With our comfortable modern lifestyles and all the pollutants that come with it, we have many doomsday scenarios to worry about.
So we don't really need to worry about anything else, because all these Doomsday scenarios are damaging everyone's collective brain. Except for Hollywood. Hollywood loves doomsday scenarios.
Here is one version of the end of the world for Hollywood: what would happen to life on Earth if the plants suddenly disappeared? Well, no one would ever eat broccoli again, that's for sure. And there would be no horrible forest fires.
The immediate danger is not that we will run out of oxygen. Scientists do not seem to agree on how long it will take to completely deplete oxygen, but this is somewhere between 370, 5000 and 52,500 years. This, frankly, respected scientists, is kind of a serious disagreement, but never mind. Let's just say that we don't have to worry about oxygen depletion in our lives or even in our children's lives. But…
We won't live long without plants
One scientist said that yes, oxygen will last for a while, but it doesn't matter, because we will be producing carbon dioxide so quickly that we will die of carbon monoxide poisoning in two and a half months. So it sucks.
If we assume that this assessment is simply awful, terribly pessimistic, then another serious threat to life on earth will be food, or rather its absence. Without plants, herbivores will die out pretty quickly, and predators will be forced to eat each other. In a few months, the only food on earth will be mushrooms, which will grow on dead vegetation - provided that the vegetation has actually died and has not been swallowed up by the heavens or something. But eventually all mushrooms will also die out.
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So will there be hope for people in such a scenario? Well, we'd be one of the last ones to go for sure. And if you don't think of phytoplankton as "plants," the oceans could support a small population of people, perhaps for a long time. With the decrease in the number of oxygen-breathing animals on the planet, it may take half a million years for the last person to finally die.