Prickly City by Scott Stantis for June 11, 2023

Yes, cockroaches will outlive the human species. So will cats. The future of the planet is a bunch of human corpses all over the landscape, and cats having a feast.

It will be The Vogans.

When it starts to die, the Sun will expand into a red giant star, becoming so large that it will engulf Mercury and Venus, and possibly Earth as well. Scientists predict the Sun is a little less than halfway through its lifetime and will last another 5 billion years or so before it becomes a white dwarf

There’s an Orson Scott Card series in which humans have left Earth behind for millenia after it was ruined. When they finally return the two sentient species are bats and rats.

This seems less likely now, what with the Insect Apocalypse.

This may not be far off the mark, although it is most likely whatever insect/bacteria life survives on Earth (until Earth’s sun no longer produces energy necessary to sustain any sort of life approximately 6B years from now) will be located only below the surface, at least for tens to hundreds of millions of years — if not permanently.

Coyotes, much like humans, can adapt to a wide range of ecological conditions, and they do it without adapting the environment to suit themselves; they might well survive a disaster that drives humans to extinction (or near-extinction), and after a few generations thrive (particularly if their larger, less-adaptable competitors are also weakened). Like rats and pigeons, they’re survivors.

If we die a chunk of the roach and rats and mice will die. We feed them so their numbers are larger than otherwise should be.