Progress sucks. I like this idea much better. Okay everyone, on the count of three...

So, I'm assuming that if atmospheric methane is gone within ten years, the coyotes ate a lot of beef during the first couple of years after we died off. Cuz' I don't see that happening as long as there are cows farting.

And I don't see how light pollution 'ends' in 24-48 hours, without somebody manually switching off every street light, and killing nuclear power generation plants. Large sections of the grid blackout, but chunks of it would keep running for a while.

Sometimes I wish I could be a dictator and start a nuclear war to end the days of human domination :)

Oh I'm kidding of course, I'm just booking my trip to north korea now.

this is kinda scary. but i like it. everyone but me, on the count of 3- 3, 2, 1!

(just kidding)

I'm sure that some neo-luddites with mass suicide fantasies have masturbatory dreams of having this happen. Ironically, they would not be there to "enjoy" the fresh clean air and all the wild animals roaming free.

Well, they should do the rest of us a favor and commit suicide quietly in the darkness of their un-airconditioned, unheated cabins. At the very least, they should stop using electricity, the internet and modern medicine.

The original article is from New Scientist and better. http://www.newscientist.com/channel/life/mg19225731.100

junyo,

as always, it depends on WHAT caused the mass extinction of humans.

Obviously anything that can take out such a pernicious group like us (and everyone of us) can pretty much take out the power infrastructure you mentioned. Disease can do it, but it would need an incrediblly fast distribution system (globally) and something that would do the damage quickly without leaving any trace. I would bet more on the alients from sigma six. (got a flyer from them last week in email.. they are looking for some real estate on earth and they don't do banks)

But truthfully, given much of what humans have made requires some upkeep and maintance, I would be more worried about the nuclear reactors that suddently have no one to maintain them.. (one overheats.. and boom).

With so much of our information being digitally stored now, I'm wondering at what point different forms of media would become unreadable to future alien archaeologists.

100-200 year till bridges collapse? Tell that to the Roman Aquaduct.

1000 years till brick, stone & concrete buildings gone? Tell that to the Greeks and Stonehenge.

This came from the Times of London? Aren't they supposed to be reputable, or are they one of the stupid tabloids? All they have to do is take a walk around their hometown to see stuff that's older than their time-lie predicts. And that' with all the nasty, terrible things us humans do to all of our heritage - war, smog, acid rain, knock it down for something newer...

(heh, "time-lie", that was a typo, but it seems appropriate!)

hmmm...nuclear waste would still be 'deadly' in 2 million years? I bet it wouldn't be deadly to the super-intelligent snakes, antellopes, and grizzly bears that evolved near it without humans shoo-ing them away. Quite a bit can happen in a million years...they'd probably eventually get some benefit from eating the stuff.

what I find funny about it is the very first step, all the little endangered species magically recover... do people realize animals do go extinct on their own, because of among other things their own freakin stupidity? You know they proport that the extinction rate is about 100 times the normal rate right now, and that's all due to human interference... only problem before people started counting endangered species (i.e. before we were supposedly killing them) there were no numbers. What about the animals in zoo's that we're jacking off, taking semen from, and trying to force to reproduce. Also I would go so far as to say these numbers are all about double what I think it would take, I'm guessing earthquakes and thing would take care of stuff pretty quickly were it not maintained, other than the nuclear material... I'll give 'em that figure. Also lets not forget the climate is continually warming... and despite what Al Gore might think it's due to the fact that the last glaciation ended 10,000 years ago, and we're still warming. If you'll consult this graph on wikipedia you will see what I'm saying holds weight http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Vostok-ice-core-petit.p... In fact, the temperature over the past 400,000 years has never remained stable, and I don't think that was due to Homo erectus or Neandertal campfires. But whatever... I think it's naive to believe we have that much of an impact on the world around us... as if humans are that freaking great that we can just destroy the earth in this manner. All and all can we knock off the political commentary's on gizmodo... i like the site, but I'll leave, I come here for gadgets not the supposedly "sci-fi" junk science.

Should I be mean? Nah, I'm too nice for that.

Hey buddy, read very carefully to me what it says about the stone buildings there and what with their collapsing...

See?

...look harder...

...little harder...

...Did you even READ the thing?

Yes! There you go! That little word called MOST!

As in, not all. I find that to be satisfactorily accurate.

Would the remaining chimps and apes eventually evolve into 'humans', just repeating the cycle?

Just out of curiosity, wouldn't the initial catastrophe that removed the human race from the planet have some sort of impact on everything else?

after 400,000 years, first starbucks begin to re-open

Okay, so, this is a little bit wrong. We are in a state now where humans are actually needed to protect the planet from massive catastrophes on a daily basis. What would happen to a nuclear powerplant if all the human workers in it suddenly vanished? Or a chemical plant? Or nuclear missile silos? I think, though this may be out-dated, that if the computers that operate the silos don't get feedback from a human every once in a while, they launch on the assumption that we've been attacked and all the humans are dead. Anyone know if this is true?

Point is, there is a lot of dangerous technology on this planet that would initially make things much, much worse without human supervision.

Oil tankers would all run aground, planes would fall from the sky, the thousands that would be up there, oooh, it could be really bad if they're in the middle of some crazy black-hole creating experiment at some super-collider when everyone vanished. You get the point.

Let us also not forget that One-celled Willy, the magical amoeba from which all life supposedly sprang, is the true culprit here. We didn't ASK to evolutionarily mutate into its great-great-great-great-(et cetera)-grandmutation. These types of scientists brood over humanity as a degenerate evil that we can only hope will someday become extinct. I'm sorry, but they're the ones filling the earth with negativity. But, I don't suppose scientific studies about positive things get as much publicity. "Let's get a little more sensationalism in here, people!!! No one's looking!!!" Public funds go to this type of crap?!?

quite from mrrobotanger: "I think, though this may be out-dated, that if the computers that operate the silos don't get feedback from a human every once in a while, they launch on the assumption that we've been attacked and all the humans are dead."

I would not be surprised if this was true at somepoint...although I find the very idea even more horrifying when you consider it would launch without anybody telling it the target -- did somebody just give it a "default target of the week" every Sunday just in case? Or would multiple missiled just fire all over the world to destroy every country other than the US, in the hopes of sparing the last few US survivors from any possible conflict?

...did somebody just give it a "default target of the week" every Sunday just in case?

I've heard the rumor of the nuclear "dead man's switch"; don't know if it's true... but the targeting lists get updated as threats change. So all the likely suspects have a ICBM or two tasked in their general direction. So it would really suck for the furry woodland creatures in North Korea if this were true.

EQC, The missiles in silos all have pre determined targets.

Forgot one:

---0-----------
2 weeks
zoo animals
die

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End_of_civilization I have way too much spare time and read all this. The biggest thing i have seen mentioned here is the fact that nulear power plants unmanned would sooner or later meltdown.

mrrobotanger says: "[...] if the computers that operate the silos don't get feedback from a human every once in a while, they launch on the assumption that we've been attacked and all the humans are dead. [...]"

Kay.. that's just really, really, silly.

On the rest of the timeline -- whatever. So a bunch of fish recover and there's less light/air pollution. If we're all dead, who gives a crap?. This also serves to remind everyone of just how inconsequential we all are. I mean it takes less then 1000 years to have a problem in finding any traces of human existence outside of certain metropolises. So all the bleeding hearts need to quietly go jack off in the corner imagining a world without humans.

Many environmentalists are misanthropes, which is irritating to me. I mean, if you're not on the side of the human race, who's side are you on?

They never fail to neglect, in articles like this, how much cleaner our newer technologies are than our old ones. Do they even think how horrible it would be if everyone on the planet burned wood for heat and light instead of using oil/coal/nuclear/hydro -electricity?

"Just out of curiosity, wouldn't the initial catastrophe that removed the human race from the planet have some sort of impact on everything else?"

Not necessarily. A biological weapon could be set off that specifically affects humans (and maybe primates too), thus leaving everything else unaffected. That sounds an awful lot like a sci-fi show...

When a tree falls in the woods, does it make a sound?

If there are no humans on earth, does it really exist?

We must be more careful when things such as this attempt to invade or arrogant sensibilities.

"Within 10 Year: Methane in Atmosphere Gone"

That's assuming that all cows have gone extinct in 10 years and all swamps have dried up.

halan is right. if anyone from the sci-fi channel reads this blog, we will see this on tv in about 2 and a half weeks.
and i sincerely doubt the world would recover, because global warming and climate change also have a large natural component to them...

Yeah, I found this pretty damned scary. We've only been around as a tech using civilization for about 8 or 6,000 years, but we've effectively changed the Earth for another 200,000?

I'm fairly certain that the article didn't refer to what would happen if all humans were killed/suicided but what would happen if we were all to magically disappear.
Retiree - Most of the things you referred to (half the buildings in London) are under constant human maintenance which prevents them from deteriorating in 100 years. As for things like the Stone Henge, it's a bloody massive rock monument. The aquaducts and greek buildings also seem to of been in use and under maintenance during their lifetime as well.

I do agree that this is a pretty stupid thing for the London Times to write about, as there is really no merit to a study like this, but as some of you have voiced I do feel that the immediate after affects of lack of human presence would be quite bad.

Man, from some of those comments, there's a few people here who deserve to get magically disappeared from the planet... Pass me the un-subscriber ray, would ya?

RTFA in NS guys, every one of your 'objections' is dealt with there.

Mother Earth will take care of herself. With all the natural disasters that would occur, many signs of mankind would be wiped away. Aliens would re-seed the planet and it would all start again!

Now I just want someone to make a 3 minute time-lapse version of this timeline, recreated ostentatiously in CG graphics. Maybe with a voice-over by one of those "Hollywood Trailer" guys.

I don't necessarily agree that there's no merit in this study. It is really a general "big picture" of what kinds of effects humans are having on the planet. (We would have to assume that everything - nuclear reactors, toasters, ride-on mowers, hairdryers, etc - would be switched off before the big magic cleaning cloth wipes off all the humans.) Animals certainly go extinct without human intervention, but over very long time periods (usually thousands to tens or hundreds of thousands of years), not fifty to a hundred years with our recent "help". We don't build buildings anywhere near as resilient as the Greeks and Romans did (planned obsolesence is a common feature in modern buildings), and without constant maintenance, most wouldn't last for more than a couple of hundred years. Our "new technologies" (Internal combustion engines? Nuclear fission?) aren't quite as clean as the sales pitches make them out to be. And as for the comment - "So a bunch of fish recover and there's less light/air pollution. If we're all dead, who gives a crap?" -, human arrogance of that sort could make this hypothetical situation real some day.

Excuse me for my ignorance, but wouldn't the negative void coefficient prevent the reactor from melting down?

If humans vanished it would be the worst thing imaginable. We are a precious commodity in our universe. Global warming and nuclear weapons are just part of the process towards escaping our planet if we are sensible. And if we are not, then like probably billions of other life forms (probably too far away for us to ever know, or for them to know us)we will go extinct. In 2-3 billion years the seas will boil, and by 5 billion years the sun will anihilate our planet. That's if by then we are not either a frozen waste on the edge of two galaxies: the Milky Way and Andromeda; or just another victim of the Super-Black Hole that lives at the centre of those intermingled galaxies. Nothing shall remain.

I found it strange when I walk through my local graveyard, festooned with the graves of grand Victorians who were the pioneers of the industrial revolution. In Camborne, Cornwall, where I live, these men were the founders of all industrial life we now enjoy or find abhorrent (according to your perspective). They lie in crumbling tombs, with pious words on the gravestones, telling us of their various acheivements. Here one built a new steam engine to service a local tin mine; there is another who helped Richard Trevithick to invent the first steam engine. Now they are just a pile of bones, in musty old grave, and in 3-5 billion years these tombs will be incerated, crushed and destroyed. Nobody will care whether they lived or died, yet if man still exists, he will have something to owe these early pioneers of the much resented industrial revolution. For without it, the space age would not have started, and therefore life would not have been able to escape this beautiful planet in search of others worlds. On the other hand if man is driven back to the stone age he will remember with fondness and sadness these men, before he is finally anihilated. Then again, Nick Bostrom might be right. Perhaps we are just a computer simulation? 01010010010001.