The+World+Without+Us

Shaylyn, Ronan and Joey March 4

“The World Without Us,” is about the changes that would occur if humans no longer existed on earth. The author visits the zapara Indians and talks about how they try to live naturally but can’t anymore because of new modern may of living and environmental problems. After the humans disappear, nature takes over and buildings immediately begin to deteriorate. Buildings are eventually over run and infested by plants, animals and bugs. Two days after humans disappear without pumping New York subways it would flood. Seven days after, the emergency fuel supplies two generators that circulate cooling water would run out.

March 14, 2011

A year later, a billion birds annually would live when radio and communication tower warning lights cease blinking and high tension wires grow cold. Animals would return to the sites of nuclear reactors which would have all melted down or burned. Human heads and body lice would grow extinct. With no heat, pipes would burst all over towns in temperate or colder zones. Cockroaches would die after one or two winters in temperate cities. After ten years, damaged buildings are gone.

March 25

After hundreds of years the world changes dramatically. After 100 years, The amounts of animals increase and decrease. Animals in the wild such as elephants, chickens cows, etc, increase rapidly due to our absence. All animals consumed by humans grow in population rapidly. Animals such as raccoons, weasels, and foxes decrease in population because they mostly rely on us for food and other animals beat them to it. After 300 years, All of New York's bridges will collapse and Dams worldwide are silted. Any City or town built in river deltas or near high leveled water would be washed away. After 500 years, the climate would be much different in places such as the rainforest. Forests would take over the looks of suburbs. All human made things would lie beneath the forest in the soil.

April 12

Within thousands of years of the Earth being empty of human beings, any stone walls standing in New York City finally fall into glaciers. The only human structures still standing would be the ones built deep underneath the ground. The English Channel would be an explain of one. After 35,000 years, lead deposited during the smokestack era would finally be cleansed from the soil. After 100,000 years, CO2 would be back to pre-human levels. 250,000 years later, levels of plutonium in plutonium bombs would be lost away in Earth's natural radiation. Hundreds of thousands of years later, microbes would evolve to biodegrade plastic.

May 5th

7.2 million:The vestiges of of Mt Rushmore would still be visible, barring asteroids or earthquakes. Toxic man made chemicals such as PCBs and dioxins, are still intact, though mostly buried. 10.2million: Bronze sculptures are still recognizable. 3 billion: Life, albiet in forms we couldnt imagine, would still be thriving on earth. 4.5billion: The half million tons of depleted uranium-238 in the u.s would have reached its half life. As the sun begins to warm so would the earth. 5 billion+: The earth begins to burn as the swelling sun envelops the inner planets. Forever: Our radio(fm only) and televion waves would still be traveling outward in space