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It is apparently canon that there are animals and plants on the Earth's surface in Neo's day.

However, in the first movie, The Matrix, Morpheus tells Neo that one of the things known for certain is that humans "burned the sky" in order to deny solar engery to the machines, which in turn led to the humans who survived the War being plugged into the Matrix to provide bioelectric energy to supply the machines.

If there's not enough sunlight for solar power, how can there be enough to grow plants to serve as food for animals? Low levels I can understand -- house plants, at least, thrive in conditions too dim for solar panels to produce cost-effective power -- but every surface scene we see in the trilogy is as dark as a cloudy night; light coming only from the machines. That wouldn't begin to support photosynthesis, which means all animal life would starve in, at most, a matter of a few years.

Zeiss Ikon
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    I'm not sure what more could be said than in my answer to the linked question. One of the panels in The Miller's Tale says that life "somehow persisted" and another suggests that wheat acquired a mutation to thrive despite the relative lack of sunlight. – Null Aug 01 '17 at 18:39
  • Animals eat corpses of their deceased brethren... Hmm wait, does it really work like that? – void_ptr Aug 01 '17 at 18:40
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    @void_ptr They will for a while, but eating meat produces about 10% as much meat as it consumes. Without plants, animals will starve, unavoidably. Null points out that low-light wheat was hand-waved, but that won't explain a monkey -- most monkeys don't eat grain, and they won't evolve fast enough to avoid starvation. – Zeiss Ikon Aug 01 '17 at 18:44
  • Right. This was a snarky reference to authors trying to pull this kind of explanation off with humans in the Matrix. In all seriousness, they likely never thought this through, and hand-waved the issue with "somehow persisted" and such. – void_ptr Aug 01 '17 at 19:00
  • @void_ptr Hence my question. If you're going to write SF, you owe it to your reader/viewers to get the S right -- or at least, as right as current knowledge permits. – Zeiss Ikon Aug 01 '17 at 19:05
  • Consider this possibility. We have no idea how long the Machines have been controlling the Earth. It could have been 100 years, 1000 years, 10000 years, we don't know. It could be possible that enough time has elapsed for wildlife to evolve to a state in which they can survive in the environment. – Magikarp Master Aug 01 '17 at 19:09
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    @MagikarpMaster With dozens of previous Ones (as shown by the Architect when Neo reached his office), the middle figure seems a reasonable minimum. And wildlife can't evolve in the (at most) fewer than ten years after the plants die before everything starves. – Zeiss Ikon Aug 01 '17 at 19:20
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    This is assuming that the Architect wasn't messing with Neo. Remember that the Architect had to demoralize Neo enough to realize that he can't win, but not demoralize him enough to prevent him from starting the new Zion. The human resistance is a necessary pressure valve that keeps the Matrix running. So one can make the case that the Architect was lying. And there was a time in which the Earth's entire atmosphere drastically changed yet life persisted. There is bacteria that lives in boiling tar pits. Life could have evolved from that. – Magikarp Master Aug 01 '17 at 19:28
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    The film basically ignores the obvious consequences of the humans blocking off the sunlight to defeat the machines, which would be to immediately plunge the world into an Ice Age of epic proportions. Lack of sunlight would be the least of their worries as ice sheets eventually cover vast areas of the globe and average temp dropping below zero everywhere. The oceans would gradually freeze over, also the death of all photosynthetic plants would mean the end of new oxygen production and oxygen levels would eventually diminish to below the level required to support any human or animal life. –  Aug 01 '17 at 21:07
  • @Nathan - Except as we see, not all photosynthesis has stopped, nor even have larger vertebrates died. – Valorum Aug 03 '17 at 09:51
  • @Valorum Agreed, this is how it's shown in universe - just saying that this is taking some liberties with how the sun's interaction with Earth's atmosphere and biosphere actually works. It's probably all powered by handwavium anyway :) –  Aug 03 '17 at 11:33
  • @Nathan - We simply don't know how this nanite shroud works. It might let through (some) IR but block visible light. That would explain the coldness but lack of actual freezing. – Valorum Aug 03 '17 at 12:41
  • https://longagoandohsofaraway.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/ianmalcolmlifefindsaway.gif – Paul D. Waite Sep 24 '20 at 10:11

1 Answers1

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The surface isn't unlit, just very dim. We see numerous views of the outside world in the Matrix, Animatrix and Matrix Comics and all of those portray the surface as being very gloomy rather than utterly eclipsed.

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The Matrix - Revolutions

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Animatrix - Final Flight of the Osiris

enter image description here Matrix Webcomic - Hunters and Collectors.

That being the case, robust low-light plant species such as fungi, various lichens, mosses and water-borne plants like duckweed and Sagittaria would survive just fine even with the general collapse of the ecosystem. We see in Miller's Tale that certain larger species such as ducks have survived, presumably by eating plants and insects and we even see that high-light species like wheat are able (with mutation) to live on.

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We do know, however know that there are No Flowers in the Real World

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Valorum
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  • It's worth pointing out that while there is heavy cloud cover that is opaque to visible light, it probably isn't opaque to the UV part of the spectrum. Also worth noting that life persists in even more inhospitable conditions, such as in the very deep parts of the ocean. To quote Jurassic Park, "Life finds a way." – Irishpanda Sep 01 '17 at 19:40
  • @Irishpanda - Except that it's not opaque. Humans can see unaided, which means that it's at least bright enough to grow low-light plants, fungi and parasitic feeders like mycoheterotrophs. Animals can survive by eating those – Valorum Sep 01 '17 at 19:52
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    True, my point is that it may not even be dim in other wavelengths. Now that I think of it, I'm surprised that no one has mentioned that something similar has already happened on this planet (well, minus the bit about fields of radioactive glass). Just ask a dinosaur. – Irishpanda Sep 01 '17 at 20:06
  • @Irishpanda https://longagoandohsofaraway.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/ianmalcolmlifefindsaway.gif – Paul D. Waite Sep 24 '20 at 10:12