Earth without humans. We’ve probably all thought about it at one time or another. And thanks to recent trends towards the post-apocalyptic, particularly in Hollywood, we have the iconic images that give us an inkling of the aftermath.

But how exactly would this formidable but hypothetical future unfold? Now, a video traces the timeline of this future, beginning with the minutiae of the first hours and days after humans disappear, and leading all the way up to a radical forecast for 300 million years later.

This long view of the aftermath of an instantaneous mass disappearance of the human race, raises one underlying question: ‘Can our planet do perfectly well without us while we depend entirely on it?’  Would the occurrence of a total human apocalypse spell a happy future for the planet?

Watch the video here: