If humans disappear, what will Earth look like a year from now? – Essie, 11, Michigan
Have you ever wondered what the world would be like if everyone suddenly disappeared?
What will happen to all our stuff? What will happen to our houses, our schools, our neighborhoods, our cities? Who will feed the dog? Who will mow the lawn? Although it’s a common theme in movies, TV shows, and books, the end of humanity is still a strange thing to think about.
But like associate professor of urban design – that is, someone who helps cities plan what their communities will look like – sometimes it’s my job to think about perspectives like this.
So quiet
If people just disappeared from the world and you could come back to Earth to see what happened a year later, the first thing you’d notice wouldn’t be with your eyes.
It would be with your ears.
The world would be quiet. And you would realize how much noise people make. Our buildings are noisy. Our cars are noisy. Our sky is noisy. All that noise would stop.
You will notice the weather. After a year without people, the sky would be bluer, the air cleaner. Wind and rain would clean the surface of the Earth; all smog and dust that people create he would be gone.
Home Sweet Home
Imagine that first year when your house will be undisturbed by anyone.
Enter your house and hope you’re not thirsty because there won’t be any water in your faucets. Water systems require constant pumping. If there is no one near the public water supply operate the machines that pump waterthen there is no water.
But the water that was in the pipes when they all disappeared would still be there when the first winter came – so in the first cold snap, the cold air would freeze the water in the pipes and burst them.
There would be no electricity. The power plants will stop working because no one will monitor them and maintain a fuel supply. So your house will be dark with no lights, TV, phones or computers.
Your house will be dusty. There is actually dust in the air all the time, but we don’t notice it because our air conditioning systems and heaters blow air around. And as you move through the rooms in your home, you also keep dust in motion. But once all that stops, the air in your house will be stagnant and dust will settle everywhere.
The grass in your yard will grow—and grow and grow until it’s so long and spindly that it stops growing. New weeds would appear and they would be everywhere.
Many plants you have never seen before will take root in your yard. Every time a tree releases a seed, a small sapling can grow. No one was going to take it out or cut it off.
You will notice a lot more bugs buzzing around. Remember that people tend to do whatever they can to get rid of bugs. They spray the air and ground with bug spray. They eliminate bug habitats. They put screens on the windows. And if that doesn’t work, they impale them.
Without people doing all these things, the mistakes will come back. They would once again have the freedom to rule the world.
On the street you live on
In your neighborhood, the creatures would they walk around, look and wonder.
First the little ones: mice, marmots, raccoons, skunks, foxes and beavers. This last one may surprise you, but North America was once rich in beavers.
Bigger animals will come later – deer, coyotes and sometimes a bear. Not in the first year, maybe, but eventually.
Without electric lighting, the rhythm of the natural world would return. The only light will be from the Sun, Moon and stars. Nocturnal creatures will feel good about getting the dark sky back.
Fires will occur frequently. Lightning can hit a tree or field and set fire to bushes or hit houses and buildings. Without people to put them out, these fires would continue until they burned themselves out.
Around your city
In just one year, concrete things – roads, highways, bridges and buildings – will look roughly the same.
Go back, say, a decade later, and cracks would appear in them with small plants moving up through them. This happens because the Earth is constantly moving. With that movement comes pressure, and with that pressure comes cracks. Eventually the roads will crack so much that they will look like broken glass and even trees will grow through them.
Bridges with metal legs will slowly rust. The beams and bolts that hold the bridges would also rust. But the big concrete bridges and interstate highways, also concrete, would last for centuries.
The dams and levees that people have built on the rivers and streams of the world will erode. Farms will return to nature. The plants we eat will begin to disappear. There is not much corn, potatoes or tomatoes anymore.
Farm animals would be easy prey for bears, coyotes, wolves and panthers. And pets? The cats would become feral—that is, they would become feral, although many of them would be prey to larger animals. Most dogs wouldn’t survive either.
Like ancient Rome
A thousand years from now, the world you remember will still be vaguely recognizable. Some things will remain; it will depend on the materials they are made of, the climate they are in, and just plain luck. An apartment building here, a movie theater there, or a crumbling shopping mall would stand as monuments to a vanished civilization. The Roman Empire collapsed over 1,500 years ago, but you can see some remains even today.
If nothing else, the sudden disappearance of humans from the world would reveal something about the way we’ve been treating the Earth. It would also show us that the world we have today cannot survive without us and that we cannot survive if we do not take care of it. In order to continue to function, civilization – like anything else – requires constant maintenance.