Thought Experiment: What would happen if the human species weresuddenly extinguished?

John F. Eldredge wrote:
On Sat, 01 Aug 2009 09:33:27 -0400, jmfbahciv wrote:

Greg D. Moore (Strider) wrote:
"jmfbahciv" jmfbahciv@aol wrote in message
...
Pat Flannery wrote:
Wayne Throop wrote:
I'm not sure the pyramids would last as long as a million years. And
over a few tens of millions of years, they'd pretty much toast as
far as recognizable artifacts go.

Being carved out of granite, Mount Rushmore should last a very long
time.

The Old Man in New Hampshire didn't last.

/BAH
It most likely lasted a few thousand years (since the Wisconsin
glaciation) and was a random collection of fairly unstable rocks.
Mount Rushmore was selected to use far more solid rock. I suspect
it'll last a bit longer than a random jumble of stones. :-)


Kewl, I know nothing about this stuff. _Wisconsin_ glaciation? Or are
you just trolling me?

/BAH

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisconsin_glaciation. The name used for
the most recent glaciation varies geographically; in North America it is
known as the Wisconsin glaciation. It came as far south as Louisville,
Kentucky; the Ohio river valley at Louisville is the classic broad U
shape, with flat valley bottom and steep slopes at the outer edges, of a
glacial valley.

Thanks for the info. I remember hearing about the glacier in school but
I don't remember the word Wisconsin associated with it. Now I have to
find more info on it; isn't that grand? :-)))

/BAH

Greg D. Moore (Strider) wrote:
"jmfbahciv" jmfbahciv@aol wrote in message
...
Greg D. Moore (Strider) wrote:
"jmfbahciv" jmfbahciv@aol wrote in message
...
Pat Flannery wrote:
Wayne Throop wrote:
I'm not sure the pyramids would last as long as a million years.
And over a few tens of millions of years, they'd pretty much toast
as far as recognizable artifacts go.

Being carved out of granite, Mount Rushmore should last a very long
time.

The Old Man in New Hampshire didn't last.

/BAH
It most likely lasted a few thousand years (since the Wisconsin
glaciation) and was a random collection of fairly unstable rocks. Mount
Rushmore was selected to use far more solid rock. I suspect it'll last a
bit longer than a random jumble of stones. :-)


Kewl, I know nothing about this stuff. _Wisconsin_ glaciation? Or are
you just trolling me?

/BAH

Nope, quite serious. As another poster pointed out, it's the name for the
most recent period of North American glaciation.

Yea, thanks for the verification. I simply don't remember the word
Wisconsin being used when I heard about it in school (probably grade
school).


Cool stuff when you start to read up on it and then see signs in the wild.
Parts of North America are still rebounding from the weight.

Yep. I now have to read about it. Somewhere, in my packed boxes,
is a history of geology or something like that. I'll put it on
my "read me now" pile.


You can start to see signs like scrapes in rocks, U-shaped values,
terracing, etc.

Kinda cool to realize the impact it had and still has.

(Some of the caves I go into were carved before the glaciers and filed up
with till that has been washing out since.)

I'm in Michigan now; I don't remember anybody talking about caves (I
grew up in this area). Now I gotta look around.

/BAH

Mr. Speed, I think Mr. Carnegie is just pulling your chain. That bit
about straw hats protecting you from dragons a few posts back, for
instance. Or "scientific evidence isn't absolute proof"...frankly, I
don't even know what that means. You'd be better served just ignoring
the gentleman.

Damien Valentine wrote:
Mr. Speed, I think Mr. Carnegie is just pulling your chain. That bit
about straw hats protecting you from dragons a few posts back, for
instance. Or "scientific evidence isn't absolute proof"...frankly, I
don't even know what that means. You'd be better served just ignoring
the gentleman.

What I really mean is that science isn't absolute proof, but it will
do until we can get some. Oh, and I elaborated on the Chinese view of
dragons' bones, but apart from the hats I think they did hold that
opinion.

On Aug 1, 3:09 pm, BradGuth wrote:
On Jul 29, 4:36 pm, Immortalist wrote:



A pop-science ghost story, in which the whole earth is the haunted
house.

If a virulent virus, or some other catastrophe, depopulated Earth
overnight, how long before all trace of humankind vanished?

Days after our disappearance, pumps keeping Manhattan's subways dry
would fail, tunnels would flood, soil under streets would sluice away
and the foundations of towering skyscrapers built to last for
centuries would start to crumble.

At the other end of the chronological spectrum, anything made of
bronze might survive in recognizable form for millions of years-along
with one billion pounds of degraded but almost indestructible plastics
manufactured since the mid-20th century.

Meanwhile, land freed from mankind's environmentally poisonous
footprint would quickly reconstitute itself, as in Chernobyl, where
animal life has returned after 1986's deadly radiation leak, and in
the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea, a refuge since
1953 for the almost-extinct goral mountain goat and Amur leopard.

Weeds and then trees would retake the buckled streets and wild
predators would ravage the domesticated dogs. Texas’s unattended
petrochemical complexes might ignite, scattering hydrogen cyanide to
the winds-a "mini chemical nuclear winter." After thousands of years,
the Chunnel, rubber tires, and more than a billion tons of plastic
might remain, but eventually a polymer-eating microbe could evolve,
and, with the spectacular return of fish and bird populations, the
earth might revert to Eden.

What about the fate of earlier societies who outran the potential for
their environment, and taking the long view of the human species -- up
till and including the final demise when the sun becomes a big cinder
about 5 billion years for now. I mean will the last work of man to
survive be a plastic water bottle?

We may need a Voluntary Human Extinction Movement proposes that human
beings help themselves become extinct.

http://www.amazon.com/World-Without-...dp/0312347294/

So far we're doing a damn fine job of eliminating ourselves, by way of
consuming everything in sight, as well as taking and badly utilizing
whatever's undersea or deep underground.

One false move by any number of nuclear and VX capable nations, and in
nothing flat it's all going WW-III until there's not hardly one
surviving soul.

Bah! A nuclear war would probably leave a billion or more people
still surviving. The eco system wouldn't even have noticed within a
century or so.

"Rod Speed" wrote:

Yes, but all that we need for evidence that humans had once existed is a few
recognisable fossils. What happens to most of the corpses is irrelevant to that.

Most corpses eventually cease to exist as objects, otherwise.

Yes, but that was just as true of the dinosaurs and we can still prove
that they did once roam the earth from the fossils that remain.

That's after a couple of centuries or pretty agressive searching for
fossils. Were any of the evidence for dinosaurs obvious to pre-1800
people? Would any be obvious if a space visitor looked around for a
year or so (ignoring museums etc.)

Human quarrying will be obvious for a long time. Messing with
organism isolation might be obvious to a visiting research party. I
don't know whether the lack of oil near the surface would be obvious
to a visiting research party.
--
Tomorrow is today already.
Greg Goss, 1989-01-27

Greg Goss wrote
Rod Speed wrote

Yes, but all that we need for evidence that humans
had once existed is a few recognisable fossils. What
happens to most of the corpses is irrelevant to that.

Most corpses eventually cease to exist as objects, otherwise.

Yes, but that was just as true of the dinosaurs and we can still prove
that they did once roam the earth from the fossils that remain.

That's after a couple of centuries or pretty agressive searching for fossils.
Were any of the evidence for dinosaurs obvious to pre-1800 people?

Irrelevant, the evidence was there anyway.

And other evidence like the pyramids and skyscrapers and Mt
Rushmore is obvious to anyone, no agressive searching required.

Would any be obvious if a space visitor looked around for a year or so (ignoring museums etc.)

No one said anything about 'from space' and the great wall of
china and say New York would be obvious from space anyway.

Human quarrying will be obvious for a long time.

Yep, the big pit in Kalgoorlie wont be going away any million years soon.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ka...t_DSC04498.JPG

Messing with organism isolation might be obvious to a visiting research party.
I don't know whether the lack of oil near the surface would be obvious
to a visiting research party.

Doesnt matter when other stuff stands out like dogs balls.