It's not often that I read non-fiction, and even less often that I stand back in awe of an author of non-fiction. (With the exception of Jared Diamond, the Fabulous.) But let me say that (Boomer) Alan Weisman has written a work of fine art in The World Without Us. The genius here is two-fold: First, the idea itself, to imagine the Earth totally without people, exactly as it is this moment, but with all of the human beings vanished. And then to let the geological clock run, and see what would happen to the planet. But the second part of his genius is the way in which he's gone about depicting this horrifying, yet intruiging notion. Weisman studies the problem scientificially, interviewing hundreds of experts--everybody from bridge engineers to builders to plant biologists--to figure out exactly what would fall apart, what would grow, which species would flourish and which would die out. (As to the latter, he claims that cockroaches would be gone without our garbage to feast on and our heated apartments to warm them in winter.) He is somewhat dispassionate, but curious, as if he were an alien being studying a lovely and lush little planet, one devoid of human beings, with which he's only vaguely familiar.
The notion is positively, and utterly, Biblical.
He writes about what would happen to Manhattan, for instance, in a way that is pure poetry.
"Ruins of high-rises echo the love songs of frogs breeding in Manhattan's reconstituted streams, now stocked with alewives and mussels dropped by seagulls. Herring and shad have returned to the Hudson, though they spent some generations adjusting to radioactivity trickling out of Indian Poiont Nuclear Power Plant, 35 miles north of Times Square, after its reinforced concrete succumbed. . .Rising water, tides, and salt corrosion have replaced the engineered shoreline, circling New York's five boroughs with estuaries and small beaches. With no dredging, Central Park's ponds and reservoir have been reincarnated as marshes.
Great idea, great writing: pure intellectual fun.
On his website, you can watch primitive but cool graphic images of how your house would be taken over by nature--125 years to fall apart, about 400 years to vanish completely. Or, you can watch Manhattan disintegrate: two days for the subway tunnels to flood, five years for the city to burst into flames, 500 years for most of the buildings and bridges to fall into almost complete ruin.
This shouldn't be satisfying to think about, but oddly, it is...