"The World Without Us" Topic

The World Without Us
Alan Weisman

New York: St. Martin's Press, 2007

Pretty astounding book that is well worth reading, even if none of the factual information makes it into your zombie/post-apocalypse games. Deals with what would happen to the world should humans suddenly be eliminated from the picture. Discusses theories on mass extinctions (and in particular the effect of humans in the disappearance of the megafauna). Discusses environments that have been abandoned due to war (ex., Cyprus and Korea's DMZ) and how nature has come to flourish there. Discusses impact of human development (ex., fossil fuels, development of plastics) as well as the fate of artifacts that would be left behind (ex., depleted uranium shells and nuclear power plants). The chapter on the fate of big cities (ex., collapse of buildings, flooding without people to man the sewer and subway pumps, and rapid reclamation of urban landscapes by plantlife) alone made the book worth reading.

ooo! sounds intersting.

Having just watch the film 'after the world ended', where 10 years after 99.9% of everyone dies from the flu, the streets of San Fransisco still looked like they were swept every day….

(oh, and everyonw was all clean and stuff- ruined it for me)

You'll like this discussion too:

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Nice find

CC:

The author of that essay is the same. Due to interest in his Discover essay, he expanded it to write the book referenced above.

Mysterioso

Very nice! I'm glad he decided on the book.

CC

Earth Abides (George Stewart (?)) is still the best post-apocalypse fiction work I have read. Needs a few annotations for younger readers/non-history people (discusses Mercury dimes being converted into arrowheads, etc.) but it captures the collapse of civilization better than any other book I've read.

I just LOVE post-apocalypse stories set in Manhattan, with skyscrapers, ect. 'Escape from New York' is the prime example of this. Most people don't realize that all the big skyscrapers have huge basements that go deep down into the island, which they have to keep continually pumping out the ground water that seeps in. Because if they fill up, which only takes about a month, the ground supports fail, and the skyscrapers come down, just like what happened to the world trade center. Manhattan becomes a huge island covered in rubble in a little over a month if the power fails.

Eclectic,

I guess I wasn't far off with my assumption that most skyscrapers would not be left standing for long:

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I am sure they water in the basement would cause the buildings to collapse, but I think it is a little reckless to claim that within 30 days of a complete power outage all the buildings in Manhattan will be rubble. Collapsing, extremely dangerous to inhabit, structurally unsound, yes. A pile of rubble, no.

I second "The Earth Abides" as a good book. It's a bit dated but not enough to make it passe'. "Alas Babylon" is another that holds up but on a smaller scale in a more rural setting. nature is pretty destructive even when you have lots of people and resources to try and stop it.

Mysterioso, Sounds very interesting. If you can remember try bringing that book to the next game. I'd like to take a look at it. Thanks.

Goldwyrm:

I got it from the public library so I don't have a personal copy. It is however available at B&N in the New Releases.

Mysterioso

Thanks!

I went to Borders and bought it today. Looking forward to reading it and my other purchase: The Savage Worlds of Solomon Kane!

I found a site for the book when looking to recommend it to someone else. It has some artwork and the like not found in the book that might be of interest to post-apocalypse gamers.

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I ordered The World Without Us just based on the first couple of paragraphs from amazon but they botched the delivery, so they overnighted it to me for tomorrow to make up for it, Cant wait!

Mysterioso,

That is a neat slide show!

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Off to the book store… Thanx

That sound awesome, I gotta get me a copy ASAP.

Thanks for the led,
Brian

Battleground Weird War II
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In other words, the world will be better off without us. No surprise there.

The History Channel ran a short commercial of a documentary on this exact topic, scheduled for January 21, 2008 (might be a series).

I can't find anything else about it on the internet though.

CC
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Here ya go!

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Except that the History Channel commercial does say that it starts on January 21.

CC

There was an article on this just this last month in Scientific American. Many of buildings would come down in a year or so because of ground water seepage. Though a good number are built on bedrock so would stand for some time. The subways would all flood in a matter of days though.

Lest humans were gone, who would defend the earth from the aliens or the next comet strike?

And I thought this was going to be a thread about the Democrats' foreign policy platform.

This is moderately interesting, but what I'd be much more interested in is what would happen if – similar to 12 Monkeys – 90% of people disappeared.

Assuming that we didn't all go Mad Max on each other right away, could the remaining 10% keep most or all of our current technology going? And what kind of social and political structures would it require to do so? (There wouldn't be very many consumers left to fuel Capitalism.)

In general, though I think it would be worth a shot to give humanity a chance to start over. If I had a vial of something like that, I'd be willing to take my chances with everybody else.

Actually some rural areas might really fare pretty badly too. Not too far away is a mass of islands, channels, etc which make up the mis-namedSacramento San Joaquin river delta. Many of the islands are there only by grace of levees ala New Orleans and require daily pumping to hold back the river. If the pumps fail for any real length of time, then it's head for higher ground gang and if the water's salt then it's going to be worse. Not to mention the levee watch and repair effort needed even in time of drought and not just during our rainy season.

If power were to fail many freeway underpasses would fill with water as pumps keep them dry.
We are so specialized now that we need at least 50% of the population to keep doing their jobs or the society will fail. (10% is not enough.) Nobody else knows how to do their jobs. (The other 1/2 is making money off the productive side and don't matter that much.)

Spin-off topic . . . if there were some survivors:

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Get your DVRs ready to record "Life After People", scheduled for January 21st:

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Related discussion:

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