Aftermath: Population Zero Page #7

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After winter comes a

spring like never before.

In the forests near ruined

nuclear power plants,

it's a silent season.

Poisoned by radiation,

these evergreens have lost their

ability to grow new shoots and branches.

But further from the power plants,

spring helps repair the

damage we left behind.

Rain washes radioactive

debris from leaves and bark.

Poisonous atoms are driven underground.

They're still a threat to

anything that lives there,

but our radioactive fingerprint

is starting to disappear.

And that's not the only threat

to animals that has vanished.

Without humans there is no one to hunt.

And a population explosion of

animals takes over the empty spaces.

This new world is filled

with new opportunities.

It's almost been a year since

every car on Earth ran out of gas.

In their last year on the road,

cars pumped 7 billion tons of

carbon dioxide into the air,

more than one ton for

every person on Earth.

This greenhouse gas

accounted for half of the impact

humans had on global warming.

But now, the carbon dioxide will be

cleaned up faster than ever before.

In spring, new plants and

leaves need carbon to grow.

They draw it out of the air,

naturally cleansing a polluted planet.

New trees soak up more

carbon than old ones.

This spring, nature has

many new places to grow.

For the past ten thousand years,

we've been imposing

our will on the planet.

In downtown Los Angeles,

two thirds of the land is

covered in roads and parking lots.

We made our mark in the suburbs, too.

In the US, lawns and golf courses

cover an area bigger than Florida.

Now that we're gone,

nature is reclaiming the Earth.

Nothing is immune.

Millions of miles of roads and highways

are slowly being invaded

by moss and lichen

and all they usually need is water.

Cracked roads are filled

in with moss and grass.

A once carefully groomed

soccer field now grows wild.

Fast-growing trees take root

where children once played.

All these new plants

allow nature to soak

up greenhouse gases like

carbon dioxide faster

than when humans were here.

Year after year,

our grip on the land is loosening.

It's been thirty years

since humans disappeared.

At night, the only light comes

from the moon and the stars.

Once, Earth was so well lit

it was easily seen from space.

But thirty years after

the lights went out,

Earth's inhabitants watch

a new kind of light show.

Hundreds of strange shooting

stars fly through the sky.

A few even make it to the ground.

The fiery wreckage contains clues

that these are not normal meteorites.

These shooting stars

are some of the last

survivors of the space age.

Humans left 25,000

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