Several weeks have passed since the lockdown started all around the globe. During this time cities have been showing an uncanny image where deserted streets and roads, tourists-free famous landmarks and soulless landscapes are the new conditions to behold. I was recently watching a very interesting documentary on Youtube - link down below - about how the planet Earth would behave without the human race. What would happen if we all suddenly disappear? When I came across the documentary I thought how convenient was to watch it now, given that the situation shown on the video is pretty much alike to the current condition we live in. Spoiler alert! – in the end, nature takes over. After spending more than 2,000 years trying to tame nature under our will through agriculture, civilization and industrialization, nature takes only about 200 years to fix our mess and bring the whole planet back to normal, whipping out almost completely any kind of signal left by the human race. Just some plastic and stainless steel remain after hundreds of years. All the nuclear plants are blown away due to lack of power supply, setting free huge quantities of radiation that nature will eventually clear up. Our lovely cities will lay defeated under kilometres of thick moss and hungry trees while the shinny skyscrapers will fall, unable to fight the daredevil bite of rust. Rivers will flow free, demolishing any type of artificial dam on the way. Animals will break out from their cages in the zoos and food chain will fall again under the hierarchy of the strongest ones. The air, water and ground will finally be free from pollution and artificial man-made chemicals. After just a few hundred years, the planet Earth will look a wild place where human beings didn’t exist at all. It’s a very interesting documentary and I recommend you to take a look at it. So, what it would be to be living in a world like that? Can you imagine yourself as the last human on Earth? It can be quite scary at first but just imagine the freedom, the lack of traffic, the silence, just nature and you, wild animals, clean as hell air and water, no people around talking loudly, spoiling the ground with their garbage and all. I guess that could be nice...for a while. Eventually, loneliness will take over your senses and you will probably go mad, as long as you didn’t die of starvation first as there won’t be anybody out there making up a pizza o a hamburger for you, my friend. It has been proved through many different studies that humans are a social species. We like to be with our kinfolks, to have a chat with our friends, to spend some time with the family. Yes, I have to admit it. Despite considering myself as a crowd-enemy, a lover of people-free places and a huge fan of silence, I have to recognise something: after so many days in this quarantine...I miss the normality of people around. I miss seeing the local people around my community, I miss visiting the charity shops and browsing among the goodness of their goods, I miss going to my favourite – and quiet – bistros and coffee shops in my city, I miss going to the cinema, I miss to go outside and walk around people without keeping this social distance as they were smelling like shit or something, I miss normal life. But above all, I miss travelling abroad. Not the overcrowded airports, not the smelly planes with coughing people and not the lovely queues waiting for the plane to arrive but the amazing feeling of travelling and visiting other unknown countries, enjoying their cuisine, their culture, their towns, their different people. To have real holidays, damn it! Because even though my home is the best place in the world, too much home can also be tiring, isn’t it? I’ve been reading the last couple of days some opinions about the origin of this coronavirus. Some people say that somebody took it from a Chinese laboratory, some others say it came from a wild animal, there’s who think that God put it there for us as a kind of punishment, trying to place human race back on the right track. I have also read a theory stating that the virus is some kind of purge as it was the black death plague or the Spanish flu, looking for releasing a bit the burden carried by the planet in the shape of us, the real virus. You know what, you can call me a mad bastard if you wish but I very much support that last theory or at least part of it. I think nature is getting more and more pissed off with us by the minute, trying to send us some kind of warning message like the sort: ‘You are too many, you are spoiling the planet with your rubbish and you are overexploiting my natural resources. You better change your attitude as soon as possible or else you will all go to hell’. I know, it’s quite a long message from Mother Nature but I do agree with its content and I don’t want to go to hell. I’ve been told that uncle Luci – aka Lucifer – is a very kind fella and all but down there it's quite hot and there’s pretty much fire all over the place and bloody ugly demons with funny horns everywhere so, I rather behave and stay where I am right now, thank you very much. Seriously though, I think this huge break we have in our normality has to mean something. Nature has to mean something to all of us. We need to start respecting the environment more than ever, going for renewable energies, working on building green cities, clean transport, living once and for all in harmony with our planet Earth.
During this lockdown, we have seen crystal clear waters in Venice where dolphins were enjoying a lovely and quiet swim along the canals, the air above the main cities around the globe is as clean as it was 50 years ago, wild animals are finally hassle-free with no hunters chasing them and so on. We have to recognise it: the world is better without us. It doesn't need us at all. Still, we need a place to stay.
Those scientists from NASA keep telling us that they have found several Earth-like planets out there and that’s alright but you know, my bicycle or any of their spacecraft will take me there any time soon so instead of looking at what’s a million light-years away from us, let’s focus on doing things right in here. It’s not too late. And anyway, how the hell would like to be on a strange planet without the Internet, takeaways and people? Not me 😉 Take care and stay safe
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