One of the most dramatic chapters in “The World Without Us” describes how quickly nature would reclaim New York City if humans were removed.

He added a cap over his graying hair, a bandanna around his neck. He had put on jeans, a hoodie, and hiking boots-all doused in permethrin to guard against ticks, which have appeared in the area as the climate has warmed. Weisman headed for the Rivulet Trail, which runs through one of New England’s few remaining stands of old-growth trees. The other day, the weather was crisp, and the sky blue, except for some wispy clouds. Instead, he has been fielding questions from people who find “The World Without Us” oddly apt, and going on hikes. (The local farmers’ stands now operate unmanned, on the honor code.) When the outbreak began, he had been working on a book about hope amid ecological collapse, but his research plans-involving travel to Europe, Asia, and Africa-were put on hold. Weisman, who is seventy-three years old, has been waiting out the pandemic at his home, in rural western Massachusetts. “Say a Homo sapiens-specific virus-natural or diabolically nano-engineered-picks us off but leaves everything else intact,” he wrote. Forever: Our radio waves, fragmented as they may be, will still be going out.Hunkering down in New York City-with its once crowded streets, bridges, and offices now relatively empty-a canyon dweller at home could do worse than to read Alan Weisman’s “The World Without Us.” The book, a best-seller when it was published, in 2007, sought to understand what Earth would look like if everyone vanished.

100,000 years: CO2 will be back to pre-human levels (or it might take longer).As Lexington Avenue caves in, it becomes a river.

Twenty years: The water-soaked steel columns that support the street above New York's East Side would corrode and buckle.

One year: Several more billions birds will live when airplane warning lights cease blinking.

It's narrative nonfiction at its finest, taking an irresistible concept with gravity and a highly-readable touch. Take us off the Earth and what traces of us would linger? And which would disappear? Alan Weisman writes about which objects from today would vanish without us how our pipes, wires, and cables would be pulverized into an unusual (but mere) line of red rock why some museums and churches might be the last human creations standing how rats and roaches would struggle without us and how plastic, cast-iron, and radio waves may be our most lasting gifts to the planet.īut The World Without Us is also about how parts of our world currently fare without a human presence (Chernobyl a Polish old-growth forest, the Korean DMZ) and it looks at the human legacy on Earth, both fleeting and indelible. Discover the impact of the human footprint in The World Without Us.

The world without us book