Extinction Theory
It is estimated that, for every million or so humans, seven species of animals go extinct. Do you understand what 'Extinct' Means? It means, gone. Forever. The final survivors of a race cast down from life and forever broken into pieces. Never to come back. Ever.
When a species goes extinct, the ecosystem takes a hit. Let's make an example: An ecosystem with two herbivores, one carnivore, three different types of plants, and one decomposer is put into a small area. Let's say now that, due to some unknown force, one of those herbivores is now extinct.
The carnivores have less to eat, obviously. And the plants have less eating them. So the carnivores, with less food, have to eat more of herbivore number one, causing their numbers to drop significantly. The decomposers have less to decompose due to the jump in plant life. After a few years of less numbers, the herbivores can't make it and die. This leads to the plant life going insane, the carnivores starving, and decomposers to also perish. Eventually, when they get too overgrown, they cross breed, weeds take over, those die from soil erosion, and the place becomes barren.
The death of herbivore 2 eventually caused an entire ecosystem to fall to hell. Yes, this does take a very long time, years, maybe even decades, but eventually It can, will, and has happened. A theory of mine takes place a very long time ago, before the First great extinction.
Large reptiles (Often called 'Dinosaurs') roamed the continents freely in this time. All of them were put together, making an unimaginably large landmass known as Pangaea. The oceans gathered around it, holding other (and in some cases, bigger) beasts of might. However, one thing this thriving and massive ecosystem lacked was quite obvious; Sentiency. Based on fossil records and various scientific studies, most of these species lacked knowledge of their own existence, and only knowledge that they needed to survive.
A lack of knowledge often produces bad results, as it did here. Have you ever seen one of those Hollywood, special-effect Dinosaur movies? The giant carnivores like the Tyrannosaurus Rex are to be feared. They were to be feared back then, as they had a near insatiable hunger for flesh and had no boundaries on what they killed. They ate anything and everything; Herbivores, carnivores, and oftentimes their own species.
Overfeeding of a certain species can lead to very, very bad things. It means that other, smaller carnivores have to scrounge for food, often going to eat things that are much too difficult. This leads to certain, unadapt smaller carnivores becoming extinct, flourishing the amount of herbivores they used as a staple food.
As these grow, the plant life reduces. The larger carnivores have a difficult time moving through the plant life and a harder time catching things, so fewer plants are good for them. They eat more food, more herbivores eat more plants.
As plant life disappears, erosion, the moving of dirt through wind, fauna, and otherwise forceful means. Without large roots to hold these plants in place, this is accelerated.
We know that sometime, around 2 million years ago, the continents began to split. This has been theorized to be caused by gravitational pull, or movement of tectonic plates, but recently I read an article and got a completely different theory.
The world was dying.
Due to the extreme amount of species going extinct at one time, the entire 'ecosystem' of the world was going into a dark state. The world was losing its vigor, its strength. I still do not know what sort of unknown force could have caused this, but I believe that something attempted to fix this.
The world was put to sleep. Pangaea broke apart, and an era known as the 'Ice Age' began, causing a mass extinction of the Great Reptiles known as the Dinosaurs. A new classification, mammals, adapted to the ice with internal incubation and hair to keep them from freezing.
Evolution took its course. Mammals became more intelligent to ward off the cold and adapted or died when the ice age was over. And when the need for evolution no long revolved around survival, it turned to the need for knowledge.
The first of humanities ancestors began to walk on earth, still as foolish as their primate counterparts, but with a basic need to think. As the mind of humanity evolved, our figure did as well. The invention of fire and tools to hunt began our rush us into the world of Sentiency.
The rest is, as they say, history. Farming, breeding of animals, the wheel, and eventually electricity and artificial intelligence. Intelligence has brought us a bounty of life, a bounty of enjoyment. If you were to go back in time with today's technology, they would think nothing of you but a god.
Of course, power has its downsides. Two world wars have occurred in just the last century. Nuclear weapons are being stockpiled, waiting to be launched at some unknown county. And most importantly, our pollution made by fossil fuels (Which, ironically, were created by the great beasts that caused the first great extinction.) tear into the ozone layer, releasing deadly solar rays into our world.
Going back to our original statement. Species are going extinct at an alarming rate and we continue to grow. Forests are being torn down, removing our ability to create oxygen. And our average temperatures increase, ever so slightly, every year (Don't deny it, it's a proven FACT.)
What if, say, there was some sort of planetary defense system, built somewhere deep inside? As it starts to become inhabitable, the system activates to remove the threat in an attempt to save the world.
The polar ice caps are melting, raising the water level, ever so slightly. What if, one day, the great oceans rise to destroy the threat to the world? To purge the waters and rebuild, millions of years later?
What if that threat was us this time?
Credited to ChildofSolitude
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