What would happen if humans disappeared?

I saw this video some time ago, I've rewatched it today and I just wanted to share it with you.
Any thoughts about that?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wy7Q6wazD_E

It just kind of confirms what I've thought. Mankind is, in general, poison to the world. It's like a bad relationship, where one partner is toxic. Eventually the other partner needs to cut lose that toxic partner, for their own health and well-being. The Earth, God, the Force or whatever balances itself out and eventually man will be the cause of his own demise. I think it's probably the best for all the other species we have to share the planet with.

Does this take into account that we're part of the food chain/ecosystem/biosphere?

If we slowly died out, that's one thing. But instantly gone? Surely, that would disrupt some part of the natural systems we're part of. The actual planet would be fine, but what about the flora and fauna? Would that sudden a shift throw things off balance?

This is the same as the History Channel special "Life After People" only much shorter. It's a good video though. It would be interesting to explore what might happen if just most of the human population died out. If only a few thousand humans survived some apocalypse what would happen? How would the remaining humans continue to survive?

It just kind of confirms what I've thought. Mankind is, in general, poison to the world. It's like a bad relationship, where one partner is toxic. Eventually the other partner needs to cut lose that toxic partner, for their own health and well-being. The Earth, God, the Force or whatever balances itself out and eventually man will be the cause of his own demise. I think it's probably the best for all the other species we have to share the planet with.

im not saying that you are a stupid person but i am saying that this is a really stupid idea to believe and especially to promote

i used to kind of feel this waytoo, so im not placing myself as superior

go look at your mother and ask yourself if she is poison

go watch little children playing and ask yourself if they are poison

do JEDI despise humanity? is that what it means to be a jedi?

do you think its ok to exterminate all the blacks?
all the whites maybe?
should we erase all muslims off the face of the earth?

of course not, but all people everywhere is somehow better?

in terms of the timeline of life on earth it wasnt very long ago at all that "we" (our evolutionary ancestors) were living in trees and being eaten by snakes and birds of prey, big cats, dogs, other bigger primates maybe, all manner of lare reptiles, and playing host to a hundred different parasites

we alone on earth do all those evil things youre thinking of but we also travel space and adopt orphans

spend some time looking at how the rest of the animal kingdom acts towards one another in real life (not in disney films) and see if we are the only species with inherent brutality

we probably are the only species that actually cares if we damage the rest of the world tho

many people believe in treating the world with respect, more every generation

its actually normal for people to want to do good, accordingto their own understanding of what that means

we arent poison, we are simply a young species

Leah Starspectre wrote: Would that sudden a shift throw things off balance?

I'll briefly cover the slice of time when we're gone from just 10, 50 or maybe 100 years. After 500 or 1000 things get more smooth and slow from an evolutionary point of view and can be hardly predicted.

First of all we have to take into account surviving dependency between species. Many species won't survive without us. That's because we are the most efficient predator on this planet (if you do not consider viruses and bacteria obviously) and if the best predator take care of you, you are safe until it disappears (dog example).

Then comes the new food chain. We are at the top of the pyramids and if we go away something else has to take our place. This means that there will be a new era of competition between predators in which many species can go extinct for several biological and evolutionary reasons.

In the end comes the new environment.
We are leaving here streets, bridges, skyscrapers, tunnels and gigantic constructions in which we live and work every day. Without us those structure will be a all-new environment for many spices to live in. Some birds can make a tall building their new home and be safe from bears, wild cats, snakes and other animals that can easily climb up a tree but can hardly take a lift to the 15th floor or walk 30 flights of stairs.
This great new environment variety will certainly influence the surviving and evolution of many species.
Then sudden changes in the natural environment will come. Nuclear power plant explosion, dams collapsing and so on. These events can easily make a specie go extinct and clear the way for other species to spread (as was for small mammals after the dinosaurs mass extinction).

EDIT: I forgot to answer your question :laugh: My answer is yes, I really think that things will be thrown off balance. Thanks for the question anyway, you've given me a great input!

Lykeios wrote: If only a few thousand humans survived some apocalypse what would happen? How would the remaining humans continue to survive?

Then I think we will have the same process that I've just described with the only exception that we will a really good competitor in the new predator competition and adaptation to the new environment. *How* we will do this I think strongly depends on every particular situation we will have to go trough.

OB1 I'm with you on this one.

You may be right. I may have been a little harsh. I believe there is some good in humanity. But there are a lot that are poison. And since you asked, yes, I do think my birth mother was poison. I saw her maybe 20 times in 43 years. Each time, she added nothing to my life besides misery. I was able to forgive her, and understand why she was such a person, but it didn't change who she was.

And I got lucky, and was removed by the state from her care. My sister was also removed from her care. The one person who didn't get lucky, was my brother, and he's a mental mess now. So yes, I believe there are people who are poison in our lives, and people who are poisonous to the planet.

And I may be stupid, that's fine, that's your opinion. I see the companies in WV poisoning the rivers, and lopping off mountaintops. I see the oil and gas companies destroying the environment. Those things are certainly not being done by bear and antelope, but by man, and in regards to the environment, yes, Man is poisonous. There are a lot who are fighting that, and that's a great thing. But there are many more who don't care, as long as they get their pockets lined with cash. Part of our job, I think is to be concerned with all life and point out the areas where there are problems. And I never said I was in favor of getting rid of all people, just that all the other species may be better off, which is what the video was about. And of course children aren't poison, they are innocent, but they can became that way. If not there'd be no abusive marriages, no child abuse, etc. So I can't say all people are poison, nor can I say all are good.

But I do agree with most of what you said. Maybe we will do better. That's part of having faith.

I believe we all are connected and therefore impossible to unbind...if, humanity were to die off completely there would be something that would give birth in its place. Yes, we have ruined this planet I will say that. But, I believe it can he undone through the evolving power of The Force. Ever seen Logans run? Go rent it sometime. But that was off subject...my point being there are many including myself that have awoken to the fact we need to take care if this planet and reverse the damage to it.

people are not their ideas: i do not think YOU are stupid

i held the same idea at one time

its actually become very trendy to look down our noses at the whole species and you see this idea expressed in a myriad of ways throughout popular culture, even among so called "intellectuals" who really should know better

thats a tough one about your family situation; human to human, you have my empathy and best wishes

all i can say beyond that is that if you have (or eventually do) come through all of that with the sincere resolution not to be poisonous yourself, then think of what that implies for the rest of humanity; that even someone who came from bad circumstances can retain basic human goodness and strive to make the world better, even if it is only the part of the world within his or her own sphere of personal influence

im remembering some lines from desiderata

"...for the world is full of trickery.
But let this not blind you to what virtue there is;
Many persons strive for high ideals,
And everywhere life is full of heroism."

its true my friend
our "goodness" is every bit as real as our "badness"
the mere factthat we recognize that there is a distinction and that we dont even argue about which is better, is evidence that the goodness is worth believing in

and as for it bein a matter of faith: if you are willing to make effort in your own life, let that itself be evidence that others do also

peace

Thanks for your concern. I've come through it all with very few scars. I'm happy with the world, and at peace with everything. And I agree with you, that people can change.

"that even someone who came from bad circumstances can retain basic human goodness and strive to make the world better, even if it is only the part of the world within his or her own sphere of personal influence" That is true, but there are those, who have no desire to seek that goodness or make the world better.

Sara Teasdale wrote: There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools, singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white,

Robins will wear their feathery fire,
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,
If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.

Hmm.


I have some thoughts on the OP, but first, with no introduction -

http://www.loony-archivist.com/babycakes/

Personally, I believe this could be turned into a general discussion about what happens when intelligent life develops on any planet. If life on Earth is any indication, there are a few observations that can be made:

- There's only one dominant intelligent species. There have been more here, but all of them were wiped out by the most versatile one

- With the development of society, resources become scarce after a relatively (ok, insanely) short amount of time. Making it necessary to look beyond the planet of origin for additional resources -> leading to the development of space traveling and refined resource exploitation technologies.

There are a few possible outcomes for this:

1. The species fails to develop the technology to continue resource exploitation on other planets once there are no more resources on Earth

2. If 1 is true, we either die out (if the planet has completely been stripped of all of its resources), or we partially die out because the remaining resources aren't enough to sustain the current civilisation size and then die out later, once the planet is destroyed by the collapse of its star.

3. We keep going on on other planets until we've run out of resources within the areas of space that we can reach within the limits imposed on us by physics. Then we die out.

So it's not really a question about if we die out, but rather: when. In my opinion, the planet (and / or entire sector) will be barren once humans are gone.

If we were to die out before we run out of all resources (e.g. wiped out by a cosmic event, by disease or by our own doing), the planet will keep going. There might be just enough time for another species to develop intelligence to the degree we have it today - which would re-start the cycle. There also might not - Earth is already a relatively old planet in terms of the development of life. Most other planets in the universe are considerably younger in this respect (which is now a theory for why we haven't been able to detect other intelligence - there simply hasn't been enough time for it to evolve on other planets yet).

And this might sound arrogant: will it matter if there's life on Earth if there are no intelligent, self-aware beings? Who will be able to reflect on it?

Life would go on.

Honestly, I am always a bit astonished by people seeing us as ‘outside’ of the natural life. Maybe that would be fair if we had another planet, until then this is what we came from and what we are part of. It’s not like we could do without nature, accordingly I don’t see how we could not be part of it.

Another thing that I think is somewhere between amazing and ridiculous is the idea that we can actually destroy the planet. I seem to remember reading about some kind of lifeform living in the coolant of a nuclear reactor (I’d have to look that up though). I don’t think anything short of shattering the planet in a million pieces’ can extinguish the spark of life on this mudball. Human life, certainly. All life? I doubt that, we humans are surprisingly squishy compared to some things in nature.

That being said, I do seem to remember a rant of the devil on the beginning of Goethe’s Faust about trying to get rid of human life. Not a valid argument, but certainly fun to read.

Cyan Sarden wrote: In my opinion, the planet (and / or entire sector) will be barren once humans are gone.

I am not so sure of that, unless we upload our consciousness in a computer (Transcendence style) and turn the entire planet in a machine, life (even bacteria or fungi) will adapt to our absence and will go on starting a new evolutionary path.
Moreover, even if we "computerise" all the surface area of the planet and sterilise it natural events such as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and meteorite impact will occur. This events bring complex chemicals, heat and so on and can make the life cycle start again in the same way it started in the beginning. So I don't think the end of humankind will be the end of life in out system.

Cyan Sarden wrote: Earth is already a relatively old planet in terms of the development of life. Most other planets in the universe are considerably younger in this respect (which is now a theory for why we haven't been able to detect other intelligence - there simply hasn't been enough time for it to evolve on other planets yet).

Slooow down Cyan ahahah
The theory your are quoting exists (is by Dimitar Sasselov if I remember correctly) but is just an hypothesis with very little support to it. We have discovered around 2100 exoplanets (number of exoplanet confirmed in 2015, but there are other 700 candidates). Around 350 of them are Earth-like planets or supearths. I'll do not take into account exomoons.
Of these 350 exoplanets we have calculated the age of less than 10 and every result is around 3.5 Gyr or so. The Earth, in comparison, is 4.5 Gyr old (1 Gyr = 1 billion years).
If every one of these planet have earth-like life on it probably there is just some multicellular organism and nothing more and your theory would be true. We have to notice, by the way, that we have the age of less than 10 planets and looking at the results I suppose is really unlikely not to find a planet (or many) older than the Earth. Anyway, no one know at the moment, we can be the oldest or the youngest planet, we don't have enough data to establish that.

Cyan Sarden wrote: And this might sound arrogant: will it matter if there's life on Earth if there are no intelligent, self-aware beings? Who will be able to reflect on it?

Not arrogant, maybe just playing the devil's advocate and it's a good thing.
We weren't intelligent life forms. We were monkeys. And before being monkey we were unicellular organism. So yes, I think it really matters because some other life form can evolve, become self-aware and reflect on these things.
If what you say is true then 4'499'800'000 years of 4'500'000'000 would have no sense; but is because of that gigantic number of years that we are here today, so I think they matter.