You walk down the street minding your own business when suddenly you realize there is something terribly wrong. You try to take a breath, and it feels like your lungs are on fire. At the same time, buildings start crumbling around you, and the sky becomes dark. Is this the end of the world? You wonder. But before you get an answer, you vaporize into a puff of hydrogen gas. This is what would happen if the world lost oxygen for 60 seconds.
There are two very different scenarios that would unfold depending on what happened to the oxygen on Earth. If all the oxygen, including the oxygen already bound to other molecules like in water, rocks, and pretty much everything else on our planet disappeared, the destruction of Earth would be almost instantaneous. On the other hand, if only the oxygen in the atmosphere disappeared, things would turn out very differently. There would be less death and destruction, and there would be a chance you’d survive.
Scenario 1: All oxygen in the atmosphere disappears.
Some pretty crazy things are about to happen, but the fabric of Earth and everything on it will not instantly be torn apart. So, at least you’ve got that going for you.
1 second after all oxygen in the atmosphere disappears.
You are standing on the surface of the Earth, looking up at the sky, daydreaming of a better world. The moment the oxygen disappears from the atmosphere, you notice that the sky seems to change slightly. It’s the gasses and small dust particles within our atmosphere that causes the sky to look blue. This is because blue light is composed of smaller, shorter waves that scatter more easily as they pass through our atmosphere. The loss of oxygen in the atmosphere will cause a slight change in this process as the sun’s light now has less gas to travel through. However, even though the sky may be changing before your very eyes, you have bigger problems to focus on at the moment.
Your inner ear explodes from the instantaneous change in air pressure from the lack of oxygen. Our atmosphere is made up of around 21 percent oxygen. If all of these molecules suddenly disappear, it will drastically change the atmospheric pressure pushing on your body.
The change in pressure isn’t what’s dangerous but how quickly this change happens. Like with scuba diving to deeper depths, your body and inner ear can adjust, but only if the pressure changes gradually over time. If the oxygen in our atmosphere were to disappear all at once, it would be like going from sea level to around 6,500 feet above sea level instantaneously. This change in air pressure causes your eardrum to rupture and capillaries in your body to burst. Blood pours out of your ear as you look around the new oxygen less world in terror. And still, the worst is yet to come.
3 seconds after all oxygen in the atmosphere disappears.
You gasp for air in horror as people around you begin to panic. And even though you can still feel air going into your lungs, it is not satisfying your body’s need for oxygen. This element is vitally important for many life processes, but the main one is that your cells need it for cellular respiration to create energy. Without oxygen, this process cannot occur, and your cells will eventually start to die.
As you inhale the gasses that remain in the air, the ones your body can’t use circulate around your bloodstream and are released back out of your body as you exhale. However, without oxygen in the air, this whole process becomes somewhat pointless. You are just breathing in waste, and you begin to asphyxiate.
5 seconds after all oxygen in the atmosphere disappears.
Even though there is no oxygen for you to breathe, you will not instantly die. If by some miracle, all of the oxygen returns within the next 60 seconds and your lungs are still working, you will likely be fine. On average, a person can last a minute or two without oxygen before permanent damage occurs to the brain. You still continuously suck in air, but it doesn’t matter since the one element you need is no longer present.
10 seconds after all oxygen in the atmosphere disappears.
Internal combustion engines that run off of gasoline or diesel slowly sputter to a stop. This includes the engines of cars, buses, and, worst of all, planes. As you stand there suffering from the beginnings of oxygen deprivation, you watch as cars along the road slowly roll to a stop. The loss of oxygen doesn’t affect the braking systems, but it absolutely does hinder the combustion part of the engine.
Most engines work by mixing gasoline and oxygen, which is ignited to make a tiny explosion in the engine. The energy created by this explosion then moves a piston which converts the chemical energy of the gasoline into mechanical energy. This is what then turns the wheels of a car. With no oxygen, the fuel can’t ignite, and the engine stops working. This will also be true for any fires that are occurring at the time the oxygen disappears from the atmosphere.
Firefighters are thankful at first as the blazes they are trying to contain instantly go out. People sitting around a campfire roasting marshmallows are sorely disappointed as their flames are smothered. However, this problem is nothing compared to what people flying in planes are about to face now that there is no more oxygen in the atmosphere.
15 seconds after all oxygen in the atmosphere disappears.
If you are flying in an airplane, the engines stall, and the turbines begin to slow down. The plane suddenly drops hundreds of feet, causing the stomachs of all passengers on board to drop as if they were on a rollercoaster. This happens because the air pressure around the wings of the plane has decreased drastically due to the disappearance of oxygen, and causes less lift to be generated. The pilot regains control of the aircraft and you begin to glide as the engines sputter to a stop. The captain’s voice comes over the intercom, he’s trying to tell everyone to remain calm, but this is a true emergency. Without oxygen, his voice can barely be heard as his body begins to shut down just like everyone else’s.
The oxygen masks drop down from their overhead compartment.
You grab onto your mask and place it over your nose and mouth. The bag does not fully inflate, which is usually not a problem as oxygen is still flowing in normal circumstances. However, the oxygen in the tanks has disappeared, and all that is left is nitrogen that is being pumped from the emergency air tanks into the cabin. Unfortunately, you can’t survive off of nitrogen alone. And since the air you are breathing is basically all nitrogen, it can cause burns, spasms, swelling of tissues in the throat, and death. You begin to panic as you and everyone else realize that it is not just a loss of cabin pressure that has caused the masks to fall, but something much, much worse.
The plane slowly starts to tilt forward as speed is lost. Your captain tries to keep the nose up, but he is struggling just to stay conscious like the rest of the people on board the plane. Without the thrust of the engines, the plane can’t maintain lift, and you go into a nosedive. This isn’t unique to just your plane; every aircraft in the sky plummets to the ground. Unfortunately, anyone who finds themselves flying when all of the oxygen disappears from the air will not live to see what happens when the important element returns after 60 seconds.
30 seconds after all oxygen in the atmosphere disappears:
If you are lucky enough not to be on a plane in this scenario, you fall to your knees, struggling to breathe to replenish your energy. Suddenly, you begin to feel a slight burn. The ozone layer of our atmosphere absorbs a lot of UV light and radiation from the sun. This is good because if we didn’t have ozone in our atmosphere, the Earth would be baked by the sun. But it isn’t just the temperature that would go up; harmful radiation would irradiate pretty much everything on the planet. UV rays still hit the Earth, but a lot less reach the surface because of Earth’s ozone layer.
The unfortunate thing is that ozone is made up of three oxygen atoms bonded together. If all of the oxygen in the atmosphere suddenly disappeared, there would be no more ozone. As you stand outside, your skin slowly begins to cook. The radiation from the sun causes burns to your skin. The cells in your body begin to die even quicker than they already were from just a lack of oxygen.
You crawl along the quickly warming sidewalk and try to reach cover. But since you can’t generate energy your muscles struggle to move. If you do manage to find shelter, the damage has already been done. You can feel heat radiating from your skin. Within your cells, your DNA has been damaged by the harmful UV rays. This may have caused mutations to develop, which could lead to diseases such as cancer in the years to come. The short time without an ozone layer would cause ice and snow to melt rapidly across the Earth while simultaneously boiling the ocean’s waters. Global temperatures would begin to increase drastically.
60 seconds after all oxygen in the atmosphere disappears:
You start to turn blue as you begin to lose consciousness. The oxygen in your blood has been completely used up, and now your cells have started to die off in large numbers. This is life-threatening, especially in brain cells. Even if a small percentage are damaged or die, it could be fatal. If you don’t find a source of oxygen in the next minute, you will suffer irreparable damage. Nothing will be able to bring you back at that point.
People who were in the middle of exercising or already holding their breath underwater while swimming would be in dire straits. Their oxygen levels were already lower than they would have been if they were just breathing normally. There would likely already be millions of casualties around the planet. Some people who live in high-altitude regions have adaptations that allow them to function better in low oxygen environments. But even they still need some oxygen. They may be able to hold out longer than most, but every human on the planet will eventually succumb to oxygen deprivation.
Aquatic animals like fish have nothing to worry about. Even if the dissolved oxygen in the water becomes lower for 60 seconds as it is not replenished by the atmosphere, there will still be plenty for aquatic creatures to survive for a full minute. Animals like whales, seals, and turtles that can hold their breath for long periods of time might have no idea that oxygen was missing from the air if they had taken a breath recently.
In fact, many animals that spend time underwater can hold their breath for several minutes at a time. Almost all species of whales would probably have no idea that the oxygen in the air was gone. Sperm whales hold their breath for up to an hour on average. The Cuvier’s Beaked Whale, which has the record for holding its breath the longest out of any animal, can last 3 hours and 42 minutes on a single breath.
Some smaller creatures that require a lot of energy to survive like hummingbirds would not do so well. Their hearts beat around 1,200 times a minute, meaning their cells need to generate tons of energy to keep them going. Unfortunately, without oxygen to allow this process to happen, hummingbirds would probably go extinct in the 60 seconds without oxygen in the atmosphere.
Plants generate energy in their mitochondria, just like most living things, which means they require oxygen as well. However, the process of photosynthesis that converts sunlight, carbon dioxide, and water into glucose and oxygen would still continue. This means that even if all of the oxygen in the air disappeared, plants would still release oxygen. It would not be enough for humans and other animals to breathe, as it would take time for oxygen levels to increase, but this process would not stop happening.
61 seconds after the initial loss of oxygen and when all oxygen returns to planet Earth.
You gasp for air and cough as oxygen finally enters your lungs and is absorbed into your cells. Your heart cells immediately start using the oxygen to generate energy to pump oxygenated blood around the body. You slowly regain consciousness and look around.
Some people will still be passed out but will be breathing on their own. Others will need medical attention but might be saved if given CPR before permanent damage is done to their brain.
The pressure that would result from all of the oxygen returning would likely wreak havoc on your inner ear again, throwing you off balance. But your body would recover, and you could then help those who did not fare as well in the oxygen less world.
However, a very different future would unfold if all the oxygen on Earth were to disappear for 60 seconds. The result of such an occurrence is almost unfathomable.
Scenario 2: All oxygen disappears instantly.
In this version of events, the effects of losing oxygen would destroy the entire planet long before 60 seconds went by. But what would actually happen? Every living thing is made up of a significant proportion of water. This is because water is the most abundant molecule in cells, not to mention that oxygen is necessary for countless processes that happen within every living thing. When oxygen disappears, molecules fall apart, and the remaining elements float away into the ether.
What this means for you is that a second after all oxygen disappears; you and every living thing on the planet would not exist anymore. All that would be left would be a plethora of atoms floating around and recombining with one another. But it isn’t just living things that would fall apart; buildings, mountains, and even the planet itself would change into a pile of floating particles in space.
2 seconds after all oxygen disappears.
The oceans are no more. The O in H2O stands for oxygen, which means any water on the planet would instantly just become hydrogen and would float away.
The Earth does not
contain enough mass for the hydrogen to collapse in on itself like in
the sun, so the gas would just expand and spread throughout the cosmos.
Where there were once oceans teeming with life, there are now just piles of salt and calcium. There are no more ice caps or glaciers, and rivers are nothing but dried-out beds of dirt. Clouds that were in the sky no longer exist as they were made out of condensed water droplets. The life-giving liquid that the entire planet relied on is no more.
3 seconds after all oxygen disappears.
Sirens go off in nuclear power plants across the planet. As all the water evaporates, there is nothing to cool the nuclear fuel rods. The chain reactions occurring in the fission reactor begin to ramp up.
As this happens, more and more radiation escapes containment. The cores begin to meltdown, causing intense heating of the facility and irradiation of everything in the area.
Luckily the particles in the fuel rods are not concentrated enough to cause a nuclear explosion. Regardless, the walls of nuclear power plants and every other building on the planet are about to come crashing down.
Oxygen plays an important role as a binding agent in concrete. This means that when the oxygen disappears from the planet, all buildings with concrete foundations and walls begin to crumble. After a few seconds, the concrete dust that was once a skyscraper, building, or house floats to the ground creating a giant pile of lime and silica.
Even buildings that are supported by metal frames will go through a surprising change. Metals typically require intense heat to weld together, but this is not the case if there is no oxygen on the planet. Metals on Earth are coated in a layer of oxidation that keeps them from naturally welding to one another. Without this oxidation coat, any metal that touches another metal instantly binds in what is called cold welding. Therefore, as concrete structures collapse into dust, their metal frames would still remain, creating eerie metal skeletons of cities across the globe.
Log cabins and structures made out of wood collapse, as well as over 40% of wood, is composed of oxygen. Trees fall apart like the rest of living things as the oxygen that binds their carbon, nitrogen, and other atoms blink out of existence.
And yet there is even worse news.
If you were somehow
in a protective bubble and able to remain in one piece during this whole
episode, you would watch the Earth literally be ripped apart.
Without any oxygen, the planet begins to crumble. Oxygen makes up around 45% of the Earth’s crust and mantle, meaning that the entire surface of the planet would dissipate into dust. There may be some binding between the remaining elements, but in the first few seconds of all oxygen disappearing, it would be as if there were no more solid surfaces. Anything that did not automatically vaporize would be floating around a mixture of silicon, iron, and aluminum with trace amounts of several other elements.
5 seconds after all oxygen disappears.
All of the elements and molecules that remain are free-floating in space. Scientists are still not entirely sure what the exact composition of the Earth’s core is other than iron and nickel, but it is not unreasonable to assume there is a decent amount of oxygen in there as well.
However, new research suggests that there might be less than originally expected. This means that if all the oxygen disappears, the Earth’s core might still be intact.
If this is the case, all of the dust and molecules left over after the Earth breaks apart will be pulled back towards the dense core of the planet. The elements and particles begin to compress and form a new oxygen-free planet. This new Earth will have a very different mineral composition than the one that had oxygen present. Pyrite and iron sulfide, which do not contain oxygen, would become more and more common. The new planet Earth might even look like a planet made entirely of gold, but upon closer inspection, any alien species that came across it would realize it’s just made of fool’s gold.
From 5 seconds to one minute after all oxygen disappears.
During this time, nothing really changes. All of the molecules that contained oxygen have broken up.
There are no longer
any living things on planet Earth, and most of what remains doesn’t
create a solid mass but instead is a cloud of floating particles
surrounding whatever is left of the Earth’s core.
However, with
each second that goes by, more and more of the particles get pulled
towards the core’s center of gravity, and the beginnings of a new
planet come into existence.
61 seconds after the initial loss of oxygen when all oxygen returns.
Atoms of oxygen pop back into existence in the exact locations they disappeared from originally. They immediately start bonding to other free atoms and creating the molecules that once made up Earth. Some of these elements have already fused into different molecules, so there would likely be more free oxygen in the air than on the previous Earth.
Water would fall from the sky as the oxygen binds with hydrogen. It is probable that this is where most of the oxygen would go, which would result in the entire surface being covered in water. In a matter of 60 seconds, Earth went from what we see today to completely falling apart, then to a water world. Oxygen is one element that literally keeps our planet together.
Life would not immediately come back into existence. However, we are finding that life probably isn’t all that uncommon in our universe, and given enough time, life may start again in a few million years. With oxygen back in the mix, everything that was present during the formation of Earth would be available on the planet once again.
Whatever the initial catalyst that caused life to develop on Earth the first time around could happen a second time. However, as millions of years went by and evolution took place, the creatures and plants that would inhabit the new Earth would be very different than what we see today. Unfortunately, if all oxygen were to disappear once again, these new lifeforms would be in just as much trouble as you and everyone else would be if this doomsday scenario ever happened to our planet.