Things the human race couldn’t survive without

Food, water, and shelter are the three basic things a human needs to stay alive, and everything after this is for the reasons of comfort, efficiency, and so on. Everything we have comes from the planet we live on and as a race, we have developed a good enough balance with it to keep living here, at least for now. When it comes to things the human race couldn’t live without, this doesn’t include cell phones and food delivery services, but rather things that we would go extinct if they disappeared.

Bee’s

There is a famous quote floating around on the internet which states “If the bee disappeared off the face of the Earth, man would only have four years left to live”. Some claim this was said by Albert Einstein, but whoever said it seems to be heavily agreed with inside the scientific community. If bees disappeared, there would be no more pollination between plants and they wouldn’t be able to create seeds or fruit to produce more plants.

This would create a chain effect where certain species of plants died out one after the other until only a small amount of plants that didn’t rely on bees remained. Fruit of all kinds and most vegetables would have a hard time surviving, and all kinds of wildflowers would die. We would still have grain as it doesn’t need bees to pollinate, but we would be left eating a small selection of crops, which would cost much more leading to a whole range of new problems. If we could survive as a race without bees, it would be at a huge cost.

The Sun

The primary star of our solar system is the reason that our planet is habitable, as without it we would be nothing more than a giant block of ice. The sun is responsible for keeping alive all the plants and animals that eat them, and without any plants, nothing could survive, but how long for is another question.

Since life started on this planet, there has only been one instance of the sun being blocked out globally for a long period of time, and this was the dinosaur-killing asteroid which threw enough dust and ash into the atmosphere to completely block it out. The most commonly agreed-upon estimate for how long the sun was blocked out is 15 years, which led to the extinction of most of the planet’s species. If the sun disappeared, or couldn’t shine through our atmosphere for whatever reason, humans would last for as long as their already produced goods and animals lasted, and then the starvation of an entire planet would begin.

Worms

In terms of humans not being able to survive it is arguable, but if they all vanished the effects on our planet would be devastating. Worms not only break down plant matter and aerate the soil, but they are a major factor in how much water can be held in the ground. Without worms, the effects would be much more than massively reduced plant yields, but could also affect flooding and starve huge areas of land from retaining enough water to grow anything. We probably wouldn’t go extinct without them, but it would cause mass starvation and flooding at the least.

Wind

Fortunately, this is something that is based mostly on the sun shining, so we have a pretty good chance of it not stopping any time soon, but if it did we would only last a few years at the most. The north and south poles would freeze solid without any warmer winds to thaw them, and the equator would be too hot for anyone to live in, but the determining factor to wiping us out would be the lack of water.

On one hand, the sea levels would fall due to the poles freezing up more water, but on the other hand, it would never rain. Sea water would evaporate and just sit there over the sea until it rained back in, but all the water in the river systems wouldn’t be replaced. It might rain a few times close to large reservoirs and lakes, but with nothing to replace them, they would eventually go dry. This would also mean no one would be able to grow any crops, leading to mass starvation for anyone who wasn’t living on the coast with the means to purify seawater.

Trees

It’s estimated that the Amazon rainforest absorbs about a quarter of all the pollution created on Earth each year. This is getting smaller all the time with deforestation due to cattle ranching and isn’t being replaced at nearly the same rate as it’s being taken away. Trees are the biggest creators of oxygen on Earth, and without them, the atmosphere wouldn’t be able to clean itself.

(Spanning 8 countries and covering 6.7million km², the Amazon rainforest is the single biggest producer of oxygen on earth)

Without trees, the oxygen level on earth would fall to the point where we can no longer survive unless we make some serious advancements in technology. Land that was once being used to grow trees to clean the air is now being used to hold cattle, which creates a huge amount of methane gas, adding to the pollution. When the air becomes dirty enough, mass sickness will begin and continue to the point where we can’t survive without gas masks.