temperatures stop increasing without more human emissions and life would last at least until our sun grows too hot to support it in billions of years from now.
The longest lasting sign that human's were even here would be the voyager spacecraft that has now left our solar system and carries evidence in the form of a golden record of human civilisation to possible distant alien worlds, barring a collision or a black hole of course.

3 comments:

Not really a blog said...

supposedly, mount rushmore is cut into granite that is so hard that it will look unchanged for at least 200,000 years. if it will look unchanged for 200,000 years, then it will likely be here for millions of years. i'd put my money on mount rushmore being here a lot longer than a spacecraft that will get sucked into an orb with significant gravity...

Anonymous said...

Voyager could get hit by something tomorrow but where is the romance in that?

Not really a blog said...

indeed. though space is so empty it is more likely to get sucked in by an orb with significant gravity