Extrapolations, the show

The planet’s ecosystem collapses, creating a mass extinction event. Only the very wealthy and well provided can survive. Industry fails. Populations decrease by the billions.

A smattering of very rich people survive, but wealth no longer matters. What can money buy when there aren’t any people to provide the goods. Society has been revolutionized. People rely on artificial intelligence and autonomous robots for services.

Over centuries the planet experiences catastrophic destruction. But then its natural cycles begin to purge toxins. Like it has gone through extinction level events in its history, it takes millennia, but eventually it returns to a baseline that is livable.

But it takes millennia. Hundreds of thousands of years. On a geologic scale, that’s just a blip, compared to the millions, to the hundreds of millions, to the billions of years it’s already endured.

Perhaps the ultra wealthy survivors can’t survive with the autonomous army and artificial intelligence they create. Perhaps it all has to start again. But the trees regrow. The bugs resurface. Metal rusts and disintegrates. Plastics decompose.

Perhaps the artificial intelligence is the only thing that’s left. Even that runs out of essential resources eventually. The only thing that survives after it all gets purged is nature. And nature rebounds. Nature is inevitable. Bacteria can grow in the scum. But something will survive to colonize the planet again.

Unless the ozone deteriorates and the planet turns into Mars.