Aftermath: Population Zero Page #7

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Other creatures also dot the

savannahs of the American West.

These furry beasts are the

descendants of millions of beef cattle.

Their ancestors mated

with Highland cows,

a breed insulated with fur, not fat.

Horses evolved here long

before humans arrived,

and once again they run wild and free.

In just 230 years,

North America has buried human homes

and lost some of its

most prized monuments.

And time doesn't stop,

1000 years after every

human disappeared from Earth,

the iron of the Eiffel

Tower is almost gone.

It has slowly eroded and

become part of the Seine.

In New York, the Statue of

Liberty has fallen into the forest.

Her iron skeleton finally gave way

and her body collapsed.

But her pedestal still towers

above the trees around it.

Made of solid concrete and granite,

it wil last thousands of years.

But time can wipe away

all evidence of humanity,

especially as the world turns colder.

A new ice age grips the planet.

Gradual changes in the Earth's

orbit take it further from the sun.

Snow will stay on the ground in

northern cities for two summers in a row.

Then, a chain reaction causes ice

to cover most of the

northern hemisphere.

It will stay here for the

next hundred thousand years.

Once again, glaciers travel south

and eventually reach Manhattan.

They'll grind down what's

left of the Statue of Liberty

and any other sign of human

civilization left in the north.

But there is one place our

imprint will remain indefinitely.

On the Moon.

Unlike Earth, the moon's

landscape changes very slowly.

Craters more than 4 billion

years old are still preserved.

Along with some human artifacts.

A car.

A television camera.

The only reminders of the human species

that will last for millions of

years aren't even found on Earth.

Planet Earth is four point

five billion years old.

In that context,

human civilization is

just the blink of an eye.

It took us 10,000 years

to cut down half of the world's forests,

but after we disappear,

they grow back in just 500 years.

Once we used half of all fresh water

and changed the course of half

of the world's major rivers.

But some dams were washed

away in just 200 years.

We pumped 13.5 billion tons

of carbon dioxide

into the air each year.

But in just a couple hundred years,

plants and oceans were

scrubbing the earth clean.

It took just over a century for

our major cities to start crumbling,

for forests and swamps to cover

what used to be concrete and asphalt.

The planet was even able to handle

the nuclear legacy we left behind.

After we disappeared,

thousands of tons of radioactive

particles were released.

But nature was able to bury most of it,

and some animal species

not only survived,

they thrived.

Earth is resilient.

And time, it cleaned up

every mess we left behind

All we had to do...

was get out of the way.

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