How to build something that lasts 10k years • Hacker News Board

Re: How to build something that lasts 10k years

#51

Post by smacktoward » Wed, Jun 12, 2019, 12:06 PM UTC

ddxxdd wrote: post #41

phito wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This place is a message... and part of a system of messages ...pay attention to it! Sending this message was important to us. We considered ourselves to be a powerful culture. This place is not a place of honor... no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here... nothing valued is here. What is here was dangerous and repulsive to us. This message is a warning about danger. The danger is in a particular location... it i…

Why not exploit human evolutionary psychology for the task? A lawnmower warning label would communicate more to future civilizations than a poem translated in several dozen languages. ( https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/VJYAAOSw~xlaqj-d/s-l1600.jpg ) Gory imagery always gets the job done.

Except it doesn't, also because of psychology.

The ancient Egyptians learned this the hard way. Many of their tombs were marked with graphic warnings threatening anyone who disturbed them with various horrible ends. But most of them were robbed regardless, and those that weren't were eventually cracked open by 19th and 20th century archaeologists.

That wasn't because the people violating those tombs didn't understand the warnings (the archaeologists certainly did). It was for two reasons:

1. Some people, like the archaeologists, are going to read the warnings and dismiss them as dumb ancient superstitions; and

2. Other people, like ancient grave robbers, are going to read the warnings and think "Huh. They really want me to stay out of that place. There must be something really valuable in there!"

Re: How to build something that lasts 10k years

#52

Post by modernerd » Wed, Jun 12, 2019, 12:06 PM UTC

vincnetas wrote: post #10

Finland is building nuclear waste storage facility which is planned to last for 100.000 years. There are quite few interesting design decisions to be made taking this lifespan in to account, for example if current civilization will be wiped out, what symbols you should put on a door to discourage someone in future to opening the door. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repo... https://www.youtube…

The project's president has said that no symbols at all might be better than any universal warning symbol they could hope to produce, such as a skull and crossbones. Leaving the site unmarked could be less likely to encourage investigation and disturbance of it in the future.

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/life/2012/01/15/general/danger-...

Re: How to build something that lasts 10k years

#53

Post by masklinn » Wed, Jun 12, 2019, 12:17 PM UTC

newman8r wrote: post #2

the lazy man's way to make something that will last thousands(or more) years: dry stone masonry. I've built a few walls, they're not going anywhere. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_stone

Cyclopean masonry probably helps survive through political instability: small drystone is easy to pull down and reuse. If you can't pull it down without enough technology that you don't need to pull it down it'll probably have an easier time.

Re: How to build something that lasts 10k years

#54

Post by mc32 » Wed, Jun 12, 2019, 12:19 PM UTC

vincnetas wrote: post #10

Finland is building nuclear waste storage facility which is planned to last for 100.000 years. There are quite few interesting design decisions to be made taking this lifespan in to account, for example if current civilization will be wiped out, what symbols you should put on a door to discourage someone in future to opening the door. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repo... https://www.youtube…

Wouldn’t the best option in planning for regression be making it inaccessible and unreachable—really hard to get to without technology?

Once people have technology back, then presumably they’d be able to detect radiation and avoid the contaminated location?

In 100000 years the biggest threat is probably glaciation submerging very large areas of Finland.

Re: How to build something that lasts 10k years

#55

Post by comicjk » Wed, Jun 12, 2019, 12:22 PM UTC

phito wrote: post #39

vincnetas wrote: post #10

Finland is building nuclear waste storage facility which is planned to last for 100.000 years. There are quite few interesting design decisions to be made taking this lifespan in to account, for example if current civilization will be wiped out, what symbols you should put on a door to discourage someone in future to opening the door. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repo... https://www.youtube…

This place is a message... and part of a system of messages ...pay attention to it! Sending this message was important to us. We considered ourselves to be a powerful culture. This place is not a place of honor... no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here... nothing valued is here. What is here was dangerous and repulsive to us. This message is a warning about danger. The danger is in a particular location... it i…

I used this text as an intro to the classic D&D adventure "Tomb of Horrors" - in my reimagining, the ancient evil at the bottom of the tomb was its civilization's version of nuclear waste.

Re: How to build something that lasts 10k years

#56

Post by arketyp » Wed, Jun 12, 2019, 12:23 PM UTC

msiyer wrote: post #47

We can learn from Nature - atoms, photons, DNA... all last long. Really long.

DNA... A lifeform, more generally a replicator, is actually an interesting idea for something long-lasting. Perhaps our meme pool will survive our gene pool.

Re: How to build something that lasts 10k years

#57

Post by SmellyGeekBoy » Wed, Jun 12, 2019, 12:26 PM UTC

phito wrote: post #39

vincnetas wrote: post #10

Finland is building nuclear waste storage facility which is planned to last for 100.000 years. There are quite few interesting design decisions to be made taking this lifespan in to account, for example if current civilization will be wiped out, what symbols you should put on a door to discourage someone in future to opening the door. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repo... https://www.youtube…

This place is a message... and part of a system of messages ...pay attention to it! Sending this message was important to us. We considered ourselves to be a powerful culture. This place is not a place of honor... no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here... nothing valued is here. What is here was dangerous and repulsive to us. This message is a warning about danger. The danger is in a particular location... it i…

Funny thing is, if we discovered some ancient tomb or burial site with these messages we'd write it off as superstition and open it up anyway. I'm not sure some future civilization would be any different.

Re: How to build something that lasts 10k years

#58

Post by mattmanser » Wed, Jun 12, 2019, 12:29 PM UTC

mc32 wrote: post #54

vincnetas wrote: post #10

Finland is building nuclear waste storage facility which is planned to last for 100.000 years. There are quite few interesting design decisions to be made taking this lifespan in to account, for example if current civilization will be wiped out, what symbols you should put on a door to discourage someone in future to opening the door. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repo... https://www.youtube…

Wouldn’t the best option in planning for regression be making it inaccessible and unreachable—really hard to get to without technology? Once people have technology back, then presumably they’d be able to detect radiation and avoid the contaminated location? In 100000 years the biggest threat is probably glaciation submerging very large areas of Finland.

People were trying to find a way through the artic from the 16th century, 400 years before the first Geiger–Müller tube was made.

Re: How to build something that lasts 10k years

#59

Post by 6d6b73 » Wed, Jun 12, 2019, 12:30 PM UTC

bambax wrote: post #30

> engineers are building a clock in the Texan desert that will last for 10,000 years Well, we don't know that. There is no way to know. Selling this to rich guys like Bezos is kind of like selling "after the rapture pet care"...

Well, actually we know that.. It's called engineering.. And no, we can't guarantee that it will work for 10k years as there is too many things that could go wrong, but we can, based on our current knowledge predict that it should last that long based on all we know about engineering and science.

Re: How to build something that lasts 10k years

#60

Post by SmellyGeekBoy » Wed, Jun 12, 2019, 12:34 PM UTC

jpalomaki wrote: post #23

onion2k wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The mechanical stability of a drystone wall is amazing, but the political stability of the border it represents is very, very fragile. It won't fall over but someone might knock it down. That's the problem the Long Now clock might have solved - it's been marketed as a symbol of human persistence. People are being persuaded that it's important. We maintain our symbolic icons. That political stability is what might kee…

Could you get a space vehicle on a trajectory that brings it close to earth only every 1000 - 10000 years? Add there some mechanism that draws attention and transmits it’s message through radio. Would it be doable to have some primitive electronics that would survive so long?

Seems it would be possible to have it spin on its axis so that it reflects the light from the sun towards Earth in some kind of pulsing flashing manner. That would attract attention. No need for electronics. Of course encoding a message in the flash would be almost impossible, but it could serve as a beacon for a future civilisation to attempt to go up there and retrieve it.