The World Without Us

The World Without Us was published in 2007 by Alan Weisman, an award-winning journalist whose work has appeared in Harper’s, The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic Monthly, and Discover, among others. The book expands upon his essay “Earth Without People” (2005), which was included in the essay collection Best American Science Writing 2006, a yearly anthology series published by Ecco Press (HarperCollins) from 2000 through 2012. The World Without Us spent nine weeks in the top 10 on The New York Times Best Sellers list and appeared in several best books and best nonfiction books lists for 2007. It was a finalist for the National Book Critics’ Circle Award, the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize, the Orion Prize, and the Rachel Carson Environment Book Award.

The World Without Us can be classified as postapocalyptic literature, but it is unusual in that it is nonfiction: Its speculative elements coincide with detailed reporting on current scientific research. For some critics, such as the biogeographer Philip Stott, the imaginative component makes the book closer to “dystopian specu­lative fiction” than to science writing; in Stott’s view, the fact that the Earth itself is in a constant state of flux makes predictions about the very distant future purely fanciful (Stott, Philip. “The world without us.” The Electronic Journal of Sustainable Development, 2008). While Weisman’s predictive imaginings are not scientific, most of the information in the book comes from his interviews with scientists. The World Without Us can also be described as a jeremiad, or a bitter lament regarding society’s trajectory. Although it is concerned primarily with describing a posthuman future, its animating theme is the notion that humans are putting our own survival at risk by aggressively and recklessly interfering with nature. Other significant themes include Reverence for the Earth and Life and the idea that Nature Is Flux.

This guide uses the 2007 Thomas Dunne Books (St. Martin’s Press) edition of the text.

Summary

The World Without Us offers a detailed exploration of a thought experiment: how Earth would respond if humanity suddenly disappeared. Weisman travels the world to formulate his answers to this question, interviewing scientific experts in a wide range of disciplines, from paleoecology to electrical engineering. Structurally, The World Without Us is a quilt of short vignettes strung together with little overarching analysis; rarely does Weisman explicitly answer any of the big questions he poses. The book has 19 chapters, divided into four parts, plus a short prelude and final coda.

The Prelude opens with a vignette about an Amazonian tribe in Ecuador that has been reduced to eating monkeys because unsustainable farming practices have greatly reduced rain forest biodiversity.

Part 1 begins in the last remaining patch of “primeval” forest in Europe, which offers a vision of what Europe looked like before human occupation and might look like after our demise. Chapter 2 describes the physical processes by which people’s homes would decay in their absence, while Chapter 3 does the same for an entire city. Chapter 4 describes how Homo sapiens evolved from chimpanzees in Africa and dispersed to the other continents, entertaining the question of whether another species with humanlike intelligence could evolve again. Chapter 5 explores the mystery of the Pleistocene-era mass extinction of terrestrial megafauna in the Americas, foregrounding the theory that it was caused by overhunting. Chapter 6 focuses on Africa, the only continent that has never experienced a mass extinction, explaining how humans and wildlife coexisted sustainably for millennia, how that ecological balance has recently been disrupted by population growth and development, and how African megafauna might recolonize other continents in humanity’s absence.

The first two chapters of Part 2 consider the low quality of much modern architecture, contrasting an abandoned resort town in Cyprus and flimsy apartment buildings in Istanbul with stone churches, caves carved into limestone, and 10,000-year-old underground cities, all of which will likely far outlast humanity. Chapter 9 addresses the prevalence of microplastics in the oceans and their impact throughout the marine food web. Chapter 10 moves to a massive industrial complex of petroleum refineries and petrochemical companies in Houston, imagining the fires and explosions that would release toxic pollution into the atmosphere until all the stored fuel was consumed. Chapter 11 considers the posthuman fate of agricultural lands, predicting that human-introduced heavy metals and persistent organic pollutants will linger in soils for thousands of years.

After imagining the posthuman fate of impressive engineering works like the Panama Canal, Part 3 explains how the Korean Demilitarized Zone has become a refuge for endangered wildlife, and how its megafauna might spread throughout Asia if humans were gone. Chapter 14 addresses the many human-caused threats to bird populations, from plate-glass windows to domestic cats, among which only the latter would be likely to far outlast us. Chapter 15 describes how nuclear weapons, reactors, and waste-storage facilities would decay and emit radiation for millions of years; life would continue, but with elevated rates of genetic mutation. Chapter 16 addresses the mysterious disappearance of the ancient Mayan civilization, which flourished for at least 1,600 years before collapsing within a single century, probably due to over-farming of rain forest soils.

Part 4 tackles the subject of human extinction most directly, describing what would happen to coffin-sealed human remains, considering various ways in which humans might go extinct, and presenting arguments for “voluntary human extinction” and “transhumanism.” Chapter 18 considers the posthuman fate of art works, of which only those made of bronze, silver, or gold will likely endure long without us; however, our radio waves will presumably keep expanding through the universe forever. Chapter 19 describes the destructive impacts of human habitation on coral reefs but also predicts their relatively speedy recovery, along with a large majority of marine species, after our demise. The Coda posits overpopulation as the root cause of anthropogenic environmental damage and argues for voluntarily limiting human birth rates to one child per woman to prevent self-induced extinction.