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.
How to build something that lasts 10k years
61–70 of 142 posts
Re: How to build something that lasts 10k years
#62Earlier 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…
Re: How to build something that lasts 10k years
#63Earlier 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?
Re: How to build something that lasts 10k years
#64Re: How to build something that lasts 10k years
#65Earlier 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.
Re: How to build something that lasts 10k years
#66Earlier 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?
Re: How to build something that lasts 10k years
#67Finland 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
#68Make 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.
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
#69Re: How to build something that lasts 10k years
#70[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death%27s_End
[2] https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=nUkoCwAAQBAJ&pg=PT539&lp...