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How to build something that lasts 10k years

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61–70 of 142 posts

Re: How to build something that lasts 10k years

#61
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I was thinking more along the lines of burying it deep under an inactive seabed. We’d have a hard time now digging things up. We aren’t even able to do simple floor mining well.

Re: How to build something that lasts 10k years

#62
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I wonder if Indiana-Jones-style death traps would successfully show trespassers that the site's builders were serious, or if this would only attract more curiosity.

Re: How to build something that lasts 10k years

#63
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These messages were listed in succession in an art installation as part of the Amsterdam light festival. An intriguingly dark contrast to the rest of the atmosphere.

Doesn't embedding these messages into art defy their very purpose of being a warning?

These messages aren't currently used as warnings, and exhibiting them as art will never diminish the literal message that they convey.

Re: How to build something that lasts 10k years

#65
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…

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.

You are totally right. I read that and I felt a chill right up my back telling me, There's cool stuff in there, go get your crowbar!

Re: How to build something that lasts 10k years

#66
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These messages were listed in succession in an art installation as part of the Amsterdam light festival. An intriguingly dark contrast to the rest of the atmosphere.

Doesn't embedding these messages into art defy their very purpose of being a warning?

That list was never intended to be literally used as a warning - think of it as a set of acceptance criteria against which any plan to mark a nuclear waste disposal site must be judged. It needs to communicate those things, unambiguously, across time and culture, for 10000 years.

Re: How to build something that lasts 10k years

#67

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-...

That makes more sense to me. It’s not like these waste canisters are going to somehow float to the surface. The biggest problem would have to be sealing the entrance and descending tunnels in such a way to keep the site hidden. Is that possible? If you could do that then the only danger would be a sufficiently advanced culture for some reason trying to drill or dig in that area. And why would they do that if the geology of the area isn’t one which would lead them to expect minerals. Fast forward any further and they’re only going to discover it with some kind of ground penetrating radar which indicates a pretty sophisticated society.

Re: How to build something that lasts 10k years

#68

Make it disposable. Make it from plastic.

Perhaps our descendants, 10000 years in the future, will be exploring the purpose of The Great Pacific garbage patch.

Assuming some break with history or loss of cultural memory, after 10k years of photodisintegration and absorption into the biosphere, there will be no Garbage Patch.

Our descendants would then be left to wonder at the odd adaptations that life must have made to accommodate complex polymers into their biology, and where those complex polymers might have come from.

Re: How to build something that lasts 10k years

#70
The best description of building something that lasts I've seen in recent fiction is Cixin Liu's Death's End [1] where he writes [2] about mankind's museum (a forever tombstone).

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death%27s_End

[2] https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=nUkoCwAAQBAJ&pg=PT539&lp...

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