I'm not trying to depress anyone, but I think I might actually buy this book, The World without Us, now that I've read the hype in Scientific American and viewed the timeline of what happens to New York City once you vaporize all the people out of it.

I am a fun person to be around! You should invite me to all your parties!

I can't help it. I find this stuff fascinating. Oh, but quick note before anyone gets on me about it: Yes, I'm aware that Scientific American is considered a lightweight science publication; start my boyfriend's physicist brother on the subject sometime if you have all day and nothing better to do. Then, for bonus points, mock him behind his back because oh sure, that lame Scientific American, so lightweight--yet he's written articles for FOX News, of all places, and since when is THAT outfit a respected scientific authority?

Anyway, this will not be a rigorous scientific analysis. Why do I even have to say that? Because it's the internet.

No, I'm really just fascinated by the whole "and then there were none" idea. No more us. I don't know why I'm fascinated by it; shouldn't it wig me out or make me a little depressed? After all, I'm not a nihilist, nor am I a believer in the Rapture. Humanity's destruction is not something I look forward to. I didn't mark it on my calendar with half a page of Strawberry Shortcake stickers and little hearts drawn in red felt-tip, you know?

I don't want humanity to go boom, but on some level I guess I accept that it's going to. We're going to. Nothing lasts forever, although speculation is that fragments of St. Paul's Cathedral could endure for 15,000 years after we check out. The Brooklyn Bridge only gets 300 years of post-humanity survival; the subway system, a whopping two days. Did you know they're continually pumping water out of the subways? It's true--they pump out about 13 million gallons a day. Cut the power to the pumps and WHOOSH, it floods quick.

I always thought of New York City's subway system as an astounding achievement (and it is, I'm not taking anything away from it), but it's also a very fragile thing, like so many other human achievements. And just as we often do with most human achievements, we focus more on how impressive the whole thing is than on how fragile, how temporary, how dependent on our upkeep it really is.

And never even mind New York. What's London going to look like a century after everyone's gone? Rio de Janeiro? Hong Kong? Ooh, I'll bet Hong Kong becomes a real mess. It all becomes a real mess for a long time after, while the earth struggles to clean up after us and rebuild herself. And then, just as the hideous giant cockroaches are forming a symbiotic relationship with irradiated barnacles, the sun expands and blows everything up for permanent.

This stuff used to depress me when I was little. I would get sad. "But I'll miss us," one-half my brain would think. "But you won't be here to miss anything," the other, more reasonable half would counter. "But someone should miss us." "Who? And why?"

That's a good question. Why should anything else on earth miss us? (Besides pets. Let's pretend, for the purposes of not having me start bawling right here at the keyboard, that pets get Rapturized or whatever at exactly the same time we do.)

Yet I think it would be nice if we were missed, or at least noticed, after our departure. Maybe it's irrational of me, but I find it cheering to read that bronze sculptures could last millions of years, maybe ten million. I want to say, "Artists! Commence working in bronze immediately! The giant cockroaches must have reminders of us. Sculpt us wielding mighty cans of Raid, sculpt us with one foot raised and poised to stomp, sculpt us with broom and dustpan, triumphantly dumping into the trash bin dozens of maimed and murdered cockroaches."

I don't mind so much that we go. It's the part where the giant cockroaches take over that bothers me. I just don't like those ugly little bastards to win anything, not even a used-up planet full of plutonium 239.

Posted by: Ilyka at 10:21 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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