What will life be like after the humans are gone?

[Raptor]

Suggested by an email from the History Channel pushing their DVDs. They did a series (http://link.p0.com/u.d?C4GtlUYmswyrL98m2iRQ=81) called "Life After People", BTW.

[Kaiser Kronos]

Basically, North America will be radically different.

There was a native North American lion prior to the arrival of the Indians, and lions are capable of surviving here. Then there's other zoo animals that could potentially escape zoos and establish breeding populations.

Also....bison will eventually revive and there'll be wolves and lions preying on them.

In Asia, that will be interesting, much of the wildlife there is in bad shape due to all the cities.

In Africa, chimps may very likely replace man, in which case this sad tragedy will start all over again.

In Europe, with the large animals extinct in the wild, potential escapes of Wisent from zoos may re-establish some populations.

In Australia....:crazy:. God knows how rabbits and camels will end up in that case or what the native fauna will do.

[Darth Reaper]

I'm not convinced that humans will ever be gone. I think it's just as likely that we'll continue to evolve and learn to be better than we are right now.

[Zardac the Great]

I think we'll be able to adapt better than pretty much anything else on the planet. If humans die off, it is likely that nothing "above" cochroaches will survive either.


A planet full of insects...interesting.

[Kaiser Kronos]

I'm not convinced that humans will ever be gone. I think it's just as likely that we'll continue to evolve and learn to be better than we are right now.

Hn....I'm sure the Neanderthals felt the same way when Europe was theirs. They....err....were wrong.

And extinction through evolution into something else is still extinction. Homo erectus went extinct in Europe, in Africa, and in Indonesia, and only survived on the mainland until the rise of Homo sapiens in Africa. That still doesn't make them any less extinct outside mainland Asia at the time.

I think we'll be able to adapt better than pretty much anything else on the planet. If humans die off, it is likely that nothing "above" cochroaches will survive either.


A planet full of insects...interesting.

A new Carboniferous, eh?

Anyhow, the ability of people to adapt can be surprisingly limited. 70,000 years ago a single volcano nearly drove humanity to extinction. There's a little thing called the Yellowstone Caldera that's geologically ripe to blow at any moment. The minute it does, half of North America at minimum is dead and more ash than most Cold War nuclear winter scenarios is flung up north. Might I add that the half of North America that's going to be blanketed in ashes and everything killed in it has the productive cropland? :darklord:

So....when Yellowstone finally erupts, you've just killed half the human race in a year or two, as no Uncle Sam agriculture means 3 billion die. And that in turn will fuel more and more catastrophes.

The Yellowstone Caldera is why most doomsday scenarios don't trouble me, as I've yet to encounter one man-made disaster that even approaches that. :sly:

[Zardac the Great]

I'm not saying that we can't wipe out large portions of the human population, I just think that the survivors will cope.

And I think that we can cope with more than most other mammals.


But yeah. I agree with you on the Doomsday Scenarios. Don't worry about them.

[Kaiser Kronos]

I'm not saying that we can't wipe out large portions of the human population, I just think that the survivors will cope.

And I think that we can cope with more than most other mammals.


But yeah. I agree with you on the Doomsday Scenarios. Don't worry about them.

Well....the survivors, if decimated enough, will evolve into entirely new species. Something like Yellowstone could see Homo sapiens turn into the baseline of entirely separate species on all the continents, given tens of thousands of years of total isolation (Tasmania only had 10,000 years. We're talking continents like America and Australia entirely marooned for tens of thousands). In a twisted sense, humankind might become the Great Old Ones to post-humans evolving back to civilizations.

"Look on my works ye mighty" indeed. :crazy:

[Darth Reaper]

And extinction through evolution into something else is still extinction.- Kaiser Kronos

I suppose it depends on how you want to look at it, and how our decendents choose to look at themselves. Even if they become very different from what we are now, they may choose to continue to look at themselves as humans because they came from us.

And, in any case, one could say that we would live on through our decendents, just as parents live on through their children.

[Zigra]

I suppose it depends on how you want to look at it, and how our decendents choose to look at themselves. Even if they become very different from what we are now, they may choose to continue to look at themselves as humans because they came from us.

What they choose to call themselves and what they are are completely different things. If they evolve to the point where they are genetically a different species, then they are a different species. Period.

[Kaiser Kronos]

I suppose it depends on how you want to look at it, and how our decendents choose to look at themselves. Even if they become very different from what we are now, they may choose to continue to look at themselves as humans because they came from us.

And, in any case, one could say that we would live on through our decendents, just as parents live on through their children.

Do humans look at ourselves as Homo erectus modified to a grasslands scavenging lifestyle?

Given the ease with which charlatans and liars like Hovind (the little scheming verminous crook he is) and Ham (whose name alone tells his character. Very...Biblical) can outright lie about things....I'll say that they're no more likely to identify with us than we do with Homo erectus.

And that any successor species in the several different parts of the world will be in deep **** even if the horse and other such creatures survive.

Remember that after 1492 nine of every 10 Indians died. Now, any future contact will come to two hemispheres that have had the chance to separately develop their own disease reservoirs.

Hilarity ensues. :darklord:

[Hellspawn28]

The Future is Wild pretty much sums things nicely and Animals will most likey have the Planet to their selfs again like they did over millions of years ago. Maybe a new speices of Animals will take our place years to come.