What If Every Insect on Earth Disappeared?

Think of the insect you hate the most, and imagine you could delete it. Not just that one: all of them, every insect on Earth, gone by tomorrow morning. For about a week you would love it. No bites, no buzzing, no malaria. Then the birds go quiet. We follow what happens next: the silent first day, the good news of week one, the hungry birds and bats of month one, the pastures that stop cleaning themselves, the first spring without pollinators, what is left on your plate after a year, and the green desert ten years later. Then we look at what is really happening to insects today. If you could wipe out just one kind of insect forever, which would it be, and did it survive this video? Tell us in the comments. Next on Hour Zero: What if the Moon disappeared for a year? 0:00 The insect you hate the most 1:09 Day 1: the silence 2:18 Week 1: the good news 4:25 Month 1: the hungry 6:34 Month 3: the unburied 8:44 Season 1: the flowers 11:13 Year 1: the plate 13:33 Year 10: the green desert 15:39 Could it happen? 17:18 The real lesson Sources: WHO World malaria report 2024; Nyffeler et al. 2018 on insect-eating birds; Smith et al. 2015 (The Lancet) on pollinators and human health; IPBES 2016 pollination assessment; Losey and Vaughan 2006 (BioScience) on the value of wild insects; Hallmann et al. 2017 (PLOS ONE) and van Klink et al. 2020 (Science) on insect decline; Ollerton et al. 2011; Klein et al. 2007; Stork 2018; Bar-On et al. 2018; CSIRO Australian Dung Beetle Project; FAO Locust Watch. The scenario itself is a thought experiment. Footage and photos: Wikimedia Commons, public domain and CC0 only (U.S. Department of Agriculture, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Bureau of Land Management, CDC and other U.S. government sources; J. M. Pearson, Truem, Extemporalist and Unsplash contributors under CC0). AI disclosure: the narration is AI-assisted.