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Lets suppose, a ship full of a few hundred colonists crash lands on the wrong planet where, despite the odds, they try to form a functioning society. This planet has oxygen, liquid water and is perfectly habitable, but is totally sterile and has never had life.

They have some soil and necessary technology to make arable land, but only enough to get them started and support a few hundred people. Even then, it's only enough to put nutrients in the soil for the first season and afterwards, they're on their own.

My question is, assuming they have seeds and livestock (including birds, fish and other fauna to seed the world), how long would it take for them to spread out over the planet? How fast would plant and animal life expand and, in turn, make the planet more hospitable for planet and animal life?

Where would they be in say, a few hundred or a few thousand years?

Keep in mind, this is not under ideal conditions for the colonists, who are going to have a lot of trouble going forward with both equipment and internal conflict. They don't have travel beyond buggies and will start out very localized to the crash site. Also, there are scientists, leaders and other highly capable personnel there, but most people are just passengers.

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    $\begingroup$ 1. If there's no life on this planet, how is there (free) oxygen? Why isn't it bound up in rock, without cyanobacteria to liberate it? 2. If there's no life and therefore no food, why would released animals expand into the rest of the planet's surface? 3. Why do they have this whole pocket biosphere but not enough soil to sustain it? 4. Have they considered minimum viable population for humans? "Hundreds" is not that many people. 5. The scientists and "leaders" are the passengers. The backbone of the colony must be skilled labor if it's to survive. $\endgroup$ Commented Jun 29, 2024 at 10:58
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    $\begingroup$ Ditto! Sorry but the presence of liquid water and oxygen (at breathable levels - for humans)) implies some kind of catalytic reaction that releases oxygen molecules frmo whatever compound they are chemically bound to. $\endgroup$ Commented Jun 29, 2024 at 12:12
  • $\begingroup$ "… but is totally sterile and has never had life." You should rather ask how long it takes until everyone is dead, then. By definition, your planet is unsuitable for life. $\endgroup$ Commented Jun 29, 2024 at 13:24
  • $\begingroup$ I was thinking that other processes (geologicalfor example) could be used to explain the oxygen, or I could just handwave it. I'm moreso worried about how hard it would be to make the ground arable, and how that small area of live would spread once it had a foothold. $\endgroup$ Commented Jun 30, 2024 at 1:19
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    $\begingroup$ VTC:Too Story-Based. There is no deterministic way to answer this question. Even random storms, earthquakes, meteor strikes, etc. would upset any answer, as would snake bite, bad choices, famine, geology, climatology, technology, the failure of technology, promiscuity... the list is endless. Worse, the timetable and patterns would be subject to narrative necessity. $\endgroup$ Commented Jun 30, 2024 at 5:05

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Colonizing an area takes around 150 years

The process is called primary succession, and commonly happens when new land is exposed or a volcano eruption makes new land. Pioneer species break into the rock, grow and produce dirt, and then that dirt can then be used by grasses, and then scrubs, and then small trees, and then large trees.

They're likely gonna have a few decades of harsh living as their pioneer species barely produce enough food to survive, and then things will be much easier. In the mean time, their species will spread through the world and colonize them, meaning future successions are much faster.

Animal life is not gonna be doing great till there's much more life around.

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Sorry, but the presence of liquid water & breathable levels of oxygen on an Earth like planet without some kind of catalytic reaction that releases oxygen molecules from whatever compound they are chemically bound to e.g. photosynthesis is impossible.

The thing is oxygen is your classic chemical 'party animal' it will literally bond to any chemical element it can as soon as it can. And once bonded it tends to stay there until it's forced to separate (on Earth Iron is a classic example). The only exceptions we know of to this rule are the noble gases which in general don't tend bond strongly with any other element.

So for your story to work you need at least some form of primitive (single celled) organisms in your world's rivers/streams oceans etc that chemically release oxygen into the atmosphere as a result of a catalytic process that releases oxygen as a byproduct (again see photosynthesis). You want to pick some other form of exotic chemical reaction? That's up to you!

So I would suggest your pioneers crash land on an Earth 'like' planet. On Earth the current evidence indicates that free oxygen began to appear in quantities in the planets atmosphere 2.3 to about 2.7 Billion years ago i.e. long before complex life forms emerged in the Earth's oceans let alone before they colonized its land masses. So I would suggest your colonists 'crash land' on an Earth like planet some time well after this stage of its development when oxygen levels are more or less stabilized at breathable levels but before advanced plants and animals have colonized the land and with the vast majority of living species still confined to watery environments.

They might have to 'put up' with primitive plants and animals on land in moist environments and simple organisms crawling though the mud and dirt but there won't be any dinos running about to deal with.

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