| Post-pal; The future without vertebrates | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Sep 15 2013, 02:54 AM (192 Views) | |
| Flisch | Sep 15 2013, 02:54 AM Post #1 |
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Beginner
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A lone human walked out a small forest and stopped for a second to adjust his eyes to the brightness. He inspected the area in front of him. The most of it was a wide open meadow, the grass and wild flowers flowing like waves in the wind. In a few hundred meters he saw a cupple of small hills. The human decided to go up there and examine the landscape. After a few minutes he was at the top of the tallest hill and looked down in a valley, where once a city stood. Now only blackened spires remained that served as a grim remainder of humanity's own demise. The human on the hill looked down to the ground, which was littered with plenty of skeletons of different sizes, birds, rodents, even some humans among them. This valley must have been a death trap during the plague, but that seemed to be decades ago. A colourful blanket has already begun to reclaim the outer skirts of the city and covered the buildings like grave flowers. The figure turned around and started walking in a different direction. Even though the place was safe again, he didn't want to get reminded how everyone he knew died a slow and painful death. Furthermore this place was empty, he wouldn't find any other humans here, so he continued walking. Though the chances were low, maybe he would find someone eventually before he died, he thought to himself. Little did he know he was the last human on earth, the last human to survive PAL. In the year 2024 bioengineering has made major advancements and biological weapons were a standard in modern wars. Infact, engineered viruses with designed DNA proved to be so useful that they almost completely obsoleted traditional warfare. However, as efficient as they proved to be, viruses were never able to win a war all by themselves, which would have been a dream for the military. Biological weapons had to overcome three obstacles. First, early viruses were designed to dissolve quickly to prevent the own soldiers to get infected while they were invading the target country after the biological attack. However, this proved to be less efficient once certain defense mechanisms were built to protect a country against attacks. The population could simply hold out in hermetically sealed bunkers that protected them until the threat was over. Second, since viruses used for warfare were designed, their genetic code was generally well-known, usually gave away by spies or scientists involved in the creation of the weapon. This made it able to create antidotes rather quickly, compared to natural diseases. Furthermore, viruses were built with a specific antidote already kept in reserve so that the attacking army will be immune to it. And third, due to an international agreement, similar to that of the now obsolete Geneva Convention, viruses must not be built with lethality in mind. It was not allowed to design viruses, that would kill their hosts outright. Thus most viruses merely paralyzed their victims or made them otherwise unable to participate in any action that would hinder the aggressor's nations attack. Unfortunately this often led to rebellions and civil wars once the country was taken over but the population was still almost as strong in numbers as it was before. All these problems should be tackled with a new strand of virus. This new virus, named PAL, should take out all the weaknesses the earlier viruses had and thus would give the attacking nation a huge advantage. PAL stands for Persistence, Adaptability and Lethality. PAL was designed to persist longer that most viruses to make the population unable to hide in their bunkers until the threat is over. It was made adaptable to hinder any attempt to create a right antidote. Evolving quickly, it would be near impossible to come up with a universal cure. And lastly, different from all other viruses before, PAL would eventually kill their hosts, but not directly. PAL is not breaking the international agreement of nonlethal biological warfare, exploiting a loophole as it does not outright kill the host by denying vital functions to the body. It only made it unable to move by infecting and damaging the spine. This damage however is irreversible and due to the lack of a working antidote, PAL is practically lethal once infected. At first, PAL worked just as planned. The population of the attacked nation quickly succumbed to the virus as soon as it left the bunkers due to impending starvation. The cities themselves were put under quarantine to ensure that no human could leave the infected area. Originally PAL was designed to only infect the human spine to prevent the disease to spread through other means like insects or birds. But exactly this should prove to happen when the first infected whales were washed ashore. PAL was designed with adaptability in mind, but nobody expected the virus to mutate so much to infect a whole different set of hosts. The infected areas were bombed and any local mammal killed my automated war robots. 69 days later however things turned from bad to worse when the first reports of infected pigeons made the news. Open warfare was suspended almost immediately as all nations had to protect their cities from everything that was coming from the sky. Red alert was declared and every single device that was able to shoot was used to defend civilisation from infection. But this was just the beginning of the end and things started to get worse exponentially from that day on. Another two months later PAL mutated in such a way that it infected fish. It took mere days until the virus spread through all the oceans and 94% of the coastal cities went down immediately. The few survivors made their way inland with most terrestrial vertebrates already dead, but weren't welcomed by the people already living there. Wars were fought over the last few resources that were left and civilisation as it was known became a matter of the past after just twelve days. This was the great but short time of island nations, as coasts were easier to protect than open land, both from marauding hordes and from infected wildlife. Madagascar lasted the longest and kept up a working infrastructure even several years after the infection but eventually was obliterated by just one single infected organism entering the island at some point. Within month, earth resembled a graveyard, the ground was littered with rotting bodies and most of the cities crumbled away as all life moved elsewhere or perished. In the middle of the seas, masses of dead fish and whales covered areas the size of Australia. Vultures and other carrion eaters became harbingers of death as they spread the disease from the dead bodies elsewhere. In a sense, PAL exceeded in its original design, as it was the most lethal and disastrous manmade weapon in history and can be seen as both humanity's greatest success and biggest failure. It is probably the biggest irony in human history that 33 years later, the last human on earth would die to another virus than PAL. Immediate Consequences With all vertebrates extinct, those species that depended on them also went extinct. As most parasites specialized on vertebrate hosts, those were the first to die along with them. Dung beetles had no way to reproduce, being deprived of excrements and simply vanished without any offspring. Carrion eaters and flies fared relatively well during the infection, but once it was over and all the carcasses have been gnawed to the bone, they went extinct as well. With all macro species that would feed on insects and control their populations extinct, there was little to stop locusts and other "pests" to explode in numbers. One would imagine that a world without any large animals would become eerily silent, but the sheer number of insects buzzing through the air or chirping their tune for their mates turned this short period into the loudest age in the evolutionary history of earth. Not only the overabundance of herbivores hit the terrestrial ecosystems hard, but also the sudden absence of dung producers meant that there were less nutrients available for the plants to process. These two facts, combined, turned many regions into wastelands where only the hardiest plants barely clinged to life. Aggriculturally used regions were hit especially hard as the lack of forests meant that the little nutrients that were still present in the soil were quickly washed out by the rain. In the seas the large masses of rotting animals caused regions of the oceans to collapse entirely, being overacidified, anaerobic, or most of the times both. Large parts of the oceans were completely devoid of life as plankton couldn't survive in these conditions. Large parts of the marine ecosystems clinged to the outskirts of river deltas where the fresh water provided both oxygen and food. Indeed the most promising places were fresh water areas, especially rivers which, due to their constantly moving nature, would always filter the water and bring new oxygen and minerals from the headwaters, turning the immediate surrounding into fertile land. Rivers became a safe haven for many species during the mass extinctions and should prove crucial for establishing the new world order. * * * The Awkward Spot Between While vertebrates were completely annihilated by the virus and non-vertebrates were left unharmed, there were species that were neither and both at the same time. While the extinction wave stopped at the lancelet, tunicates underwent a chordate stage during their development as a larva. This allowed the virus to infect these creatures but often didn't have the time to kill them as they would grow to maturity fast enough. Tunicates were one of the main reasons why the virus survived long enough to wipe out every single vertebrate species. Even after the virus was almost completely extinct again, a few infected tunicate larva washed ashore or drifting among the carcass vortex was enough to spread the deadly disease elsewhere through insects again. It took millions of years until the virus was completely extinct, and at that time there was no vertebrate species left to take advantage of that fact. * * * Longterm Consequences With large parts of the earth turned into wasteland and the phytoplankton reduced in numbers drastically, the levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide and water vapour, the two most important greenhouse gases, severely decreased, which induced a short but intense ice age. The large developing glaciers and polar caps locked even more water, making the planet even more arid. Forests became insular oases within the vast wastelands dotted with the occasional plant growing between the barren rocks. Most of these oases grew around bodies of fresh water and rivers, further strengthening the dominance of "river-philes", especially dragon flies which were good fliers and became the top aerial predator during this time. Spiders and scorpions were competing over the top terrestrial predator, with the scoprions being better adapted at arid environments than spiders and spiders having proven to be adaptable to a vast array of different habitats. Many other animals that had a migrational behaviour prior to the climate change were favoured by this new environment. Especially locusts fared exceptionally well, being able to wander from one oasis to the next in huge swarms. Over time however their bodies and wings became bigger to cover greater distances and they started producing less offspring, both directions that would lead to a role as the new dominant group of large herbivores. Lepidoptera weren't a group that fared very well, considering many of their species' larvae specialized on one host plant, and their group was a matter of intense natural selection as only a handful of the most generalist of them survived the constant struggle for the search of new food sources. However, one particular species of butterflies would evolve a strategy to cope with the temporary food sources. Instead of hibernating as a chrysalis like other insects, especially beetles and cicadas to wait for better times, the caterpillars themselves could delay their metamorphosis until the conditions were right. An evolutionary adaption that would save the crippled Lepidoptera's future. The oceans took longer to recover from the damage that was done. Due to the lack of plankton in vast areas of the sea as well as the die off of the coral reefs because of the lowered temperatues, only the hardiest marine life was able to survive several thousand years of ecological starvation. Most plankton eaters experienced a severe reduction in numbers, especially jellyfish and clams, and even though they were never on the brink of extinction as a taxon as a whole, they had their numbers decreased more than in any other mass extinction before. Krill, which also mostly feed on plankton, also decreased in numbers but were able to survive due to the lack of predators. Their relatives the crabs and shrimp weren't hit as hard as they were one of the most generalist group of more complex marine organisms. Their top predators, the cephalopods were able to survive solely because of the success of the crustaceans during the infection era. It is interesting to note that after things went to normal and the temperatures and plankton levels rose again, many fresh water species would migrate into the marine ecosystems and gain a foothold in the empty niches left by the extinct species of past ages. Especially many clam species of the Post-PAL era are descendants of freshwater clams, as marine clams were hit harder than jellyfish, because unlike those, clams are sessile and thus more prone to extinction when their home ecosystem would collapse. * * * A New Era Begins As hard as the marine ecosystems were hit by the mass extinction, it was the sea that returned the planet to a "green" stage once again. After the composition of the oceans has gone back to normal the low temperatures allowed for more oxygen to be dissolved in the water which in turn resulted in a plankton boom and, subsequently a boom in marine organisms. The sheer amount of breathing organisms produced more carbon dioxide than both the phytoplankton and the water could absorb resulting in an increased amount of the greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, slightly rising the global temperature levels. The higher temperature let parts of the glaciers melt, resulting in a wetter climate and caused the forests to spread out more. While the carbon dioxide was being absorbed and processed by the increased amount of trees, they also produced additional water vapour which also gathered in the atmosphere, increasing the greenhouse effect. After some time the greenhouse effect balanced out and the planet found itself back in a warmer climate, not as warm as during the times of the palaeozoic, but still slightly warmer than during the late cenocoic. This was the beginning of a new era. This was the beginning of Post-PAL. Dun dun duuuun. Anyway, next update will cover the time 5 million years hence and (most likely) include pictures. =) |
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| Admantus | Sep 15 2013, 06:32 PM Post #2 |
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Elusive old one
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Looking forward to this. |
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| Olympianmaster | Sep 15 2013, 08:49 PM Post #3 |
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Very Active Member
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Interesting. |
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| JaggerTheDog | Oct 28 2013, 02:12 AM Post #4 |
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Beginner
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Yes indeed. |
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| martiitram | Oct 28 2013, 03:44 PM Post #5 |
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Very Active Member
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I can't wait until you start creating the animals! |
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| Sheather | Nov 24 2013, 06:59 AM Post #6 |
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Flamethrowing Walrus
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<3 I just love this and can't wait to see what you come up with. You really had me interested reading it the whole way through. |
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8:34 AM Jul 11