1. This book explores what would happen to the earth if humans disappeared tomorrow. It examines everything from engineering structures and infrastructure to animal populations, flora, and the general landscape. It also considers the impact of pollution and other toxins that we’ve left behind.

2. The book highlights how quickly some aspects of the earth would recover, such as the destruction of cities and infrastructure. Yet, it also explores how long it would take for all traces of human impact to finally disappear, like plastics, toxins, and radiation.

3. I found the information on infrastructure and engineering particularly fascinating. Within one to three decades, the earth would almost fully reclaim the land through vegetation, erosion, and animal activities. Examples they gave were the sites of Chernobyl, the no-mans land in the conflict within Cyprus (where nature completely took over the highly manicured resort areas) and areas of land during the contra war

   Yet without chemical additives, war curiously has often been nature’s salvation. During Nicaragua’s Contra War of the 1980s, with shellfish and timber exploitation paralyzed along the Miskito Coast, exhausted lobster beds and stands of Caribbean pine impressively rebounded. That took less than a decade.

Impressions

How I Discovered It

I found it from a reddit thread talking what would happen if a virus or nuclear war killed all of human kind. Someone recommended reading this book suggesting that the world would be fine without us. After reading the book it made me realise that we have only imposed such a small change (compared to what the earth has been through before albeit in small amount of time) and that the earth has been through all these cycles before, what the worrying part is, is the environment for humans to live will be significantly changed and difficult. It will cause a lot of pain and suffering for humans, we are not hurting the earth as much we are hurting ourselves.

Who Should Read It?

Anyone who has an inquisitive mind, particularly those who are focused on engineering and science, those with a vivid imagination, and those who are concerned about the fate of the earth.

How the Book Changed Me

• It makes me think that as humans, we don’t really make a difference on this earth. We have only been here for a fraction of the time that the earth has existed. The earth has been here for millions of years and we’ve only been here for a 10 – 100 thousand year time period. What we do day-to-day is inconsequential to the earth itself, but has massive consequences for humanity and the potential suffering of those who come after us.
• What is fascinating is that we are accelerating these natural processes and cycles. For example, with climate change, we release so much carbon that has previously been buried in the earth into the atmosphere, which will cause heating. The earth has mechanisms to mitigate this, like algae blooms in the ocean that suck up carbon from the atmosphere. However, these processes will take hundreds of thousands of years to return the Earth to the state it is currently in.

My Top 3 Quotes

A few quotes on progress and having spare capacity to do other things other than farming:

Since a few farmers could feed many, and since intensified food production meant intensified people production, suddenly there were a lot of humans free to do things other than gather or grow meals.

Until agriculture arrived, food-finding was the only occupation for humans on this planet. Agriculture let us settle down, and settlement led to urbanity.

Humanity’s desire for increasingly luxurious items can lead to societal collapse due to excessive indulgence. This happened with the Mayan civilization, as evident in Tikal, Guatemala. The nobility directed too much energy towards grand temples and luxuries, such as gold, neglecting the common people’s needs. This neglect eventually led to dissent and a lack of support for the average person.

Nobility is expensive, nonproductive, and parasitic, siphoning away too much of society’s energy to satisfy its frivolous cravings

Other Notes and Interesting Quotes

1. On engineering in Istanbul, and how it is primed for a disaster:

“Istanbul and its houses sprawling city that are ready to collapse at any moment due to a earth quake. The floors just keep getting built on top of with no regard to the structural integrity of what is below it. The bottom floors are shops which are typically open and less structural”

2. “Stone structures were among the first things that distinguished sedentary humans from nomadic hunter-gatherers, whose temporary mud-and-wattle huts were no more permanent than the season’s grass. Stone buildings will be among the last to disappear when we’re gone. As the fleeting materials of modern construction decompose, the world will retrace our steps back to the Stone Age as it gradually erodes away all memory of us.”

3. “The bulk of what’s in landfills, he says, is construction debris and paper products. Newspapers, he claims, again belying a common assumption, don’t biodegrade when buried away from air and water. “That’s why we have 3,000-year-old papyrus scrolls from Egypt. Wepull perfectly readable newspapers outof landfills from the 1930s. They’ll be down there for 10,000 years.””

4. “Beason’s observations also suggest that migrating birds evolved to fly toward light in foul weather. Until electricity, this meant the moon, which would put them out of harmful weather’s way. Thus, a pulsating tower bathed in a red glow whenever fog or blizzard blots out everything else is as seductive and deadly to them as wailing Sirens to Greek sailors.”