Today I saw a TV program about what would happen if humans suddenly dissappeared. The first 1000 years, all of the traces of humans started to go away. Global Warming stopped, but in the 25,000th year the world was covered in ice.

I think, just like on the show, places where grass was not seeable, would cover the cities. All buildings would collapse, animal population would rapidly increase. When the dams broke, in particular The Hover Dam(my own cities pride:) the US regained its swamps, and suddenly global warming stopped.

What are your guys thoughts on this?

Are you asking what would happen if humans were never here in the first place, or if humans would just disappear right now? If it's the former, it's really hard to say. Another form of intelligent life would have undoubtedly risen to power, probably a different primate, a corvidae, an octopus, a dolphin, or a canine. If you're asking the later, that's pretty obvious. Other life forms will take over human lands, and the domestic creatures would all die, like cows, especially cows, pigs, horses, some dogs, etc. At least the French would all be dead, so there's a bonus!

I watched that show a few weeks ago, it doesn't leave much open to debate. When we're gone, mother nature reclaims the planet. Pretty cut and dry.

If you want to know what will happen, all you have to do is look at history. there have been several ancient cities all over the world, witch were about as advanced as a modern city. Now all thats left of them is acouple broken walls and scattered rubish.

The wolves would definitely be better off, though the dogs might be a little screwed.

Although.....I wonder..........

We would still leave our trash and nuclear waste lying around, and that would probably cause a lot of problems.

Everything's already said. The nature will claim back what once was its.

However, the climate just won't suddenly change to another ice age. Humans actions are actually a quite small factor in global warming(that would be another topic to debate of), so it would just follow the same pattern it has done in earth's entire history. Right now it's the time for temperature to rise.

Exactly, we don't do much, at least not compared to something else, something like, say a giant ball of fire that's roughly 11,000 degrees Fahrenheit, you know, THE SUN! here's a link to an image of the sun giving off a solar flare. Now while Earth isn't in that spot, it's about that size. Don't you think something like that could affect our temperature.

Oh...but I'm getting off topic.

Oh, definitely.... the greenhouse effect (caused by excess carbon dioxide) would not be getting any worse, but I must ponder: could nature find a way to consume the excess carbon dioxide?

And what about the nuclear waste? It'll stay around, except it won't be hidden away safely by us humans.

Trees, anyone? CO₂ --> C + O₂ The oxygen leaves while the carbon is used for energy.

Just to be nitpicky, trees do also use O2, a bit. They have much the same cellular processes as we do! A lot of plants beyond trees will take that up, too, though.

As far as nuclear waste? I think nuclear waste won't be too much of a problem; currently the way its handled is a process that won't let it out for a while. Think more of the ecological problems that we have rated that need humans to fix; Australia's ecosystem is completely out of whack due to varying types of farming and irrigation, the Aral Sea may or may not come back if humanity when phhhhhhht! and disappeared; certain types of mining and farming areas release dangerous chemicals and will take a while to stop.

Some nature-conservation efforts would actually require active human participation to make them work and it would be difficult for them to succeed without us, but, then again, many problems are just because of people mucking with nature and if they just stopped, nature'd eventually evolve somehting to fix it.

Yes, nature does have a way of fixing itself, like when mammals rose to power after the extinction of the dinosaurs.

Do you think the excess of carbon dioxide will lead to above natural plant level growths? That could lead to the world being a bit more jungly....

I believe that the biggest reason for nature to grow back is because we wouldn't be holding it back anymore. We are the most destructive thing that nature has "seen". Of course jungle wouldn't invade in everywhere as it needs a specific type of climate to grow. Also the deserts, at least the biggest ones, would probably stay as deserts.

All I'm suggesting is that there may be a 'spike' in plant growth due to excess carbon dioxide. Te plans may grow to fast, and there won't be enough carbon dioxide (now there's something you never expected to hear) to support them and some may die off.

I doubt that... animal populations will be exploding as well, and trees, rainforest in particular, support a hell of a lot of biomass. most trees have teenyweeny CO2 generators all over them, in the form of birds, insects... you name it.

We fiddled with the environment. If we were gone, then maybe the earth would right itself. Hopefully the ecosystems would stabilize and return to normal.

...it would be pointless.

I believe that life would return to a more... old-fashioned way for a while. Think of a beautiful forest that lasts forever. Animals would do their usual routines for about 5000 years until they evolve. Primates and Canines would most likely be the first to evolve to a superior species where they become bipedal, ambidextrous, and basically become intelligent like humans, except with their usual appearances. Later they will become more advanced with the ability to create technology and be the new dominant species.

This situation has happened, except there were no previous humans. If you believe in human evolution, there is evidence that people were not simply primates, and then formed more human-like characteristics, but actually started as little tree-climbing creatures that looked like some sort of koala bear or muskrat. Those creatures then gave a form of offspring that looked more ape-like, sort of like a monkey. Those creatures then became bigger and became the more familiar form of human, which looked like a hairy man who has not exacly learned to walk on two legs. After that they became bi-pedal and evolved to the next familiar stages such as the "Neanderthal" and so forth.

Besides the fact that we aren't holding nature back and that nature will do what it wants when it wants(Myanmar and Katrinia), I would say it's laughable to think that Humans are the most destructive catalysts that nature has ever witnessed.

Some millions years ago, the planet was being bombarded by hundreds of thousands of meteorites that would make the Hiroshima disaster look like a mess on aisle 7.

What is more, some million years ago, the Earth went through a period where poisonous gas(Oxygen) was taking over the atmosphere and thus killing whatever life remained on the planet.

It's funny how people can criticize humanity for destroying life whilst not looking back in time where oxygen was obliterating thousands of uni-cellular organisms.

Instead of complaining and doing nothing maybe we should think and do something.

I had a few theorys back in my stoner collegate days. This was one of them. If you could witness the next 10 million years here is how it would go.

Present-1000 years. Humans mess up, either by some nuclear disaster, or biological bug, or some mistake, we all die. The world becomes alot quiter.
1000-10,000 years. Most traces of human life disappear, Some of the bigger structures may remane, namely buildings built to withstand earthquakes. Geological changes in the earths crust may have happend major fault lines may have sunk below sea level. Trees, Rainforests, swamps, all those natural things comeback, Less Heat out put of humans means the planet cools during this time slightly, maybe plunges the world into a minor ice age. Animals numbers rise, rampant mating ensues, during this time a dominate animal arises, like the humans. But not as intellegent. ( probably be canines as they are the next best thing to understanding humans. maybe pigs. maybe gorillas who knows.)
10,000-1,000,000 years. A few Other animals arise to dominance, a animal might figure out what a stick is a beat something to death with it. So begins the dominte rise of the new creature. around 600,000 ad animals look different, act different and are recovering from natural cycles of the earth which may have plunged into a deep ice age for 20,000 years and warming periods for 40,000 years. Small tribes of sub intelligent life forms cannot survive the constant change in climate, and become extinct. Trees become different. More efficiant filters for greenhouse gasses, air becomes pure again. around 700,000 years allsigns of human life are gone, erosion, time itself contribute.
1,000,000-10,000,000 earth from space would look diffrent, probably green again, some point in time do to the human contact with life on earth in previous time a sentient Intelligent being evolves. Probably dogs, Cats, Maybe birds. Animals who were once domesticated, but needed to adapt quickly to survive, ( i say dogs because as far as man can see the dog is one of the most adaptble creatures ) , plant life could be totally different, depending on various factors. Animal life would become Big again ( mammoths, giant sloths, ect ect ect. )
The world would become noisy again.

who is to say something like this hasnt happened already? Times may very in a more scientific theory, could be more, could be less, could be 500,000 years again for an intelligent life to evolve, but i belive do to the things humans have done, it is only inevitable whether we are here or not, some animal will copy our intellegence. Do to the contact and things we have done to this world. Human ittelegence probably evolved to an extent before but the creature died out do to the previous life forms on earth, they were to afraid of giant animals. We just happened to evolve when on land when the biggest animals where in the ocean. Oceanic intellegent lifeforms could also evolve. you never know the road mother nature will take.

With all that said, I belive a world without humans would be alot quiter for me. Alot more room.

would be nice to walk around earth with no other humans, might get lonely though. Abit like 28 days later. Except not just england, but the world is silent and derlit. I think it would take millions of years before everything the humans have created over thousands of years actually deteriorated enough to disappear. I think it would be better, because humans today are not exactly nice. we have a corrupt spirit. thats why we are so destructive to the environment and each other.

about the end of the world if the nuclear waste wasen't all stored up on yucca mountian
america animals are sc***ed though i'm not sure were you european dudes are going to store
your toxic waste.but if any thing evolves to something close to humans it probably would be orangatans. and the problem with global warming, toxic uranium waste and just generaly trashing the planet. would occur all over agin if there was anything intelligent as humans in small numbers though wouldn't be as bad.and you probably couldn't kill all human life on earth without totally destroing the earth, there are research stations in anartica,bunkers all over the place,the austrian outback has people that don't even see other people for years at a time,heck even lobster ships in the pacific are isolated for long long periods of time.my point is desise wont kill us off there are too many isolated people,that wouldn't come in contact with other people. meaning that we they wouldn't die.yea big comfort for the rest of us.......

it would be pretty cool to be the last person on earth though.....
a little lonely but pretty cool.

In the end mammals will all perish,and then the true rulers will again take their place on this planet. The insects. With the earth replenishing its forests and other eco systems,the insect will again become huge in size and who knows,maybe even sentinent!

If there were no humans on Earth, then I guess it would only be a matter of time and random luck until another mammal, avian or insect develops a large enough brain. If we think of this in evolutionary terms, the system generally screws up somewhere. That creature gains a huge advantage, and wipes out all the others.

It has happened before it will happen again, such is the cycles, of existence .. Civilisations rise and fall..Nature is ignored and She recycles the humyns that thought to ignore Her warnings to shape up..and then it starts all over again, for those that want to incarnate back here that is, for those that do not, they go to other places, humyn beings are not the only sentient races in the Universe out of billions of worlds and universes...to think so is naive..as i see it..
There are other places to go..other rounds to make on the souls cycles of learning..The humyn form is but one form, and when it passes, it may return it may not, a new more advanced form may take its place..Who knows..IMNSHO

The climate would have to change radically for insects to get anywhere near as big as their ancestors. i think oxygen levels would have to raise to something like 35% of our atmosphere.

We do need a bit of a "restart" with the planet. Im not saying kill people, but stop making a few babies.
The more poeple created, the more waste is produced.

Oooh sh*t! Sorry for the double post there.

Well, little to add, but some observation: Nearly all people in this thread (avoiding to say all just in case I missed something) seem to share the view that there is a general dividing line between mankind and nature, which is rather strange given that we're basically talking about evolution, be it in a speculative way. Biologically we do not descend from apes, we are just one specific kind of. The dividing line simply doesn't exist. Perhaps due for a strike here, but basically that is just a residue of religious notions in secular thought. Ok, let's keep it at that, flame war probably just around the corner.

On a lighter note: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089869/

cm, naked ape of reason

Life without humans would be boring!

I think it really dpnds on what world were talking about, If humans vanished from my wold then nothing would chnge as there are no humans there.

If you talking about earth, then doubtlessly, the aliens woudl come agin nd we would go right back to the stone age. Or in few thousands years another asteroid would come and we would start over, Furthermore it also depends on wht you view as being alive. and what intelligent life is. Personally i think that some animals are smarter than some humans.

In the end mother nature will win, just wait for 5 billion more years and the sun will expand until the earth is a burnt chicken leg. at that point even the robots are done for, poor WALLE.

All Problems Are Solved

1. No wars
2. People can't misjudge me
3. People can't annoy me

That thought as of late is appealing sometimes as I view life for me at times,of great pain, and things around me, and as I watch the westernising of Ireland attempting to take place, a world without parasites..la.. is very tempting,.mother earth at peace again...As Spock said.. "Beam me up Scotty. There's no intelligent life down here."
I'm ready!!!!

Sometimes I think it's going to be "the humans without world"

I watched the same show that this thread was started about and that show was based on the assumption that all human kind suddenly vanished. Life is resilient and a lot tougher than we first thought. I don't think man will ever be whipped out completely, I don't think that concept is even in religion. Man will continue. It's possible that man could be reduced to a few thousand or even hundreds by disease and war but not completely destroyed.

I think that mankind will eventually outgrow this planets ability to sustain him. This planet can only withstand ten billion people. It took all of history to reach six billion in 1998, today we are nearly at seven billion. As food and fresh water become more scarce countries will fight for those supplies. Wars will be fought for fresh water not oil. Disease and famine will spread, people will be afraid to associate with other for fear of catching something. Cities will be the first to be abandoned as people look for food supplies in rural areas. The remaining people will become transient, nomads, bands of hunter gatherers. Because of the damage we have done to the planet, an ice age is inevitable. The ice age would further reduce the human population. By the time the ice age was over and the human race began to regain their footing, all memory and evidence of this age in human history will have vanished.

"Those who do not remember the past are condemned to relive it."

Mankind's industrial age and the destruction of the atmosphere would begin again, and who is to say that we are the first to reach this point?

Ok seriously now...As an Anthropology major,we have reached this point before..I didn't see the show, here in Éire, but religion aside for it has no place here in debates.......the possibilities, as we study all ancient cultures, the rise and fall of many civilizations..the earth can take only so much abuse..there may be a point of no return for the humyn species..it is naive to think that humyns are indestructibility, its part of the god complex, that abuses this planet, that humyns will always be around so they can do what they like..the soul, or spirit will, of course..but then perchance there are many of the billions of planets and Universes, out there, much better places for a soul to incarnate, or take form on then here.. and humyn forms, may not be the only form one can take on....to think so is also naive..
To think of the possibility, of Mother Earth, to say, destroy the parasites on her back..is indeed not only a possibility, but as the world ignores the warnings, and still does not take care of that ozone layer, for one, and keep unbalancing nature.. abusing nature and her creatures..if unity of all people doesn't happen... hate, wars and violence imbalances the energy of things also..the possibility...of the human species being wiped out, is probable, if a change of behaviour and course is not taken soon..Mother earth may one day show human beings, they can't keep repeating this cycle, of abusing the earth again and again, without finally, an ultimate consequence..possible human extinction as we know it..

Once humanity uses up all the recources and kills all the animals for food, the planet would be an empty rock. I literally mean a rock as in stone, meaning no sign of plants and water. Eventually the earth will start over, since it originally was just a sphere of stones. I believe that the earth is older than people believe. I think that life on earth has started over multiple times already.

If all humans in the world disappeared, the list below is what could possibly remain.

1. Me, because I'm not human.
2. Aliens
3. Vampires
4. The world would be my citadel and I'd have a hardcore harem of vampire and alien men to my disposal!

That's all I wish to say on this topic.

Exanimis, on what time scale are you talking about? as in 100? 1000? Ice ages are inevitable anyway, they will happen at some point, and there is little we can do.

Kresselack, I am not being cruel or mean here, but, there is no evidence to suggest that earth is older than 4.5 billion years.This age has been determined by radiometric age dating of meteorite material and is consistent with the ages of the oldest-known terrestrial and lunar samples. To believe otherwise is to ignore science, or in other words, the facts. The oldest known solid constituents within meteorites that are formed within the solar system – are 4.567 billion years old, giving an age for the solar system and an upper limit for the age of Earth. And how are we going to destroy all signs of water?! Consider how much water there is!


In a short space of time (geologically speaking) all human traces would vanish. Other than fossils nothing would remain of humanity. Humans would be merely a blip in earth's history. I saw te programme and the problem with it is that it doesn't state how humns will go, and this could have a drastic effect on what happens next.
We should always remember that looking at the future is a highly inexact art, just look at any 50's futuristic drawings.

It's not going to happen in my life time so I'm not worried about it.

I think you missed the point of the discussion.

I was going to get into the topic but wouldn't it end in the same outcome?