How did the d̶i̶n̶o̶s̶a̶u̶r̶s̶ humans die?

March 27, 24721 (Thank goodness we finally solved that Y2K thing by adding another digit.)

First there was the mystery of the dinosaurs, probably the meteorite and all that dust. And then the Neanderthals, who knows.

And then the humans. Seemed to have dominated for about 5,000 years, pretty good run. Lots of stainless steel and plastic stuff — what is ‘tupperware’? — scattered hither and yon from which we can tell a lot about how they lived. We’ll never know for sure how they died, but we can speculate. They seem to have taken things too far. Packed themselves into every crevice of land on the planet… crawling on top of one another, eating everything in sight, and trashing the place. Viruses have feasted on such anthills for a billion years — perfect conditions — so when they got too powerful for any macropredators, the micropredators were foaming at the mouth. Poised and patient. Can survive dormant for centuries.. from the depths of the ice-cold oceans, to maybe even the vacuous world of Mars.

Pretty quick story after that. First there was a virus that had a non-symptomatic but contagious stage. Brilliant, spreads before revealing itself. It was basically a nasty cold, but killed at a 1–3 percent rate. (Used the young to persist across generations. ) Nothing horrible, a warning shot across the bow. But nothing changed. Then came one with the same silent transmission skill, but killed more like the hemorrhagic fevers; don’t wanna get that… bleed out from the inside in a spasm of tissue flying all over the place. Sort of a flesh-and-blood volcano. With an R-nought infectivity of over 20 before they even saw symptoms, it might have been over in a few months.

Mother Nature, she does what she has to do to protect the biota. They took too much and they paid the price.