Nerd Out Time!
It is a mass extinction. It occurs when a large number of species die out in a relatively short period of time. It is a widespread and rapid decrease in the amount of life on Earth. Over 98% of documented species are now extinct. There is debate about the causes of past mass extinctions.
“The insidious thing about extinction events is that they tend to be gradual, often leading to a domino effect in which one event stresses one or more species, leading to another event that destroys many more. Thus, any cascade of death typically involves multiple killers on this list.”
Anne Marie Helmenstine, Ph.D., Chemistry Expert Courtesy of ThoughtCo, Quote from https://www.crystalinks.com/ELE.html
“An extinction event (also known as a mass extinction or biotic crisis) is a widespread and rapid decrease in the amount of life on earth. Such an event is identified by a sharp change in the diversity and abundance of macroscopic life. It occurs when the rate of extinction increases with respect to the rate of speciation. Because the majority of diversity and biomass on Earth is microbial, and thus difficult to measure, recorded extinction events affect the easily observed, biologically complex component of the biosphere rather than the total diversity and abundance of life.
“Over 98% of documented species are now extinct, but extinction occurs at an uneven rate. Based on the fossil record, the background rate of extinctions on Earth is about two to five taxonomic families of marine invertebrates and vertebrates every million years. Marine fossils are mostly used to measure extinction rates because of their superior fossil record and stratigraphic range compared to land organisms.
“Since life began on Earth, several major mass extinctions have significantly exceeded the background extinction rate. The most recent, the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event, which occurred approximately 66 million years ago (Ma), was a large-scale mass extinction of animal and plant species in a geologically short period of time. In the past 540 million years there have been five major events when over 50% of animal species died. Mass extinctions seem to be a Phanerozoic phenomenon, with extinction rates low before large complex organisms arose.
“Estimates of the number of major mass extinctions in the last 540 million years range from as few as five to more than twenty. These differences stem from the threshold chosen for describing an extinction event as "major", and the data chosen to measure past diversity.”
Book Six, Clash tells you how the ele is happening. Not only is there a highly contagious virus that quickly transforms spillover mammal species into reservoir species occurring, but all kinds of nukings and nuclear meltdowns, which is how the fauna and insects are affected. Alas, anyone familiar with massive disasters and suddenly thrown into the 18th century has a suspicion on what else is to come for humanity. I’m not telling you if you cannot foresee it. You’ll just have to keep reading to find out.