I wonder...

[davywavy]

...if the entire human race were to drop dead tomorrow of Bird Flu, how long it would be before there were no visible signs that we'd ever existed?

Comments

[mrmmarc.livejournal.com]

Quite some time.
Basically until a large ball of rock hit a precise part of the moon wherein a small plaque with Nixon's name on it exists.
Then considering the longevity of of SOME man made structures...
I'd say you'd lose all visible trace of the human race in about 8-10,000 years.

[karohemd.livejournal.com]

Don't forget it's likely there will always be a small percentage who will be immune.

[verlaine.livejournal.com]

Doesn't plastic take like half a million years to degrade?

[mrmmarc.livejournal.com]

Some. Ish. We aren't EXACTLY sure on the half-million years tag.
But a bloody long time indeed.

The oldest structures may fall away but traces remain. Roman forts long gone can been seen from the air ala time team.
Dave- you want it- no buildings left gone, or GONE gone.

If the former, then 8-10,000 years from today.
If the latter- mmmmnnnn. 25,000. Give or take a few.

[vierkilau.livejournal.com]

Depends on the mountain of shit all those birds produce. They could cover all our achievements

[reddragdiva]

Toilet bowls. Millions and millions of toilet bowls. Made of ceramic, mechanically strong, chemically indestructible. Biologists of the future will have a whale of a time working out what creatures grew them as skeletons.

[barty.livejournal.com]

Really obvious stuff like big stone buildings should last a while. Most of the erosion to such structures is believed to be caused by humans nicking the stones to build new stuff with. Without all that manpower, you'll have to wait for accidental erosion by rain and whatnot, or for buildings to get covered up with sand or forests. I'd give it about twenty five thousand years.

If someone turned up and did a serious study, they'd be digging up plastic bags for a few thousand years. After that we should be easily detectable in core samples as an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide a few million years from now.

In the fossil record, we show up as short mass extinction event, accompanied by a thin layer of radioactive deposits (from all that coal-burning), and followed by a small explosion in biodiversity. That should last at least a hundred million years, but it might be mistaken for a cometary impact.

The Earth and Moon are scheduled for demolition by the sun in about five billion years anyway. After that we'd be quite hard to detect.

Somebody might stumble across Pioneer 10. Five billion years from now it should still be in galactic orbit carrying a readable message plaque. It'll probably eventually go too close to a star and collide with something. Then we'll be gone.

Rather quickly I wager

[applez.livejournal.com]

If you mean things like overt architecture, infrastructure and the like...

Consider all those petro-refineries, nuclear power plants, ships at sea, and multiplicity of boilers & fuel systems all over the world that would start massive conflagrations without proper monitoring.

Likewise, most roads and homes in the US, at least, are built so poorly that a decade of floods, frost, and weeds would devastate most recognizable structures.

Otherwise, if one means all traces of humanity, I'm afraid our toxic and nuclear wastes, plus massive species transfers have made a permanent mark. As it is, most near-surface groundwater surfaces have levels of pesticide & herbicide contamination that won't be removed for a century or more.