Dark ages

[Niles09]

Just wondered, wouldnt all this dark dust clouds preventing the sun from coming make most of the plants and trees die, most of the animal population go mad and a good part of the intelligent creatures too?

[Dorganath]

The lack of light would make most plant life less vibrant, and only the heartiest species would survive/thrive. There is still some light and plants can use that, but again, they don't do as well in most cases. Animal life would suffer as a result, finding less food at the bottom of the food chain.
  As for the intelligent species and whether or not they would go mad....Not sure. I guess that depends on how stable they are to begin with.
  Now, having said that, we're not going to go through and modify all vegetative areas to reflect a more barren landscape, nor are we going to thin the animal population world-wide. The reasons for this are simple....it would take far too much time and effort to do so. Some areas may be targeted for changes, but those will be handled in small groups, and not be done world wide.

[darkstorme]

More to the point, there have been periods on earth where the sky has darkened from dust.  In August, 1883, Krakatoa exploded, hurling 25 cubic miles of dust and ash into the stratosphere.  It darkened the world, chilled the entire planet by an average of 1.2 degrees C, screwed up weather patterns, and stained the sky red.  It caused widespread famine in parts of the world, and may have inspired the sky in the painting "The Scream", but there was no mass panic that was not related to one of the more mundane (ie. the famine, the tsunamis, the earthquakes) effects of the blast.

[PsychicToaster]

I believe that was the madness Niles was refering to, the ferocity inspired by competition during a time of resource shortage.

[Niles09]

Animals would go mad if it is as dark as night, cause it would screw up their daily circle: hunting, sleeping etc their lives depend on the day and night, and sthe numbers of species who forage at day and sleep at night will shorten very very fast, because they simply wouldnt stand a chance against those who hunt at night.

Though ofcourse if this whole dark age things just is a constant grey weather I guess it wouldnt be so bad. Hmmm I actually think that was what I originally intended to ask, is it dark nearly as night or just dark like a grey weather?

[Dorganath]

During the day, it is as a heavily overcast/cloudy day. During the night it's dark, as any night would be. So there is a definite day/night cycle, but there is surely significantly less light during the day than normal, which will affect plant life as I indicated, thereby affecting the lower end of the food chain, thereby affecting the upper end of the food chain.