I liked this article. It was a weird feeling to read it because I felt like it would be quite nice if humans disappeared from the planet…
At the same time I’m happy to be here, enjoying all the tech we have and the tools we have, the food we eat.
I still think humans can live in harmony with nature but we don’t have any good leaders to take civilization in that direction. So in the end, we will probably perish because we fought over power and money until there was nothing left.
I think you could get a good idea of what it would be like in the Chernobyl exclusion zone.
Or Fukushima. There are fantastic docs of both places.
Exploring the Unbeaten Path did a great series on it, they visit Fukushima I think two different times, but here’s one of their more popular video from that series, well worth a watch:
https://youtu.be/UJUvStUdY3E?si=wPEDSaGBsE_H7TR0
edit: If you’re curious for more, here’s the playlist for the whole series: https://youtu.be/DdhongzGxV0?si=70AuMB9xpFKYrqaa
Life After People was a History Channel series on that exact subject and they’ve put Season 1 on YouTube.
I used to watch that show all the time as a kid. I’ll have to rewatch it again thanks!
it would be quite nice if humans disappeared from the planet…
“Nice” is a human concept so if all human beings are gone, is it really “nice” and does it matter?
Because Mother Earth don’t give a F. Most of what we say about saving the Earth is in the sense of making it sustainably habitable for us humans and not to f up the economy too badly.
Mother Earth don’t care if it gets 30 degrees hotter and if the atmosphere turns into sulfuric acid because for the vast majority of its lifetime, it’s been human free anyways.
Well, the earth as a geologic entity doesn’t care about what we do or wether we exist, but it makes a hell of a difference for the living species we have as roomates. So for the earth as an ecosystem, it does matter whether we exist or not - and it’s better if we don’t.
Well that’s what I mean. OP says it’s kinda nice if we’d be all gone, and my response was what’s the point of things being “nice” if there are no humans to observe or affirm it? The only thing that is meaningful for us is if we find a way to sustainably coexist with everything, and not self-loathe our species into oblivion.
I always say this when people start harping about mother earth and climate change.
Before I go further and get downvoted. I BELIEVE IN CLIMATE CHANGE AND I WANT TO SAVE THE ENVIRONMENT.
There is literally nothing humans could do currently to actually destroy the planet, even if we set off all the nukes at the same time in the worst places. There’s nothing we could do to truly eradicate all life either. Plenty of places bacteria and small animals could survive until it’s chill again to evolve. What we can do is make it unlivable for ourselves and our offspring. Not that I personally care much since I don’t want kids and neither do my siblings but we still do our parts to at least minimize our impact.
The World Without Us by Alan Weisman is a good book to read if you’re interested in this topic.
Agreed. Interestingly the English canal tunnel would be among the last human made structures left after everything else is gone. That and the faces on Mount Rushmore. Old steel bridges would last for pretty long too as they are extremely overbuilt. Back then they really didn’t have ways to calculate how strong they need to be so they just made everything way beefier than necessary.
One thing I frequently think about is just how toxic everything would turn if humans suddenly disappeared. There’s a hell of a lot of waste and fuel that would go unmanaged and seep into the ecosystem. Nuclear reactors across the earth would a irradiate almost the entire water supply on the planet. Life might survive but not before a lot more species went extinct. Huge tracts of land would be no longer able to support life for possibly thousands of years
In the words of the inimitable Jeff (Chef) Goldblum, “life, uh, finds a way.”
So many tailings ponds and retention dams would fail and severely mess up the landscape.
yeah exactly my reaction, I’d worry the world would be messy - at least near any nuclear plant that doesn’t self shut down… I agree it would irradiate an enormous amount of water and soil but 1000 years later? most of the hot stuff will be long gone and nature will just adapt around the dead zones. see the results @ Pripyat.
Most of the radiation won’t go away for tens of thousands of years actually, We also don’t know the long-term effects on the animals and life in those zones, extreme cancer occurrence is likely for one
Farm animals would be easy prey for bears, coyotes, wolves and panthers. And pets? The cats would go feral – that is, they would become wild, though many would be preyed upon by larger animals. Most dogs wouldn’t survive, either.
Yeah, I think that tracks. When we domesticated our feline masters they seem to have retained most of their natural predatory instincts, so cats would probably do quite well for a while until the large animals come. Most dogs wouldn’t survive probably, domestication has changed them so much compared to wolves, also we practically mutilated some breeds when we bred them.
chernobyl like 50 more times i guess. and most of the apartment pets likely starved.
Probably a lot of unnatural disasters, like power plants shutting down since no one is maintaining them
There’s a dort of documentary that tries to show that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_Sapiens_(film)?wprov=sfla1
I like the idea of humans dissapearing.
From a neutral point of view, it’s too simple, one species in exchange for millions of other species and a planet.
Also on the universe scale, humans don’t really matter so no one cares except for us.There’s a book on this topic, The World Without Us, by Alan Weisman.
If you want to see how fast things erode all you need to do is pull up half of Detroit on Google Maps and flip through streetview photos a few years apart.
