We are as much part of the planet's ecosystem as the animals we strive to protect or eliminate. Many are dependent on our existence. In our rotting cities which animals would survive and multiply, which fail? Many animals are successful because of us. What will happen to them when we are gone?
Crumbling cities, packs of dogs attacking domesticated cattle and sheep. New primary predators emerging from the rubbish of rusting metal and collapsing sky scrapers.
Check out Alan Weisman's book: The world without us
http://www.worldwithoutus.com/about_book.html
This book would help in answering your question.
Shashway,
> All the satellites will fall off like shooting stars.
No.
Without human intervention there might be the odd collision in the geostationary ring, but most satellites (MEO and higher) will continue to orbit for aeons.
The chance for that is very very low. It may be happen not from nature but possible from human mistakes.
The fact is Prasanna that twice in living memory humankind has come close to complete disaster-the Black Death, which significantly changed societies around the Old World, and the Fly epidemic of 1918-20. A significant repeat or/and a more virulent virus could cause irreversible disruption. Many species have been annihilated by viruses, even successful species like us. In the novel The Road our annihilation is the consequence of diseases destroying the grasses on which we depend, so that provides another scenario.
I don't think that would happen. If it happens (assertion) what would happen? The collapse of everything because of the breakdown in ecosytem management and functioning. Humans function as influential species on earth.
I think it will not happen in near future, if happen that! don't think about it!! because nobody alive!!! So, think about live people in the world !!!
As most of the world's more successful species are dependent on us, most, we must assume, would not survive our departure or be radically diminished. Not just domesticated animals but rats as well. Thereby, new existing species will emerge as primary species and diversify. Maybe crows will grow larger, even develop more intelligence than they have at present. Maybe new amphibian will emerge out of present species and spend more time on land taking advantage of the fact that the main predator has disappeared.
Shashwat,
The atmospheric density falls off very rapidly with altitude. Low-earth orbit craft have lifetimes of days, through years - at most. Out at GEO, the orbits are essentially immortal.
Recall, LAGEOS was given a very long-lasting message to carry - and it's below GEO altitude.
How long would it take for all human endeavour to disappear? 10,000 years or 20,000?
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
Shelley
Would they be easily consumed? Yes. Helping the development of other species surely as they competed for the nourishment. Mice would become large carnivores before themselves becoming depleted as no take-aways are being made, bought, and discarded.
But present species will be subject to change and although new species will arrive usually they grow from existing ones. So I'm ok with giant mice, even as a temporary measure. In some circumstances mice turn carnivorous and become extremely aggressive, so changes in size may complement changes in behaviour. From this, certainly new species would emerge.
Rats could evolve into the next intelligent species; I can already imagine their little front paws becoming more handlike. (I'd vote for water bears except they aren't nasty enough.)
Clifford D. Simak in his novel City imagines ants eventually overrunning the planet: little smokestacks start appearing in the anthills as they have their industrial revolution. Eventually they build little robot ants....
If all human beings died out overnight then nothing is going to happen this earth. Other many types of animals will successfully and happily enjoy their life.
Such events happened several times previously when most dominating species of the Earth vanished suddenly.
If we all vanished today, nothing will happen to the planet Earth.
A new system of species development through evolution will start from tomorrow.
this link is useful
www.dailymail.co.uk/.../What-happen-Earth-humans-disappeared-W...
regards
See this link,
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-468267/How-world-thrive-mankind.html
I suspect dominant species have been wiped out quite often, providing a rarely considered evolutionary action. In all seriousness, we cannot assume it will not happen to us. We have an understanding of time peculiar to us, not understanding how possible this is.
Although this is a hypothetical question, but it will happen one day.
Hi Stan,
No answer will be correct because none of us will be around to check it. Sorry, this is a very trick questions and you are a very bright guy for posing it! Amir
In reality, all the weapons including atomic and nuclear bomb are developed just to use over human being.....Bye the people for the people. No idea what will happen..
in part, this is about people understanding how ephemeral we actually are. sans cities, sans civilisations, sans ideas, sans history, sans gods.
Yes, Syed, dying species, like whales, will return, and repopulate the ocean. A truly beautiful sight, huge whales again in the Mediterranean, and without, the apex predator, others return to ancient numbers. Whole herds of bison swarming over the remains of Berlin and Paris.
Be optimistic :)
I deeply believe in God and this will never happen.
An Atheist may say: the cycle of life will be recreated by evolution
once more.
But God in all scriptures promised that everything will be under controlو
even when the Devils dominate the world and evil actions spread everywhere, Almighty - Merciful God promised to save us:
اللَّهُ لاَ إِلَٰهَ إِلاَّ هُوَ الْحَيُّ الْقَيُّومُ لاَ تَأْخُذُهُ سِنَةٌ وَلاَ نَوْمٌ لَّهُ مَا فِي السَّمَاوَاتِ وَمَا فِي الأَرْضِ مَن ذَا الَّذِي يَشْفَعُ عِنْدَهُ إِلاَّ بِإِذْنِهِ يَعْلَمُ مَا بَيْنَ أَيْدِيهِمْ وَمَا خَلْفَهُمْ وَلاَ يُحِيطُونَ بِشَيْءٍ مِّنْ عِلْمِهِ إِلاَّ بِمَا شَاء وَسِعَ كُرْسِيُّهُ السَّمَاوَاتِ وَالأَرْضَ وَلاَ يَؤُودُهُ حِفْظُهُمَا وَهُوَ الْعَلِيُّ الْعَظِيمُ [2:255]صدق الله العظيم
Best regards
It will continue to exist a little longer than would happen if humans were around
i'm not sure Kenneth, as some species have experienced local extermination very much overnight from a particularly virile virus. And, how can we tell that such a thing isn't possible and exactly how would we know if it happens?
Borden, that's very likely although I doubt that the earth is actually that fragile.
If that happened I imagine that the world would stink badly for several years provided the hungry animals would not feed off of us. The world would become over populated with animals and then they would kill each other off because domesticated animals will become wild and hungry. Then the world will continue to turn like it always has. I could never forsee this happening even if an asteroid killed off 1/2 of the population. Human beings are here to stay and nature has a way of balancing herself out by any means necessary.
Laverne, suppose human beings continue to deplete animal stocks, diminishing fish in the sea until they only exist at the deeper levels, killing off all wild animals, with our demise leaving only domesticated groups, which through the nature of domestication are much less aggressive than their wild ancestors? Would they survive particularly well?
Human beings I would suggest are unlikely to survive, and it will be a minor miracle if we continue for another 10000 years.
Good morning Stanley Wilkin! I do not believe that human beings will ever be able to deplete all animal stock , fish or vegetation. Nature is very protective and it would allow us to be killed off first. We are so animalistic that if everything was taken way, we would feed off of each other. We need each other, we need animals and trees and they need us. If one is gone, then everything else will be gone. Unfortunately, it will not be something that happens rapidly. To your last question, if only domesticated groups were left, they probably would not survive particularly well because we would eat them. Survival of the fittest. I am really enjoying reading these answers by the way!
We are not separate from the animals, the earth would be devoid of life form. Human before going would try all to consume or subsume all others. Earth would be simply inhabitable!! Interesting thought for AI and Robotics.
"...if all human beings died out overnight?"
Well, the immediate consequence would be a lot of technological devices that require human operators or monitors would stall or continue on automatic before grinding to a halt. Airplanes full of dead people would crash, and so on. Over time nature would reclaim the environment and some other species might evolve to become the next technologically savvy species.
@Kenneth M Towe
The original question was a hypothetical one, which asked us to imagine an implausibly farfetched possibility -- what if all humans suddenly died overnight? So I don't understand how your why-then question relates to that; it looks like an interrogative non sequitur to me. Why does my answer have anything to do at all with what actual people are currently dreaming about?
Well, I reject the technologically savvy addition as, since there is no evidence of such creatures before humans, and since it might be reliant on a particular type of intelligence, there is little chance of it evolving again-especially so quickly. Size, fangs, razor-sharp claws are two a penny in biological history, but technology? No.
@Stanley Wilkin
RE: "fangs, razor-sharp claws are two a penny in biological history, but technology? No."
True, advanced technology wouldn't evolve quickly, but technology starts with tool use and there are plenty of animals that already do that to varying degrees:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tool_use_by_animals
https://www.livescience.com/9761-10-animals-tools.html
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2017/03/animal-tools/
Also, radiation leaked post-extinction from unmanned reactors and interrupted nuclear waste disposal operations might speed up the mutations on which natural selection runs. 😈
Kenneth, very.
But I suggest a gradual extinction would prove equally deadly.
One reason for the question being couched in the above fashion is to indicate how temporary and fragile our existence is, and equally our assumed importance. Once gone, would we really be missed?
This video by National Geographic gives an idea of what might happen:
When Humans Disappear (3mins 50secs)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ri9bAtQDe00
Here's another (9min 46 sec.):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kibpn9UTGzA
I read a report recently on the possibility of temperatures rising by 2100 that would make any human survival difficult. Think of the 50 degrees attained in the northern hemisphere over the past month: fiery skies and unbreathable air.
If you believe in evolution, the other species would evolve and rule the Earth!
species annihilation has occurred at least three times before with a good million years before complete recovery-life has recovered with similarities to the past.
Have a look at these interesting videos
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wy7Q6wazD_E
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kibpn9UTGzA
I actually wasn't necessarily pulling the two together, and I agree with you that apparently one extreme summer discounts the terrible summers of last year and the years before. I haven't over the years witnessed many such panics.
First: a return of the Ice Age
More recently of course extreme excessive heat
In both cases Europe's fate depends on the Gulf Stream stopping
Seems to me, people are surviving well to the high temperatures. Few deaths. Just a few fires.
A return to the far off days when all we had to worry us was the Russians.
Kenneth, your last statement is clearly wrong, unless you mean in the present. Of course whole locations once occupied by humans have disappeared such as Dogger Bank, and of course the old Alexandria. But as for towns, inhabited areas now, well too early still.
Although human beings are probably not as young a species as we once thought, many nevertheless have died off after a few hundred years, whole swathes through sudden viruses. All species are perhaps fragile. One passable theory for mass extinction, is oxygen depleted oceans and there being a knock-on effect as life dies there and then elsewhere. Again, the point remains that humans are no more likely to survive for a long period any more than other apes, or other large mammals.
One point though: the land close to New York is expected to become uninhabitable, either underwater or turned back into marshland but that is more to do with houses being built where they shouldn't be and simply too many people crowding into tiny areas.
Ah, Kenneth, but over-fishing? With the development of deep-sea fishing, the dwindling of many known species, what then? Ancient Histories record whales in the Mediterranean, and certainly this one species has been consistently whittled down in a struggle between nature and human civilisation (Moby Dick): one of many. What then? Will we simply subsist on huge herds of domesticated species with an alternative 'holiday species' in parks for occasional visit by the elite, a means of sustaining YouTube?
I certainly believe that contact with other species is essential-even if only to encourage less belief in our immovable centrality to the universe. We are, after all, the last of our own species!
Of course, while humans hug shorelines, which they always have, then urban sites will be subject to depredation. You could have added Texas storms. Such storms have always occurred but assume additional dimensions when large numbers of people die.
Kenneth, the number of new (?) species stumbled upon by enthusiastic scientists recreationing in the Amazon, the escapades paid for by desperate universities.....(no comment need for my overuse of words and cynicism). Of course not new at all. And, unless I'm mistaken, no new hominin allied to us has emerged unless the huge man I bumped into (literally) the other day was one. He certainly didn't resemble the majority of us.
We are definitely the last of the human line, Neanderthal and Denosovich gone unable to handle the competition. 400,000 years of existence has been more than enough time allowed for others. Neanderthal scrapped through into about 500, 000 years than gone while on a holiday in Gibraltar. Just enough time though to finish eating with and on his relatives.
The numbers of humans on the planet, and increasing, is no surety of our survival (Woolly Mammoth, etc) as it only takes on pathogen species to wipe us out. All species have that inbuilt vulnerability to disease. The present global migration may be carrying the specific doomsday variety now, ready to leap into three billion bloodstreams in one initial, audacious leap.
Sorry, Kenneth, but this I am in agreement with, but that it can be repaired I have no doubt. Large species decimated, fish stocks being depleted. Healthy scepticism yes, but I think this is occurring.
The decimation of species over the last 15000 years has been put down to human beings or/and climate change, but I think the odds are on us having a heavy hand in proceedings. Our population rose at around that point, and we don't, I believe, take kindly to competition (see current, recent and past wars). No, I think we are fouling up our own pond water.
That will be interesting. An end to all evils, politics and selfishness. But why and how would that happen?
Segun, the end of human life might involve the end of your evil triad, but such things are evil because humans describe them in that way. While I see nothing wrong in that, we could designate animals in a similar fashion but we do not perceive them as having choice. Sometimes, people who do the most harm believe they are doing the most good.
Mmm. A point worth looking at, but simply an observation on my part. If lion populations become too successful and hunt their large prey to extinction, that is no more than cause and effect. The judgement day of Abdullah is of course based on the view of a particularly nasty god-the best of us separated from the worst, on the basis of observing a bunch of silly rules, and going in some form of celestial transport to heaven, or at least our re-animated corpses. Keep my view to cause and effect, not observations of doubtful sin.