>> |
Anonymous
>>302361
No we wouldn't.
Someone somewhere would manage to last a few years longer than anyone else, but their life would consist of scraping algae off rocks. Not really living, when you think of it, and since the land-based ecosystem has collapsed, the surrounding ocean shelf would eventually follow it. All insect-dependent plants would die out. That would be...hmm, about ninety-something percent of all plant life, if I remember correctly. (Happy to be corrected.) All ecosystems would collapse. No crops, no food, no us. Some individuals would manage to last a while on stored reserves, but once the reserves are gone, they're screwed. All crop pollination would have to be done by hand, and it takes a lot of corn and wheat to feed one person. So say you've got a handful of survivors who do exactly that; they even know how to build the machines, basic grindstones, windmills etc, to put the food into edible form. That works for a while, but then you come across a BIG issue: tiny, tiny gene pool. One virus and Jim-Bob-Joe and his sister-wife Mary-Sue and their one-eyed mutant progeny are gone. Also, without trees and grass you have massive, massive erosion and in many areas, the water table will rise in response to the sudden drop in pull from deep-rooted plants, and in many instances that's a dramatic rise in salinity, and in still others, things like arsenic, which is not good for a plant's health. Dramatic erosion; nearly the entire surface of the earth will become nothing but shifting sands and very few species will be able to survive when their fertile, watery plains become deserts. Massive, massive climate shift will do over the few that manage.
|