What would happen?

[SteveD]

What would happen to the Earth (short-term, medium- term and long-term) if the whole of mankind was wiped out overnight?

[Clanad]

Interesting question... I suspect not much at all.  There would be severe short term effect on most all domesticated animals and pets that depend on man for their existence, but once these died or were able to revert to their wild nature, life would go on without the "earth" taking much notice...

[jenstar]

The nuclear power stations would go into meltdown, which would be somewhat unfortunate.

[brooklyn77]

Good point about the nuclear plants...that would end much of life as we know it, every single one going in to meltdown...would be catastrophic.

However, assuming that did not happen:

Short term: (1-10 years) Domestic animals would eventually eat the dead bodies..it happens..I know. All other life would continue as normal. Except plants would grow wild and so more life actually would begin to thrive. Some outer towns would see more wildlife encroach on to it.

Medium term: (11- 49 years) Wildlife as we know it would be thriving. Domesticated animals will almost all have died although some that survived will start to turn themselves into wild animals again, no more Mr Nice cat. The atmosphere would begin to heal itself, nature in general will be much better off without us.

Long term: (50 - 10,000 years) barring any meteor strike (or nuclear explosion of course) one species of wildlife will be generally running the roost. Dont know which but probably ants or arachnids. Although they wont try to take over the world, they will never become that intelligent, or not knowingly anyway.

Endangered species will be thriving, the environment will be glad the humans are still gone. Maybe, just maybe, Chimps will start language again and a new species of human forms will be created. And off we go again.

You see..as much as we try to do the best in our lives with what we have got, we really are parasites and vermin as a race. We are like the rats and pigeons of the intelliegent life.Actually thats unfair, rats and pigeons dont affect the planet for the worse. So you see. The planet would not be in bad hands.

Unless of course you take into account that nuclear explosion you mentioned? Now that would really put a sucker punch into nature. If that happened, the world would go to pot for thousands of years, but some nature somewhere would survive, and eventually it will rebuild itself...probably

[mystress]

I have always thought that the ANTS would take over!

Any thoughts on this?

[Bob A Job]

Theres an old saying that in a nuclear war the cockroach would survive and thrive. But cockroaches only thrive on our waste and would soon run out of things too eat!

I believe after 100 years or so the world would return to a state much like before us apes ever became 'civilised', and the world would recover from the 'Human infection'  its suffering from at the moment! lol

[MargeB]

Mystress, don't you mean DEC? Seems to be a million of them already...

Its pretty possible that something along the lines of humans would arise again, assuming that the present primate line is intact. Chimps do not possess the brain architecture (Broca/Wernicke) to use language properly (especially higher order representation). They possibly do have the vocal apparatus for speech. They do have culture. A big problem is their ecological niche and physical makeup: it would take a lot of time for them to evolve into a creature that walked upright. This ability to walk upright probably gives the springboard which frees up your hands for proper tool use on a large scale, brings demands for symbolic communication, and you have a head start on a brain which can give you language, understanding of other minds, and 'abstract symbolic reasoning'. Given this, the 'new humans' may just come from another primate, probably orang-utan, who are already on to a 'social cooperative' headstart (even if their current environment lessens this).

[MargeB]

The scientific discourse which backs up everything I am saying is here  

[Gef]

Would the nuclear palnts go into meltdown? What about all the fail-safe devices?

[landie]

It would get on very nicely without us, as it did for the many millions of years before homo sapiens developed.

If you imagine history as a 24 hour period, mankind arrived in the final 30 seconds of the final minute before midnight.

[MargeB]

I agree that we're pretty **** at looking after it and probably will make it uninhabitable, but during that 24 hour period the earth has been a pretty **** place, if we use as our measure 'inhabitibility'. If you were the maker of it and I the customer using it for my pets, I'd want my money back! Huge freezing periods, mass violent warfare all the time (very nice if you're the predator), meteor storms. We're just the first mass-species-induced effort.

[Space]

SteveD, do you have any particular plan in mind?
Been watching Moonraker recently or something?

"Mr Bond, you defy all my attempts to plan an amusing death for you."

[gerkin]

The new generation of nuclear power stations are fail safe, i.e they can not melt down.  In the event of loss of cooling, the reactors are designed to let off sufficient residual heat into the surroundings.  They are also designed to withstand massive earthquakes, and are built away from super volcanoes.  Sods Law a meteorite will hit one !

[brooklyn77]

Marge B - Were the dinasours not the first mass induced species that we know of that inhabited the planet?

It was nature herself that (apparently) destroyed them. How ironic.

Anyway, we may have had periods of burning volcanos and periods of ice age etc...but each time, nature survives then thrives.

Humans I think will destroy this planet before nature manages to get to another ice-age (we are on course for an ice-age rather than its opposite - fact). And then after an ice age? Maybe years of death and ice will naturally heal the planet anyway, so maybe we dont need to worry after all?

But we do - as I said, If we want to survive as a species, we must change our ways. Otherwise when the next ice age has been and gone, man wont be here to start again...thank god.

On the other side of the coin though. If it got so bad that humans dies out before an ice age, maybe earth wont heal itself, and we will have destroyed everthing.

Or maybe a big meteor will do to us what it did to the dinasours before it gets that bad...lets hope so.

[MargeB]

brooklyn, not sure if I understand your question to me.

[MargeB]

Sorry, I get you now. By 'mass-species induced effort' I was referring to a species produced catastrophic event...no other species has ever put itself directly at risk by its own actions.