What would hap­pen if humans dis­ap­peared from the face of the planet right now? What would hap­pen to our infra­struc­ture, the wild ani­mals… our legacy?

This is the topic Alan Weis­man tack­les in his spec­u­la­tive non-fiction book, The World With­out Us (which I’m con­sid­er­ing adding to my read­ing list purely out of curiosity).

The Wikipedia entry for the book is very insight­ful, but I just love the (inter­ac­tive) web­site:

1 Year: World­wide, a bil­lion annu­ally doomed birds would live when radio and com­mu­ni­ca­tion tower warn­ing lights cease blink­ing and high ten­sion wires grow cold. Ani­mals would begin to return to the sites of nuclear reac­tors, which would have all melted down or burned. Human head– and body-lice would grow extinct.

35,000 – 100,000 Years: Lead deposited dur­ing the smoke­stack era would finally be cleansed from the soil.

7,200,000 Years: Toxic man­made chem­i­cal com­pounds, such as PCBs and diox­ins, would likely also still be intact, although mostly buried.