A world without mankind

A series of devastating disasters completely wipes out humanity. How does the world look several thousand years later? What new species have evolved and what threatened or endangered species recover?
 
A series of devastating disasters completely wipes out humanity. How does the world look several thousand years later? What new species have evolved and what threatened or endangered species recover?

That depends entirely on exactly what kind of disaster wiped out mankind, and exactly when this happens.

A nuclear war or extreme natural disasters like large meteorite impacts will propably cause a mass-exctinction, but if mankind is wiped out by something like several genetically engineered viruses, then the effect on the environment will be minimal.

In the latter case, species that have become pretty much dependant on humans (especially the domesticated animals, but also rats and mice, etc.) will suffer the most, as the man-made environment in which they lived is now gone.

The situation will definitely improve for animals that were directly and only threatened by human activities, but animals that were threatened by non-native animals that man has introduced elsewhere are pretty much screwed now.
 
A series of devastating disasters completely wipes out humanity. How does the world look several thousand years later? What new species have evolved and what threatened or endangered species recover?

1) Any disasters that wipes out (not 'reduce to 18th century technology', not 'kill off a significant portion of', not even 'kill off most of', WIPE OUT) in any sort of recent time is going to leave the Earth in pretty bad shape, unless it wipes out humanity in the very early stage of development (say, 500,000 years ago). Your post was extremely unclear, we only know by default that this wipe out, was happening before 1900 (which rules out nuclear weapons), and what we can deduce by talks of 'endangered species'.
2) Several thousand years may be enough time for bacteria and algae to evolve. That's about it. Nothing else is going to change at all significantly. Try several million years, at LEAST. Again, how that changes entirely depends on the nature of the disaster. If it was a series of localised disasters in Africa, probably nothing much... if it was something like a Paleocene-Eocene extinction event, or, funner still, Cretaceous-Tertiary... then something else entirely.
3) Try to throw more than two-lines at a PoD of this complexity, this WI is so poorly designed so as to make it pointless.
 
Yes I know , but do otters really have the potential to evolve into an intelligent species? I would pick one of the apes or monkeys

They're pretty damn cute and use tools. I must confess I didn't offer much more thought to my answer than was given to the question.... Its been posed once or twice:/
 
In all likelyhood, the creature that will replace mankind as this planets sapients are either going to be Baboons (intelligent tool users which exist in a not to dissimiler manner to man) or Rats (Intelligent, Social, commonplace, extremely adaptable and fast evolving due to high birth rate).

Zor
 
Top