What happens to the world after everyone dies?

We had had a bit of a dramatic morning with it not exactly going to plan. My son had woken up angry, breakfast hadn’t gone right and getting dressed had been a nightmare. This meant at 8.30am, after pulling up to school, and without having a cup of tea yet I was feeling slightly frazzled, and all I wanted to do was roll myself up in a duvet and cry. I knew I just needed to get through the next ten minutes then my son would be safely in his classroom and I could go home and cry. We got out of the car and started a slow walk down to the school gates when he asked….

“What happens to the world after everyone dies?”

Wow! Just what I wanted to hear at this very point in time! Was this why he had not had a good morning, was this question worrying him??? I now had ten minutes to explain to him either what actually happened to the world after everyone dies or come up with a reason as to why everybody wouldn’t die. And what does actually happen to the world after everyone dies. I was literally fighting back the tears and now I had to consider what did happen to the world after everyone dies. It was almost too much to deal with. But of course I did deal, as I always do.

I knew he needed to hear the answer to this question before going into school so I knew I had to swallow down my tears and get this answer sorted. I quickly decided not to go down the route of humans becoming extinct and the world slowly decaying and felt the only possible answer was this “That wouldn’t happen because even though people die, new people are born so the world always has people on it”. That settled him. He went into school smiling and waved to me as he walked through the door. I was stood on the playground almost shaking my head in disbelief. Had we just had one of the worst mornings ever followed by the best question ever. Yes we had!!!

And once again I had managed to get him to school under some very traumatic circumstances and also answer a philosophical, scientific question worthy of a university degree dissertation.

It was by far one of the best questions he had asked me. Intelligent, thought provoking and definitely a question many many scientists have asked. But was it a question I wanted to be faced with on this morning……it most certainly wasn’t and I believe this question (and the preceding morning that we had had) was the morning that started me needing to go for a drive straight from the school run with the music blasting and me crying. It was the start of many many mornings where I wondered how I had managed to do what I had done. It was the start of the mornings where I made the decision to always make sure I had a even just one slurp of tea because by god I was gonna need my wits about me with these types of questions being asked!!!