General Question

imrainmaker's avatar

What will happen if human race is wiped off from earth surface tomorrow?

Asked by imrainmaker (8380points) January 20th, 2018

Will peace prevail again and remaining species will be better off without us?

Observing members: 0 Composing members: 0

22 Answers

ARE_you_kidding_me's avatar

Our technological presence here could ensure that species survival is indefinite for a couple of reasons. Our absence would allow things to progress without intervention for better or worse. Just takes one cosmic impact to kill everything if we are not here to detect and deflect. I’m firmly outside the “humans should die camp”

dabbler's avatar

Is there a reason to think the place was peaceful before humans arrived?
There are carnivorous species out there !

imrainmaker's avatar

By peace I mean letting others to live. Food chains are inevitable but killing for fun is different. How many species are extinct due to human activities or close to extinction in this brief history of mankind?

imrainmaker's avatar

@ARE_you_kidding_me – I’m not sure how much we are ready to save ourselves from cosmic impacts. I’m not saying humans should die but asking what will be impact on the surrounding if that happens.

elbanditoroso's avatar

If the human race is wiped out, there won’t be peace, because peace is a human construct.

The animals would likely rejoice, although a lot of them – pets for example,.will die. And cattle (and anything else that humans grow for food) will die as well because there will be no people to feed them.

The entire plant ecosystem will take over – overtime roads will be overgrown with weeds and buildings will fall apart.

imrainmaker's avatar

Here’s the link for top 10 extinct species from recent times.

ragingloli's avatar

peace on earth

Unofficial_Member's avatar

There are some videos about this in Youtube. Other than nature will take over again there would be disaster that hailed from human beings creations that can no longer be managed properly (such as nuclear power plant).

Darth_Algar's avatar

Peace? The Earth has never been peaceful. Nature is cruel and violent. And it goes beyond food chains. Plenty of animals will kill for fun (domestic cats are a good example, people forget, with all the cute fluffy cat pics, how savage and predatory those little fuckers are), or to establish dominance, to eliminate rivals, to eliminate potential future rivals before they can even fend for themselves.

Love_my_doggie's avatar

If given a fair chance, the environment is very effective at repairing itself. The moment we humans stop polluting, the air, water, and ground would begin resetting.

Pandora's avatar

As already pointed out. Peace will not exist because there are predators in nature. But more than likely if we die off so will they if it is a catastrophic event like a meteor. If some of them survive, than some humans may survive as well.
But if all living things die except for tiny creatures who live below the surface, eventually nature will be recreated. I think the planet has a way of fixing most damages, or adjusting. Unless it’s a meteor big enough to take a huge chunk of our planet or knock us off our axis. Then we may end up like Mars. A big chunk of rock.

flutherother's avatar

Weeds and trees start sprouting up through the roads. Wildflowers proliferate and horses begin to gallop through our cities. A team of archaeologists from Aldebaran appear and begin a 1,000 year long investigation to find out where we went wrong.

Patty_Melt's avatar

Tbere would be a massive nasty smell.
Some animal species would become extinct, because conditions are such that those species can only survive with human intervention.
The most prominant one I know of is the polar bear.
Because the young learn how and what to eat from their parents, they are unable to survive on their own in a non frozen environment.
Their habitat is rapidly disappearing.
Animal behavioralists are working to use other bear species to teach polar bears new survival skills. It is difficult, because of territorial instincts.

Some animal speciez would thrive without human presence, but others would perish.
Long ago, giant pandas were omnivores, but a declining population of what they like to eat caused them to become herbivores.
This predates any influence from humans.
While the existence of humans has a profound influence on the
populations if many species, our absence would not reverse all negative aspects of wildlife.
Would there be peace? That depends on your definition of peace.
If you believe peace to be just the absence of war, sure.
There are so many unpeaceful aspects to natural life in reality. Natural disaster brings widespread panic, death, and even extinction.
As humans mature, and become more responsible about our existence, we will become more and more beneficial to current plant and animal species.
We are rapidly moving from using our intellect only for the advancement of our own species, to advancing the benefits to many other species also.

Zaku's avatar

Depends on how it’s done and how much collateral damage there is. If we just all died or disappeared, it would be an amazing boon to most non-human life and ecosystems and habitats!

Whether or not the climate change we’ve started will still lead to widespread extinction-causing disasters in decades to come even without us, isn’t entirely clear, but removing most of the input from our industry would be a huge improvement.

Jeruba's avatar

The World Without Us, by Alan Weisman (2007), covers this subject in both a heartening and a humbling way.

RedDeerGuy1's avatar

Nuclear reactors would run out of coolant and meltdown. .

Zaku's avatar

@RedDeerGuy1 The area around the Chernobyl nuclear disaster of has been doing quite well with radioactivity but no humans since the 1986 disaster there.

(Of course, there are also horrifying mutations ), but compared to having populations wiped out by human domination of the land, in general the animal populations are much healthier with nuclear disaster than with human domination).

Better still, I expect most modern reactors are designed to shut themselves down in a non-disastrous way if unattended.

kritiper's avatar

The planet might return to what it should have been without humans in the first place.
Humanity is a pestilence, vermin, a cancer, deadly infection. We aren’t special!

rojo's avatar

Well, for one thing the garbage will not get put out tomorrow.

Although, when considering it; it probably wouldn’t matter because it was not going to get picked up anyway.

Patty_Melt's avatar

All the dinosaurs which had taken refuge in the Amazon rain forest, and the frozen mountain regions of the great white north could come out of hiding and dominate the planet once again.

Dogs would line the vacant streets, waiting for something to chase.

Birds would have to go back to building their nests without gum wrappers, twist ties, and yarn.

The udders of dairy cattle all over the world would explode.

Little capuchin monkeys holding out little red hats would be ignored, leaving them feeling unloved.

Cats would not notice, until they got hungry.

Fish would flourish, and so then, grizzlies and eagles.

Transports would land, ready to take humans to an enormous planet rich in resources, and finding nobody here, grab a few guinea pigs for pets, and leave.

Cows would no longer feel a need to hide the fact that they can talk.

Birds would no longer be able to line up on power lines, and would have to reintroduce themselves to trees.

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