BOOK REVIEW // ‘The World Without Us’ by Alan Weisman: A fascinating, ecologically relevant experiment in thought
What if humanity suddenly ceased to exist? How would the natural and physical world react, unhindered and no longer actively shaped by mankind’s attempts to control and fashion it? Alan Weisman’s thought provoking exploration reads a bit like a piece of visionary science fiction, but the science is sound and the events predicted are perhaps inevitable, at least within the author’s framework. The World Without Us pits nature’s power vs. man’s legacy and comes up with an absorbing “if and when” plotline, beginning with the extent of how we have already changed our planet’s nature and geography. Weisman then investigates how and when the natural world would reclaim itself in the event of our immediate disappearance, eventually wiping away any remaining vestiges of our existence.
In the spring of 2008 I devoured this “eco-thriller,” a stunning example of speculative non-fiction, which fires the imagination to conceive of something it can never experience: a future world without human consciousness and all that comes with it. Not a preachy treatise on environmentalism, deep ecology or the eradication of humanity, The World Without Us is more entertaining, interesting and penetrating than any of the former presentations of arguments, editorials, or documentaries I’ve come across. Perhaps I’m just a sucker for doomsday scenarios, dystopias and bizarre futures, especially if they are believable, or in this case, entirely possible. What Weisman does is examine not just what is plausible, but with painstaking research, he tried to determine exactly what our Earth would be like if we simply vanished. And his findings about what would disappear first and remain longest make for compelling reading as well as pertinent information concerning what humanity has done and is continuing to do to the environment.
Projections from Alan Weisman’s The World Without Us:
2 days – New York City’s subway system floods
7 days – nuclear reactors begin to overheat and meltdown
1 year –1 billion doomed birds survive due to the cessation of man-made electricity
3 years – pipes burst, buildings start collapsing
20 years – the Panama Canal closes
100 years – elephant population increases 20x and feral housecats outcompete other small predators
300 years – the world’s bridges and dams cave and fall
Image source: Alan Weisman's "The World Without Us"
500 years – forests reclaim the suburbs, but plastic and aluminum kitchenware remains
Thousands of years – only underground structures like the “Chunnel” remain intact
35,000 years – lead deposits from old factories finally cleansed from the soil
100,000 years – CO₂ returns to pre human levels (maybe)
250,000 years – weapons plutonium degrades and fades
Hundreds of thousands of years – plastic eating microbes evolve
7,200,000 years – dioxins and PCBs still remain, as does America’s Mt. Rushmore
10,200,000 years – bronze sculptures still recognizable
3 billion years – life, not as we know it, still thrives on Earth
4.5 billion years – America’s half million tons of depleted Uranium 38 reaches its half-life, the Sun expands; heating up the earth, microbes still survive
5+ billion years – the Earth is finally swallowed by the Sun
Thankfully, radio and TV broadcasts will still be beaming into eternity to delight, confuse and disgust anyone who should happen to be listening.
By Graham Land
Additional resources:
The World Without Us official site
New York Times review of The World Without Us
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BOOK REVIEW // ‘The World Without Us’ by Alan Weisman: A fascinating, ecologically relevant experiment in thought? Seriously? I was searching Google for how to control nuclear pollution and found this… will have to think about it.
I think the discovery channel had a similar documentary (or might have been based on the same book) and they actually had pretty awesome graphics as well, which showed some of what would happen to the earth if all humans suddenly disappeared.
BOOK REVIEW // ‘The World Without Us’ by Alan Weisman: A fascinating, ecologically relevant experiment in thought | Greenfudge.org…
What if humanity suddenly ceased to exist? How would the natural and physical world react, unhindered and no longer actively shaped by mankind’s attempts to control and fashion it?…