i've been doing more thinking and something just struck me... just how much time passes between the cleansing and the beginning of a new civilization? from what i believe (which is formed from ingame sources), it seems like only a few thousand years, like ten millennia or less... now, with the beacon, without something to focus it... it kills off all animal life across the planet, right? shouldn't just basic "unassisted" recovery take like hundreds of thousands of years, longer still for more advance forms of life? if that much time passed there wouldn't be much left physically of anything man-made after so much time. so is there some kind of life seeding that goes on after a few thousand years? or is the damage done to the ecology and the fatality rate less then it appeared to be, so animal life and a few humans manage to survive? even if the ecology isn't damaged, it should still take tens of thousands of years for humanoid life to reappear. or am i missing anything?
(take note: these aren't figures i pulled from mid air, but stuff i learned in school 20 years ago or so, or what managed to stick anyway)