The World Without Us
October 19, 2008 3:23 am Books
I generally like to talk about games, but I enjoy reading nearly as much as playing games. So hey, here comes a book report.
I’ve been reading “The World Without Us” by Alan Weisman. It recently came out on paperback (I hate buying hardcover books, they’re too expensive and they eat up more shelf space) and it’s a book that I’ve wanted to check out for a while. I was told the premise of the book was a huge “what if” scenario if humans stopped existing on Earth. Although, out of 19 chapters, the first six mainly deal with how humans got to be where they are now (evolution through primates, and so on). Typically at the end of a chapter Weisman touches on which plants take over, which animal populations die off or take off, which human constructions fall apart, which is the good stuff for me.
Throughout most of the book, Wiesman introduces some situation, talks to an expert about that situation and tried to get them to explain what would happen if humans were gone, then follows up with his own imaginary story telling of the events that would play out.
For me, the theory and science behind what would happen when we’re gone is the most interesting aspect, I wish there were more of it. However, one thought came to mind when reading a chapter dealing with evolution and African primates. The theory goes that humans evolved from Chimpanzees, and Weisman brings up that chimps have some pretty interesting tendencies for aggression that are shared with humans. There’s another type of primate, bonobos, which exist in the same region as chimps. However, bonobos have no aggressive tendencies outside of defending their territory. That is, where chimps are outwardly aggressive and will kill, maul, and sometimes methodically pick off chimps from other groups, bonobos don’t.
So, in another world and time, it could have been possible for a more peaceful primate to evolve into our evolutionary slot. Of course, that assumes that our (chimps and humans) aggressiveness didn’t get us here in the first place, which it certainly could have.
Another section of “The World Without Us” deals with some theories on the disappearance of all the “mega-fauna” in North and South America. If you’ve ever been to the La Brea tar pits (the the tar tar pits!) you’ll be a little familiar with giant sloths, mammoths, various north American horse and camel species as all the skeletons of those creatures is on display. Apparently they were around when humans were, but around the time humans arrived in North America, the mega fauna started dying off. Coincidence?
Well, not really. Yeah, some of our ancestors most likely killed them all off. But how? Because the North and South American mega fauna didn’t have time to adapt to us. So, they were roaming around, minding their own business when suddenly they’re getting a spear thrown through them. Plus, because they were so big, they were great sources of food and they made great trophies too. I’m sure bagging the biggest sloth was a hit with the ancient ladies.
So, lots of the predators that relied on sloths, camels, etc. Started dying off (sabertooths, the North American Lion) since their food source ran out. Humans could have killed some of the the predators off too (they make good trophies as well). So why didn’t this happen in Africa (the African Paradox)? Why are lions, hippos, rhinos, elephants and other similar species still around there? Because African wildlife adapted with humans and had time to adjust. When we were still transitioning out of the forest and into the plains, they were evolving right along with us. However, in the western hemisphere, many years later, much more advanced humans dropped into territory which had creatures that had no reason to be frightened of us. Sort of like city pigeons that no longer fear humans because we’ve stopped killing them for enough generations. If humans started killing pigeons again, within a few generations you couldn’t get with 100 feet of one.
There was a fairly scary chapter about plastic. The author goes out of his way to point out how bad plastics are for the environment currently and that there’s huge sections of the ocean literally covered in plastic continue to grow. Pretty nasty stuff, but one scientist goes on record of saying that if humans were gone, then eventually plastic would get worn down not through biodegredation (although bacteria might evolve that could make that happen), but through other means like erosion, photodegredation, etc.
So, Earth will correct itself in a few hundred thousand years or more. The problem is that humans keep adding plastic to the environment, and even “environmentally safe” plastics aren’t necessarily so. Generally the problem is that enviro-plastics need to be exposed to heat or the sun, but being in the ocean keeps them cool. Algae can also “foul” the plastic, and even make it sink into the ocean depths, preventing it from degrading from the necessary sunlight.
There’s many neat little tidbits in the book over all. There’s a nice history lesson about the Panama Canal and what would happen if no one was around to watch over it. Mount Rushmore could be around for millions of years because of the type of rock it’s made of. Millions of birds die every year from unintentional human harm such as erecting huge towers that confuse bird and make them run into power lines. Larger birds can die from landing on powerlines because they sometimes touch two which grounds them. Lots of interesting little facts I’ll definitely remember.
Some of Weisman’s math seems off though. At one point he calculates that domestic cats kill something like 7.8 – 219 million birds a year in Wisconson alone. That seems waaaay to high. My cat only “kills” a bird when the bird slams into a window and even then it usually fails. Actually between my two cats, they maybe get that lucky once or twice a year, if that.
To relate this to games, it be cool if there was a game where you played as an alien race and basically discovered an abandoned Earth. I’d have to be a mystery game, where you try to find out what happened to all the humans, but first you’d have to learn about humananity. There are a few good level / scenario ideas, such as going exploring Chernobyl that could be pretty cool. Although I think the real challenge would be figuring out how to make a game fun with an Earth devoid of humans. It’d be difficult to make a mainstream game to take advantage of that scenario without some ridiculous plot twist or something that’s already been done before (Protheans in Mass Effect for example). Maybe it’d be a better edutainment title.
Anyway, the book isn’t what I expected, but there were enough “what-if” scenarios to keep me going. There were also a bunch of great little history lessons and factoids which I had either forgotten about or didn’t know about, so I’m glad I read it.