If humans went extinct today, how long would it take for rivers, lakes, ponds, and agricultural land to no longer be polluted? How long until lakes and rivers would be clean enough for a hypothetical human survivor to drink from?
>>16382392some rivers and lakes are never clean enough, of course, but in a matter of weeks without any waste drainage getting in any river that's not muddy by nature would be fine. for lakes, it depends.
>>16382400>never clean enoughI just mean clean from anything caused by humans (sewage, agricultural pesticides, etc)>lakes, it dependsWhat would be the general timeframe? Weeks, months, years, longer?
For it to be >99% clean it would take tens or even hundreds of thousands of years. For just to survive i think maybe 2 weeks.
>>16382392https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silurian_hypothesis
>>16382590retard
>>16382392Probably not too long. 1000 years from now most of human society would be undetectable to the naked eye outside of some stonework and bronze. After all, steel rusts, wood decays, etc. Even plastics on the planet are getting slowly eaten up by microbes. I'd say 10k years would be enough to erase most of civilization.
>>16382600It's a bot
>>16382479What if we ignore plastic and metal and are concerned only with sewage, agricultural runoff/cow shit/fertilizer, that sort of stuff? The stuff that presents health hazards and affects drinkability of water? Would that be all dissipated within a few years from lakes and ponds? And soil near agricultural areas?
>>16382424It depends on the volumes of water displaced downstram, clean water coming upstream, levels of pollution. Lake Maracaibo, for instance, will likely not be clean in many, many years. Lake Geneva would be fine fast.
>>16382637How many years for the worst of lakes?And what about small ponds with no inflow or outflow?Obviously the best we can do is make educated guesses but I am curious to hear more-educated guesses from people more educated than me
>>16382684
'forever' in 'forever chemicals' means 'forever'
>>16383764No, forever chemicals break down. Sure, it takes 1000 years or something, so it's impossible for them to break down at the human time scale, but they will be gone 1-2k years from now. What really will take a long time to break down are plastics, but bacteria can accelerate the process by degrading them for energy.The most permanent part of human civilization is isotope deposition in the soil layer from nuclear testing, that's gonna stick around for pretty much forever.
>>16382392Not that long. There's a few spots in the world today that were previously occupied by humans and then subsequently vacated, the flora and fauna bounced right back. I think, as humans, we vastly overestimate our importance to this planet.
>>16383802>>16384011How long for chemicals such as agricultural runoff to decay/dissipate enough for lakes and ponds to be drinkable (assuming lack of contaminants not caused by humans)? Weeks, months, years,.decades?
>>16384049>Without humans nature would collapseBiggest retard on /sci/ award
>>16382392I expect that there would be someissues if humans all just dropped dead suddenly. For example, wouldn’t a lot of nuke plants eventually experience accidents if they aren’t properly shutdown?
>>16384070
>>16384070Most are designed with passive containment/cooling in a failure state, so they'll just use up the fuel in a few decades and go dark. The few that would just spew shit after their fuel melted wouldn't even make a huge impact on the ecosystem, far less than humans do, and their measurable radioactivity would at worst last centuries.Honestly you'd have to worry about some of the nasty chemical plants making small but long lasting dead zones, or certain mines causing sinkholes for a few centuries.
>>16382614>newcomers
>>16382392You gotta ride your faggy bike through the apocalypse
>>16384068He is right you stupid piece of shit.
>>16384068LMAO, you are the most stupid idiot here.
>>16384041Not all lakes and ponds are drinkable to start with.
>>16382614It's a race to the bottom. Anybody who unironically thinks the future of humanity lies in colonising the stars is extremely naive. At this rate the future of humanity will effectively be one giant mashup of Africa and India, massive civilisational regression where many aspects of modern technology will pass into folklore and mythology for future generations, unlikely to be achieved again.
>>16385632Your theory relies on technology being still maintained and developed further. With autistic whites bred out to extinction no on will be around to maintain electricity, refrigeration, computers, agriculture, etc. Asians might keep it going for a while though but the rest of the world is doomed.
>>16382392real humans died millenias ago, we're alien hybrids
>>16385665I think you misread that post.
>>16382605>Even plastics on the planet are getting slowly eaten up by microbesChatGPT 3 post.
>>16385632>It's a race to the bottom>the future of humanity is one giant mashup of Africa and Indiabut who will be in control?is there any group somehow slotting themselves into leadership positions?
>>16382392Never, because uranium exists.
>>16382392https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_Without_Us
>>16382392Just removing the population of India/South Asia would go a long way
>>16382392rivers would get clean within a few days, pretty much because they are running water. They only get dirty because sewers dump poo on them non stop
>pH is 0.1% off the limit>discharge solution, prepare another batch
