Fight Club Afterparty
So a couple of weeks ago, Alan Weisman was on the Daily Show about his new book, The World Without Us. It’s about what would happen if humankind suddenly vanished from the Earth. A couple of days after I saw that episode, I stumbled on this website about his book…
If you are interested in the premise but just want the Cliff’s Notes, here it is, in Flashy flowchart format.
I think most surprising is that we don’t completely fuck shit up with our nuclear waste and toxic sludge and whatnot.
September 20th, 2007 at 7:37
I don’t think his projected events are all too surprising. The earth has survived through 2 billion years of boiling seas, ice ages, meteors, galactus, and McDonalds. I wouldn’t be shocked to find that “life”, which by nature is the ability to thrive in environments, continues on for millennia.
I think the more interesting question is what kind of organisms will dominate the Earth next time. Our time has been the era of small mammals. Weisman guesses that microbes will take over the Earth, but it may very well be Giant Mothras, or a 5000 mile-long self-sustaining “Serpent”. I think to think of future Earth as King Kong vs Voltron vs the giant Eagles from Lord of the Rings.