Your House Without You

In The World Without Us, Alan Weisman offers an utterly original approach to questions of humanity's impact on the planet: he asks us to envision our Earth, without us.

In this far-reaching narrative, Weisman explains how our massive infrastructure would collapse and finally vanish without human presence; what of our everyday stuff may become immortalized as fossils; how copper pipes and wiring would be crushed into mere seams of reddish rock; why some of our earliest buildings might be the last architecture left; and how plastic, bronze sculpture, radio waves, and some man-made molecules may be our most lasting gifts to the universe.

Visit www.worldwithoutus.com.

Category:

People & Blogs

Tags:

• environment
• humanity
• earth
• humans
• alan
• weisman
• world
• without
• us

[squanto2]

I suspect that almost everything mankind created would be gone without a trace in a few thousand years...back into the earth where it came from.

Don't forget...human beings WILL DEFINITELY become extinct at some time. Definitely.

[mdarnton]

I suspect this video is massively optimistic. There was a cute little empty house in the country where I lived in the late 70s. Over 25 years I watched it go from renovatable to just a chimney standing, with no help from anyone except Mom Nature. The last time I went past, all there was was a hole with a collapsed mess in it.

[RebelKnightCSA]

I think modern architecture would go a lot faster than that. Consider the abandoned wash house in Byrnesville, Pennsylvania USA - the walls are still sturdy, yet the roof is half caved in, and thats after less than 20 years of abandonment. There are plenty of other examples.

[1029blue]

Yeah, I wonder how long a standard European house would last. I have seen lots of rotting abandoned houses in the US, but I've never seen a European building coming that much apart.

[fallenpedalz]

I do to.. o_o

[AlexanderFreud]

We've got pieces of architecture which already last from thousand years

[AlexanderFreud]

You made me laughing. You AREN'T talking about religion? Does your god want us to destroy the world with our f*cking chemicals and everything? The Earth would be a perfect paradise without us!

[GotMilkFilms]

1. 47 wow it took that piece of metal 41 years to cross the screen that's one slow stream XD

[sumdumfoo1]

Never in my life have I wondered what the world would be like without us or before us. This book was interesting and thought provoking, but, like you said, depressing at the same time.

[lostluna6]

I find this kind of creepy for some reason

[carbonbasedboy]

the proposed elapsed time to the decay in the book is much shorter

[arkanoid1980]

amercian wooden houses are cheaper, but not designed to last for long, this is well known