~ EARTH: POPULATION ZERO ( LIFE AFTER PEOPLE ) ~

If the earth's population of 6.7 ( and counting) dissapeared all at once fine day, nature is whera the party would be at. With our plundering, pillaging, over-consuming and over-developing ways, the most dominant species on Earth is also the most demanding of its resources. So if we all vanished into thin air, leaving nature well and truly alone, it would eventually reclaim the planet and return to its glory days of green. But these flora and fauna would first have to deal with the mess we leave behind. There are some of the things scientists predict would happen to Earth once humans are no longer habitants:

• With no one to turn on the light, artificial light would no longer blaze the night sky. Light pollution will no longer taint the atmosphere
• Power stations would not be fuelled, and with no power, nothing runs - factories, machines, water pumps, sewage treatment plants, etc. Wind turbines and solar power plants that also produce power will eventually die out with no one to maintain them
• Without water pumps, subways and streets would flood. In colder climates, freezing and thawing would split cements
• In the absence of pollution, weeds and creepers would consume cities
• No more pollutants from cars and factories. Some pollutants already in the atmosphere will wash out in weeks. Some, such as chlorofluorocarbons, dioxines and pesticide DDT, take longer to break down. Our biggest headache, carbon dioxide, will eventually be absorbed by the ocean to its full capacity in about a thousand years. But 15 per cent of CO2 will remain in the atmosphere, influencing the climate for more than 1000 years after humans stop emitting it
• Lightning will set paper-filled offices on fire after lightning rods have rusted away. The concrete ruins of these structures, however, will remain for thousands of years, just like the ruins of ancient civilizations that we've discovered in our time
• Steel bank vaults could last for eons with our paper money and gold bars in it. Certain common plastic might remain intact for hundreds of thousands of years and may not break down until microbes evolved the ability to consume them.
• Nuclear waste currently in long-term storage will last thousands of years without supervision, by which time its radioactivity would have dropped drastically. Active reactors, however, might leak, catch fire and melt down, releasing huge amounts of radiation. But as witnessed around Chernobyl, where nature quickly bounced back, the effects of radiation might not be so dreadful
• Some ecosystems may never return to the way they were before humans interfered, because they have become locked into a new state
• Domesticated, artificially selected and inbred animals and plants will evolve back to the way their feral ancestors were through random breeding. No more cute little poodles running around
• Most endangered species will rebound once they get their habitat back. But some on the brink of extinction won't survive without human protection as they lack the genetic diversity and the ecological critical mass they need to recover
• The rat population, though not endangered, would dissapear as it would be deprived of human garbage. Cockroaches will too. as they thrive in warm buildings
• Fish populations will gradually recover from drastic overfishing. Corals and other bottom-dwelling organisms on deep water reefs will gradually regrow
• After a few million years, almost every trace of our present dominance would vanish completely