NationStates Jolt Archive

I've been pondering this for the past few minutes.
What if humanity dies out in some event other than the destruction of the planet?
What do you think would happen after we were all gone?
In a few short decades, almost everything we had built would be overgrown by the formidable machine of Nature. What will be left of our accomplishments?

All we have ever built, no matter how strong, in the grand scale of things, are just so unimaginably tiny, frail, and impermanent. "O quam cito transit gloria mundi.", "O how quickly passes away the glory of the earth."...

"Cineri gloria sera est."
"Glory paid to our ashes comes too late."

Lemurs. Those bastards are up to something... The way they stare at you when you walk by...

Humbling ain't it? We've been around for merely a wink in the cosmic timescale. What will become of our great achivements? Will it all be for naught?

If anything, I think Earth would revert back to an earlier state, and recouperate for the creation of the next dominant species.

But isn't thinking about how insignifigant we are kinda depressing? Not really. To me it's rather refreshing realizing there's something going on around you greater than your everyday qualms. In the end there's nothing we can do about it, right? So why not make the best of civilization before it's gone?

I'm of the opinion our extinction will arrive silmutaneously with what replaces us. In other words, I like the Singularity theory. It states that, within fifty years, I think, we will develop technology that's so much smarter than we are, we won't be able to compete. We will either have to evolve or die, and either way, we will no longer be human.

probably the return of the Neanderthal, but will never physically resemble us, even if they get more techs than us.

Bah, Man is the sperm of the Universe. If we can get some near-lightspeed craft before we nuke ourselves or are hit by an asteroid, we'll populate the Universe until whatever happens to it happens. We're frisky like that.

Bah, Man is the sperm of the Universe. If we can get some near-lightspeed craft before we nuke ourselves or are hit by an asteroid, we'll populate the Universe until whatever happens to it happens. We're frisky like that.
Oh, yeah! :D

Our cities, etc..?

Well Mt. Rushmore will have some very interesting erosion patterns. Cities like New York, Berlin, Tokyo, LA, Paris, London, Shanghai, Hong Kong etc... will likely have many many skeletal remains of their many sky scrappers. It would take many thousands of years before they would fade away. We can find the ruins of poorly constructed and poorly preserved Cities like Jericho that are 10 thousand years old. New York will be standing for a very long time.

Not to mention places like Cheyenne Mountain , Raven Rock or the Greenbrier bunker.

Basically Humanity will have left its stamp on America for a very very long time. And our little things on the Moon and Mars will likely be there until a meteor smacks into them.

Check out The Future is Wild (http://www.thefutureiswild.com/flash/index.html), if you haven't already. It has great speculations based on science.

The idea, in essence, is simple. Imagine the world millions of years in the future, without the overbearing presence of mankind. The stories yet to be told are sure to be extraordinary and intriguing.

The Future is Wild team began by consulting geologists. The movements of Earths' landmasses in the past have been thoroughly reconstructed. Using this information it is possible to predict how continents will continue to move. Next climatologists can start to build the plants and ecosystems into our future maps. This information in the hands of biologists enabled them to fill all the future lifestyles with new animal species.

The end result is a rich fantasy world, made all the more exciting by the fact that it could really happen. No event or animal in The Future is Wild is outside the realms of possibility. A world this detailed could not be constructed by just one person. It has taken experts in the fields of geology, marine biology, neurobiology, biomechanics, botany, insects, evolution, mass extinctions and many others to create this world. Their ideas and feedback have been harnessed by an award-winning team of Natural History documentary makers. They brought the animals to life through the creation of stories that examined the new creatures behaviour. The process was now complete, and the "simple" idea was ready to be shared with the world.

(Oh, and they posit a "squibbon" as the next major intelligent lifeform. It's basically an aboreal squid.)

And our little things on the Moon and Mars will likely be there until a meteor smacks into them.
Hmm.
You have a good point there.

Three Possibilities:
1. We pollute the Earth so much that nothing else can evolve.

2. We don't mess up the environment so much that dolphins and chimps evolve human-level intelligence, and become the next two dominant species, coexisting in the different spheres of land and water.

3. A Messiah comes. The world "ends," but becomes irrelevent - all species will have ascended to Heaven. I hope it's this one.


(Oh, and they posit a "squibbon" as the next major intelligent lifeform. It's basically an aboreal squid.)
Two things, either a. A word was made up, because dictionary.com says aboreal is not a word, or b. it was a misspelling of "arboreal," in which case tree-living squids are supposedly the next intelligent life form on Earth...yeeeeeah, wow.

Some culture is going to find some huge iron mines.

I've been pondering this for the past few minutes.
What if humanity dies out in some event other than the destruction of the planet?
What do you think would happen after we were all gone?
In a few short decades, almost everything we had built would be overgrown by the formidable machine of Nature. What will be left of our accomplishments?

All we have ever built, no matter how strong, in the grand scale of things, are just so unimaginably tiny, frail, and impermanent. "O quam cito transit gloria mundi.", "O how quickly passes away the glory of the earth."...

"Cineri gloria sera est."
"Glory paid to our ashes comes too late."

I have no idea, I would like to see it though. It would be nice to see the concrete slab that is New York City and London and other places overgrown by trees and plants to tell the truth.

cocroaches. Giant, semi-evolved cocroaches.

cocroaches. Giant, semi-evolved cocroaches.

Lemurs, damnit!

(Oh, and they posit a "squibbon" as the next major intelligent lifeform. It's basically an aboreal squid.)

I saw that, the arboreal squid are the thing I remember the most clearly. Most interesting show.

Indeed, that "Future is Wild" show was great. Forward-thinking science that can neither be proved nor disproved is fun and entertaining. :)

Dolphins, maybe, though? If we don't eat them all.

Their capital could be.. Dolphinopolous. Or an ear-shattering squeal. Sommin' like that.

We pollute the Earth so much that nothing else can evolve.

cannot happen.

something will always find a way to live off its surroundings


let me give you the scenario:

a group of organisms have a process that they find necessary. one of the byproducts of this process is a gas that is highly corrosive, unimaginably toxic, and is filling up the atmosphere because there is no way to defeat it.

there is a small colony of organisms in this world that have developed an interesting trait: they can process this gas.

now, for many years beforehand, they had been doing this process, but there had never been enough of the gas for them to really thrive.

now that the pollutors are having a go at it, they are quite literally feasting on the stuff.

soon, they grow to dominate the original organisms.

farfetched?

it happened.

the gas is called oxygen, and the plants are the ones doing the polluting.

animals begin to make use of the 'waste' products because, after all, there are certainly more than enough of them around.

it would not surprise me if we began seeing organisms that breathe carbon monoxide, eat plastic and styrofoam, and drink industrial waste.

that's what will rule the world when we are gone.

if, that is, we manage to pollute it up enough first.

so let's get cracking!

remember: you trash is someone else's treasure.

Check out The Future is Wild (http://www.thefutureiswild.com/flash/index.html), if you haven't already. It has great speculations based on science.


that link doesn't work.

how long should it take to load up?

Deleuze, yep I misspelled it. The arboreal squid were awesome. ;)

that link doesn't work.

how long should it take to load up?

Mmmm.... worked when clicked it just now. Opened up immediately.

We can find the ruins of poorly constructed and poorly preserved Cities like Jericho that are 10 thousand years old. New York will be standing for a very long time.

Being located on the seaboard may have an adverse effect on the ruined city of New York's longevity. Coastal erosion is a wonderful thing.

Lemurs. Those bastards are up to something... The way they stare at you when you walk by...
LOL

One of the legacies we will leave are the remains of the nuclear power industry, massive both in architecture and material. Given the half-life of a lot of this material, there's an interesting question of how to mark it, since we can't assume the markers will be seen by (human) beings with the same language/culture &c as ourselves.

This guy, James Acord, (http://www.tcfn.org/timecapsule/html/james_l._acord.html) is doing some good work on that.

Check out The Future is Wild (http://www.thefutureiswild.com/flash/index.html), if you haven't already. It has great speculations based on science.

(Oh, and they posit a "squibbon" as the next major intelligent lifeform. It's basically an aboreal squid.)
The BBC documentary series on that was fascinating.

"If you want a picture of the future imagine a boot stomping on a human face-forever."

Humans aren't going anywhere. People today seem so damn convinced that the natural course of societal evolution is doomed to self-destruct unless we all embrace [insert radical anti-human, anti-intellectual, anti-progress theoretical dead-end here] and scrap everything it means to be human. It's disheartening really, I haven't lost my faith in humanity but by God I am disheartened. I still have faith that Humans will continue to do what they do best, get better at it, and come out in the end marked with the tenacity that took them there.

The future is bright gentlemen, you may desire to chain yourself up with willful ignorance and lock yourself in the darkness of idiotic cynicism, that of course is your right. Just don't expect the rest of humanity to stay with you.