261–270 of 287 posts
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But reading from left to right/top to bottom is definitely not universal. How will you make sure that the figures are read in the correct order? Perhaps a future culture will read the signs to mean that they should bring old and dying people to the stone to resurrect them?
Maybe arrows would help with the designated order of the frames.
I find the "human comes near box with radioactive sign/sign is on human now/human sick" drawing to be a pretty universal warning sign. No matter how many years we're aiming for the message to survive, as long as we're warning against humans, wouldn't using the human form somehow in the message be the best way? Isn't drawing narratives with bipedal stick figures something we've had since the dawn of humanity?
But reading from left to right/top to bottom is definitely not universal. How will you make sure that the figures are read in the correct order? Perhaps a future culture will read the signs to mean that they should bring old and dying people to the stone to resurrect them?
Honestly, reading this, I kept thinking to myself, "Man, this is just waiting to be turned into science fiction short story." It could go in different directions, future humans discover such a site, humans discover an alien analogue of such a site on $planet, aliens discover such a site crafted by humans on $planet, etc. Either way, there's potential for a good story there.
In the full report [1], there actually is a sample short story or "scenario" (page F-139, "5.1 Scenario for the marking system (MFK)"). Extract: > Jo climbed down and walked over, the sand squeaking beneath her boots. She followed Steve’s head around the shape, only to find another shape behind it. The sand had shifted in between the two, but the writing was still clear. She stood next to Steve and looked. There were…
Say there is a biological weapons attack and humanity is wiped out aside from some remote communities like Alert, Canada. Some tech survives like gears, but obviously computers go away for a while. In 3000 years people are aware that humanity was once great, but then destroyed itself with hubris. They may even have a fairly developed understanding of science based on what they could save (university text books would _certainly_ be hoarded and copied 10 years after the bio-attack).
Now the society enters an age that is kinda like a more advanced renaissance. No more easy coal or oil, so they use electricity from wind turbines.
What happens when they figure out what is at that site? They weaponize it. It's so obvious to me. If we want to stop people from getting killed by it we should hide it as best as possible. Or make it as hard as obtaining enriched uranium. Humans have always had a "Do whatever it takes" approach to war and there is no way a emanating death object is going to be avoided once they understand what it does.
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A most clever ruse, to be sure.
To what end? Tremendous effort for no purpose but to intrigue? Kinda like building an enormous underground labyrinth then filling it with sand, just to get a giggle at how much people will do (long after you're dead) to find the presumed hidden treasure that isn't there.
There are layers of wood, etc, but they're probably just laid down by natural causes over the millennia instead of being a constructed building.
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I'm not so sure. Primitive mining in e.g. Røros, Norway goes back to 1740. Dynamite were introduced to the mine in 1870. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%B8ros
Mining, dynamite or otherwise, has to be for something. So why would people dig super far down in the desert through sand and worthless rocks?
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> How would you make a system which could kill interlopers quickly and reliably 10,000 years from now? 1. Put the real stash of waste very, very deep underground. 2. Put a (much smaller) booby stash in a moderately innaccesible place above. People who make it this far should get the first symptoms within one hour and probably die painfully a few weeks later. 3. Leave smaller traces of the stuff laying around in the m…
> 1. Put the real stash of waste very, very deep underground. What exactly is the benefit of that? If you're willing to poison people, just go ahead and poison them.
Alternatively, you may want to fetch a dictionary and look up the meaning of word "tradeoff".
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We're hoping to start a colony on Mars. How could we possibly make Earth even remotely as inhospitable as Mars? Do you expect us to remove all the oceans' water? Remove most of the oxygen from the atmosphere? Kill all plants? I don't think we have much hope of making Earth inhospitable to us even if we tried. Perhaps we somehow contaminate it all with nuclear waste. Even then, there'll be safety underground for long…
"Keep Earth hospitable" and "Colonize Mars" have very different goals, though. It would likely be humanity's crowning achievement to put a permanent outpost on another planet, but it would be, what, 15 people maybe? The other planet we're talking about has to support at least 7 billion.
Even pessimistically over one human lifetime I bet that "15 people" turns into at least 30.
You get gene pool and interbreeding issues with too small of a pool, then again you'd be amazed what you can store in liq nitrogen for a long time.
Also looking at the temporary and limited mineral and energy requirements, the earth isn't going to support 7B or 9B or even 1B for much longer, on a geologic / radiation timescale.
For awhile you can turn mined petrochemicals and chemical fertilizers into lots of human biomass. The key is for awhile, temporarily.
[0] http://prod.sandia.gov/techlib/access-control.cgi/1992/92138...
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waste_Isolation_Pilot_Plant
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To what end? Tremendous effort for no purpose but to intrigue? Kinda like building an enormous underground labyrinth then filling it with sand, just to get a giggle at how much people will do (long after you're dead) to find the presumed hidden treasure that isn't there.
Probably just a lie. No effort. There are layers of wood, etc, but they're probably just laid down by natural causes over the millennia instead of being a constructed building.
Flagstones, layers of heavy timbers every 10 feet, a stone with carved glyphs at 90 feet, oak chests with coins, a sideways booby-trap well, Layers of blue clay at 130 and 160 feet, a cofferdam, and artifacts dating back 200+ years.
This strikes me as far, far more than an elaborate prank; it is a significant defense system meant to protect _something_