An apocalyptic prediction that has existed for several years can become prophetic.
Less people - more oxygen
Even the not strictest self-isolation regime introduced on Earth in connection with the pandemic demonstrates how quickly the planet is cleared. It turned out that people - and even not all of them - just need to hide in order to begin to recover the environment they had spoiled.
That's really true: "fewer people - more oxygen." The validity of this popular wisdom was recently confirmed by the European Space Agency (ESA), unveiling images from its "ecological" satellites Copernicus Sentinel-5P.
The pictures show that the harmful emissions in the air of European cities have become noticeably less. For example, the concentration of nitrogen dioxide fell sharply - in Paris by as much as 54 percent. The situation is developing in a similar way throughout the world, in accordance with the adopted quarantine measures.
People just hid, and the air has already become cleaner.
And if there are no people at all? Will a virus kill everyone? Well, not the current one, but much more vicious. For example, such as "Wuhan-400", invented by the American writer Dean Kunz. In his 1981 thriller "Eyes of Darkness", those infected with this "hoot" died 20 hours later.
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Scientists began to represent the Earth without people back in 2006. Then well-known experts appeared in the New Scientist magazine with an extensive article and for some reason outlined the situation "there is no one anywhere", which then seemed absolutely unreal.
The far-fetched situation was matched by a fantastic "introductory": they say, no one died, and some higher forces in an instant teleported all of humanity to other planets suitable for life. As a punishment for earthly sins. By the way, exoplanets are planets in other stars, and 14 years ago, quite a few were discovered.
As a result, there is not a soul on our planet. Which, in fact, is quite possible to be afraid of.
In an extreme case, there will be someone alone - like the immortal Duncan Macleod, who will sit on the ISS to watch what is happening. And what will he see?
And darkness will come
“Visible changes will become noticeable in the next day,” explained Gordon Masterton, president of the UK's Institution of Civil Engineers. - The light will go out. After all, there will be no one to replenish fuel supplies at power plants. NPPs and HPPs will work for some time in automatic mode. But without human participation in the regulation of consuming networks, accidents will occur. Water pumps will stop, sewage and cleaning systems and all other equipment will stop working. In a week or two, maximum in a month, the planet will finally plunge into darkness. And in some places and in the slops.
In the meantime, even from orbit, you can see how the Earth sparkles with trillions of bulbs - ecologists call their radiance light pollution. In some countries, it is extremely intrusive - the starry sky is not visible. In Japan, for example, almost the entire territory is artificially illuminated. Which is by no means good for nature.
And the walls will fall
Modern buildings, although designed for at least 60 years, bridges - for 120, and dams and dams - for 250, but without proper maintenance, they will come into complete disrepair much earlier. According to experts, in a couple of decades hurricanes and just bad weather will only speed up the process. An example of this is the city of Pripyat, abandoned by people after the Chernobyl disaster.
“The city has changed a lot in just 20 years,” said Ronald Chesser, a biologist at Texas Tech University in Lubbock. - I have been there many times: wooden houses fell. Roots of trees sprouted through concrete and brick structures, roofs - especially factory ones - sagged and in places collapsed, collapsing the walls behind them, glass shattered. Bridges began to collapse.
The buildings won't last long.
Masterton assured: despite the apparent pace, the destruction will drag on. It will take several thousand years for the winds and currents of water to erase the traces of everything we have built - even after the ruins of collapsed buildings and ruined highways remain.
According to the scientist, almost entire structures and recognizable remains, which are more than 3 thousand years old, can now be found on Earth.
And the rebirth will begin
Chesser referred to the Chernobyl zone for another reason - as an example of nature's amazing ability to heal itself.
“No radioactive desert,” the scientist recalled, “the local ecosystem flourished. Of course, rats, mice, dogs bred first. But in a few years, the local fauna suppressed all this rabble. Now in the Chernobyl zone there are dozens of times more wild animals than outside it. It is full of wild boars, wolves and other large predators.
By the way, in some "quarantine" countries affected by the pandemic, wild animals have already felt freedom - they began to walk along the streets of empty cities. I repeat: this is despite the fact that people just hid.
In Japan, reindeer have grown bolder.
In Italy, wild boars took to the streets.
* Penguins * roamed in South Africa.
What will happen to pets?
“They certainly run wild,” Chesser replies. - Breed division will disappear. Populations will also decline. For example, now there is a surplus of rams on Earth - more than 3 billion. There will be much less.
And regardless of whether at least some people remain on the planet or not, those species of animals that the current intelligent inhabitants have already brought to extinction are likely to disappear. Although, in general, according to scientists, the deserted Earth will give the animal world more chances to maintain biodiversity - both on land and in the oceans, where, in addition to fish and marine mammals, coral reefs and plankton will actively begin to recover.
And trees will grow everywhere
All terrestrial ecosystems will begin to revive at about the "Chernobyl" speed. Faster - in warm and humid regions. But in the cold North or South, the matter will not drag out. After all, the person did not do it so badly there. Mainly roads and pipelines.
The freeways won't stay * passable * for long.
Canadian ecologist Brad Stelfox modeled on a computer the "non-human" future of northern Alberta. It turned out that in 50 years forests will cover 80 percent of its territory. Almost all over 200 years. And even now, semi-wild Siberia will probably overgrow even faster.
However, nature will take many centuries to "heal" the huge areas occupied by parks, in which one or two species of trees are used. And some ecosystems won't recover at all.
David Wilcove, a biologist at Princeton University, refers to the Hawaiian Islands, where the forest is "blocked" by grass that burns regularly and prevents the trees from growing.
The bald patches of agricultural land, according to Wilkov, will disappear without a trace in a few centuries. Russian ecologist Professor Alexei Yablokov believed that it was much faster - in several decades. And he cited as an example young spruce forests that grew on the site of abandoned collective and state farm fields in Russia. Yes, I saw them myself - in Valdai: the Christmas trees stood up impassable fences.
And clear water will return
According to Kenneth Potter, a hydrologist and hydrologist at the University of Wisconsin (University of Wisconsin at Madison), it will take several decades to clean the planet of nitrates and phosphates, which now turn its rivers and lakes into poisonous broths. This rubbish will last longer in underground waters. But in a hundred or two years bacteria will neutralize it.
Stinky gases will disappear much faster - exhaust and various factory gases that accompany the creative activity of people. In two to three weeks, precipitation will wash out an impressive amount of nitrogen oxides and sulfur from the atmosphere. The old forecast was convincingly confirmed just the other day.
Worse - with carbon dioxide, the main culprit in global warming.
“ By burning fossil fuels, humankind has already emitted so much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere that it will significantly affect the environment for another 1000 years, ” explained Susan Solomon, an atmospheric chemist at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration - NOAA). - The surplus will remain at least 20,000 years.
“Even if it disappears, humanity will remain guilty of the continued warming,” agrees climate forecaster Gerald Meehl. - And it can lead to the release of methane from under the ocean floor, which is still there in a frozen state in the form of hydrates. As a result, the temperature will jump even higher. And what will happen next is unknown - whether a new ice age, or a global flood, or a global fire.
And it will seem that we didn’t exist
Scientists agreed: the time will come and there will be no visible signs on the surface of the Earth, indicating that a highly developed civilization once existed on the planet. And in this sense, the Earth will be equal to Mars. Photos from orbit or from all-terrain robots moving on its surface will not reveal a single artifact. The aliens will have to land personally. And excavate.
The most persistent will remain the Elipetan pyramids. But they too will eventually disappear from the face of the Earth.
Archaeologist William Rathje of Stanford University suggests that if aliens ever arrive, the first thing they do is dig up pieces of glass, plastic, and perhaps even paper.
- The preservation of some ancient things always surprised me, - the scientist substantiates his hypothesis.
TOTAL
Experts at New Scientist almost unanimously allotted 100,000 years or so for mankind, as they say, to disappear. Although, according to some researchers, there will be absolutely nothing left of people in about 50 million years. And after such a time - this or that - it will no longer matter where the people have gone: they teleported or died from some virus. Nobody will know anymore. Even aliens.
"And neither a bird, nor a willow will shed a tear if the Human race disappears from the Earth …". These long-standing, but highly relevant nowadays lines from a short poem by Raymond Douglas Bradbury, with which he adorned his "Martian Chronicles", would not have become prophetic. As well as these: "And spring and spring will meet a new dawn, not noticing that we are no longer there."
VLADIMIR LAGOVSKY